Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 44(6): November 2018 Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 2018. 44(6):255–265 255 Monitoring Young Tree Survival with Citizen Scientists: The Evolving Tree Checkers Program in Philadelphia, PA Lara A. Roman, Bailey C. Smith, Dana Dentice, Mindy Maslin, and Glen Abrams Abstract. Citizen science programs are not static; they change over time in response to new program priorities and emerging tech- nologies, as well as to improve work flow for program staff and volunteers. In this article, the authors present a case study of an evolving urban forestry citizen science program at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, a nonprofit organization in Philadel- phia, Pennsylvania, U.S. The Tree Checkers program involves tree stewards recording data each summer about recently planted tree survival, growth, crown vigor, and maintenance, while also engaging their neighbors to encourage proper tree care. The pro- gram began in 2011, but changed in 2016 to use a new online data collection tool that was integrated into a larger tree data man- agement system. Tree Checkers has also shiſted to be more focused on rigorous data to report program performance and share information with researchers, whereas the earlier years of Tree Checkers were centered on enabling and encouraging neighborhood tree stewards to plan for tree care. A recent data quality evaluation showed that volunteer data was reasonably consistent with data reported by more experienced interns for tree survival, vigor, and trunk measurements, but stewardship variables were not inter- preted and recorded consistently. By making rigorous data more central to Tree Checkers, program staff also sought to institutional- ize monitoring within the organization, allowing for direct comparisons of outcomes year-to-year. The authors close with lessons learned that are relevant to other organizations seeking to create or enhance outcomes monitoring programs with citizen scientists. Key Words. Adaptive Management; Citizen Science; Data Quality; Tree Mortality; Tree Survival; Urban Environmental Stewardship; Urban Forestry; Volunteer Monitoring. Volunteer stewardship is integral to urban for- est management, with volunteer roles associated with duties such as tree planting, maintenance, and data collection (Silva and Krasny 2014; Fisher et al. 2015; Hauer et al. 2018). Citizen science, in particular, has been gaining steam in urban forestry, with municipal agencies and nonprofit organizations engaging volunteers in monitoring and inventories (Roman et al. 2013; Roman et al. 2017; Bancks et al. 2018; Crown et al. 2018; Ro- man et al. 2018). In the ecological and environ- mental sciences, a citizen scientist is “a volunteer who collects and/or processes data as part of a scientific enquiry” (Silvertown 2009) and citi- zen science programs are “partnerships between scientists and non-scientists in which authentic data are collected, shared, and analyzed” (Jordan ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture et al. 2012). While these definitions imply for- mal scientific uses of volunteer-generated data, citizen science is also widely used by natural re- source managers for adaptive management, with applications beyond peer-reviewed publications (McKinley et al. 2012; McKinley et al. 2015). Whether citizen science programs serve primar- ily scientific or resource management objectives, they can change over time, adapting to shift- ing goals and new technologies (Sullivan et al. 2009; Newman et al. 2012; Tulloch et al. 2013). In this article, the authors present a case study of a citizen science street tree monitoring program, Tree Checkers, at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. More specifically, Tree Checkers is an example of community-based outcomes monitoring to sup- ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture
November 2018
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