262 Roman et al.: Monitoring Young Tree Survival with Citizen Scientists and Likens 2009). Tree Checkers, as it exists today, has the same core elements that it had when it launched in 2011—namely, volunteers monitoring recently planted trees in their neighborhoods—yet the particulars of how the program operates, and even the PHS staff’s goals for the program, have shiſted. Crown et al. (2018) likewise describe how a citizen science street tree inventory program in New York City, New York, U.S., has changed over time. Objectives for monitoring urban trees—and the data quality needs for those objectives—vary across programs. Over the past few years, the Tree Check- ers program has prioritized the collection of rigor- ous, consistent data for outcomes monitoring to produce results that can be meaningfully compared year-to-year and shared with researchers. This shiſt means that the goal of producing high-quality data becomes paramount. In the earlier years, Tree Check- ers was more focused on encouraging proper tree stewardship through neighbor-to-neighbor pressure. That objective uses data collection as a catalyst for stewardship, rather than data collection as a vehicle to evaluate program performance. It is imperative that data quality needs be matched to monitoring objectives (Kosmala et al. 2016). The data consis- tency observed for the Tree Checkers program does not meet the high standards for the Forest Inven- tory & Analysis program. Yet that is not necessarily a large concern for internal program reports because management-oriented monitoring does not require the extremely high data consistency levels needed for scientific research (Roman et al. 2013; Bancks et al. 2018). While the trunk measurements do not show consistency levels that would enable analysis of stem growth, volunteer mortality observations may be suitable for research applications, particu- larly if consistency levels (currently 96%) could be pushed slightly higher through additional training. Accurate at-planting data is critical to monitor urban tree planting programs. Any monitoring pro- gram relies on accurate baseline data; to track urban trees during establishment, this baseline is at-planting data (Vogt et al. 2015). When these records contain errors or have incomplete information, monitoring becomes challenging or even infeasible. While at- planting data for Tree Checkers are generally clean with the new Urban Forest Cloud, there are still rare instances of trees incorrectly listed as planted, as well as occasional locational confusion. Although these ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture issues apply only to a tiny fraction of the database, they could potentially inflate mortality rates: a tree that was never planted or that was planted at a dif- ferent property could mistakenly be recorded as “removed.” The use of local Tree Tenders to collect data offers a validation check for at-planting data, as these tree stewards were present on planting day and can catch errors in the records. Older planting records at PHS seem to have more gaps and other issues that cause problems for monitoring studies. Research-practice partnerships can lead to knowledge co-production, but institutionalized monitoring by managers creates continuity. While the findings of various past monitoring stud- ies provided some useful information for PHS staff, these studies had varying methods, mean- ing that their findings cannot be directly com- pared. Enhancing the Tree Checkers program will create continuity over time for PHS to evaluate their tree planting efforts year-by-year. When natural resource managers seek to track out- comes from their own programs, practitioner- initiated and programmatically institutionalized monitoring, as opposed to researcher-originated projects, can appropriately serve local man- agement needs (Silva and Krasny 2014). There is much more to learn about Tree Check- ers and other citizen science monitoring efforts in urban forestry, including what motivates volunteer participation, what volunteers learn by participat- ing, how resident maintenance activity responds to conversations and “report cards,” and how planted trees fare over the long-term. By enhancing their data management system and focusing on data quality, PHS staff aim to enable such investiga- tions through future research-practice partnerships. Acknowledgments. At PHS and the FS Philadelphia Field Station, we are grateful to Barley Van Clief, Leslie Hendricks, Jason Henning, and Sarah Low for their contributions to enhancing the Tree Check- ers program. For establishing the Urban Forest Cloud, we thank Ian Hanou, Chris Peiffer, and Michael Gentry at Plan-It Geo. We also thank Kinsey Miller, Sara Dennis, and Yasha Magarik for helping with Tree Checkers field work. We appreciate comments from two anonymous reviewers that strengthened the manuscript. Last but not least, we thank the dedicated volunteers through Tree Tenders and Tree Checkers for their tremendous efforts to plant, steward, and monitor street trees in Philadelphia.
November 2018
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