Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 44(6): November 2018 a diversity of scales (global to neighborhood) and disciplines. Community-based monitor- ing (CBM) falls under the umbrella of citi- zen science and encompasses efforts that are designed to track and respond to issues of common community concern (Whitelaw et al. 2003). Collaborators on CBM projects typically involve scientists, the public, government agen- cies, community groups, and local institutions. CBM efforts oſten focus on areas of environ- mental concern because of an increasing aware- ness of anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems (Conrad and Daoust 2008) and in some cases public concern about governmental capacity to monitor ecosystems (Pollock and Whitelaw 2005). The increasing complexity—and in some cases the rapidity—of emerging environmental issues stretches the capacity of monitoring pro- grams to provide decision- and policymakers the information they need to address environmen- tally important changes (Vaughan et al. 2001). For CBM efforts to be useful with respect to providing information to management agencies, it is necessary to understand the accuracy and reliability of the data collected by non-experts. Data reliability is a common theme within the citizen science literature (Cox et al. 2012; Kos- mala et al. 2016; Lukyanenko et al. 2016; Roman et al. 2017). Regardless of whether experts or non-experts collect data for scientific studies, data quality is constantly monitored, and there are many protocols and procedures that are designed to reduce error. Furthermore, data vari- ability and reliability play key roles in determin- ing how scientific data can and should be used. Urban forestry is positioned to take advantage of an increasing interest in CBM projects because of the high concentrations of people in cities and the importance of trees and greenspace to urban environments. Studies that have focused on volun- teer data quality for urban forestry applications have found that accuracy levels vary for each variable being collected. For instance, Roman et al. (2017) found highest consistency between experts and non-experts for species ID, DBH, site type, land use, and dieback (all >80% agreement), and lower levels of agreement for transparency and wood condition (71.5% and 55.2%, respectively). Two other studies focusing on volunteer data quality 237 for urban tree inventory applications found simi- lar levels of agreement for species identification (approximately 80% agreement) but lower levels of agreement for volunteers assessing tree condi- tion or maintenance needs (Bloniarz and Ryan 1996; Cozad et al. 2005). Roman et al. (2017) sug- gests that citizen science is appropriate for some urban tree inventory and monitoring projects but not for those that require extremely high accuracy. Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, U.S., is a midwest- ern community facing EAB infestation, and as such, presents an opportunity to use and evaluate a CBM approach for ash tree health assessment. The primary goal of this project was to use vol- unteers from a local Boy Scout troop to furnish the City of Oconomowoc with detailed health assessment data for all city-owned ash trees. There were two research objectives: 1) assess the level of agreement between data collected by volun- teers and data collected on the same trees by an expert, and 2) use the agreement statistics calcu- lated in Objective 1 to inform a discussion about the potential usefulness of volunteer-collected tree health assessment data for making man- agement decisions about city-owned ash trees. METHODS Study Area This study took place within an eight-week period between July and September 2015 in Oconomowoc (43°6’31”N, 88°29’49”W), a small city in southeastern Wisconsin, 56.3 km west of Milwaukee (Figure 1). EAB was first detected in 2013, and while the city had a tree inventory, it did not have information about current ash tree condition. An Eagle Scout candidate ap- proached the city’s Parks and Forestry Superin- tendent with a proposal to organize volunteers and assess the physiological condition of all city- owned ash trees using a tree health assessment method developed by the U.S. Forest Service. Study Design The city furnished tree inventory data for 3,758 city-owned street and park trees. The in- ventory included information about species, diameter, and height, along with geograph- ic coordinates for each tree. Researchers ex- ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture
November 2018
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