Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 44(2): March 2018 A more practical approach to assessing volunteer condition-rating performance would be to assess volunteer-rated trees during the same season and year. A final factor not controlled by this study that might have influenced results can be attributed to data fatigue. Complex, detailed, or arduous tasks can contribute to frustration and boredom on the part of the volunteer, which have negative rami- fications for the quality of data collection (Dar- wall and Dulvy 1996; Newman et al. 2003). If volunteers became unengaged in the task at hand, or lost their sense of objectivity during data col- lection, bias and/or imprecision could have been introduced into the data and influenced results. CONCLUSION The results of this research indicate that trained volunteers can collect urban forest survey data at a higher frequency of agreement with univer- sity researchers when provided with appropriate tools and technical assistance. The implications of these findings carry substantial weight, especially for communities lacking the financial, administra- tive, or technical resources that are otherwise nec- essary to provide quality information about their urban forests. Although not directly addressed by this research, evidence indicates dynamic train- ing that is responsive to expressed needs and con- cerns improves the experience of the volunteer participant (Hager and Brudney 2004; Leslie et al. 2004; Simes 2006; Fernandez-Gimenez et al. 2008). Smaller communities oſten have difficulty imple- menting urban forest management practices. Most oſten, this is due to challenges in finding sup- port and time, a lack of resources, and uncertainty regarding responsibility and authority pertaining to management. Engagement and empowerment of volunteers within communities can also be har- nessed by municipal foresters, resource managers, and decision makers to leverage funding or impact policy that benefits the urban forest (Bloniarz and Ryan 1996). Effective urban forestry programs promote the importance and value of urban for- ests, seek to include a range of involvement across the community, and acknowledge the shared responsibility of both public and private interests in resource management (Elmendorf et al. 2003). 83 Volunteers can play a vital role in collecting quality data necessary for management of urban forests. A large body of work has helped to estab- lish and support the use of volunteers to effectively assess and monitor natural resources (Penrose and Call 1995; Rock and Lauten 1996; McLaren and Cadman 1999; Brown et al. 2001; Fore et al. 2001; Engel and Voshell 2002; Nicholson et al. 2002; Del- aney et al. 2007; Crall et al. 2011; Gillet et al. 2012). Beyond providing useful data for management and monitoring programs, volunteers can also have profound positive impacts for communities through increased civic engagement or momen- tum-building toward future management efforts (Westphal 1993; Bloniarz and Ryan 1996; Nich- olson et al. 2002; Foster-Smith and Evans 2003; Galloway et al. 2006), leveraging of limited bud- gets (Mattson et al. 1994; Brown et al. 2001), and expanded data collection on large temporal and spatial magnitudes that would otherwise be beyond the capability of most scientific endeavors (Dickin- son et al. 2010). Further examination of volunteer ability to collect high-quality data in urban forests will help refine and improve the use of volunteers, as well as volunteer experience and engagement. Acknowledgments. We would like to thank all of the communities and volunteers who worked on the surveys and inventories. Sup- port was provided by the University of Minnesota, Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota Extension. Funding was provided through the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry and the U.S. Forest Service. LITERATURE CITED Ball, J. 1986. Urban forestry and volunteer management. Journal of Arboriculture 12(7):182–184. Beedlow, P.A., H.E. Lee, D.T. Tingey, R.S. Waschmann, and C.A. Burdick. 2013. The importance of seasonal temperature and moisture patterns on growth of Douglas-fir in western Oregon, USA. Agricultural and Forest Meterology 169:174–185. Bloniarz, D.V., and H.D. Ryan. 1996. The use of volunteer initia- tives in conducting urban forest resource inventories. Journal of Arboriculture 22(2):75–82. Brandon, A., G. Spyreas, B. Molano-Flores, C. Carroll, and J. Ellis. 2003. Can volunteers provide reliable data for forest vegetation surveys? Natural Areas Journal 23(3):254–262. Brown, W.T., M.E. Krasny, and N. Schoch. 2001. Monitoring of nonindigenous invasive plant species in Adirondack Park. Natural Areas Journal 21(2):189–196. Cozad, S., E.G. McPherson, and J.A. Harding. 2006. STRATUM case study evaluation in Minneapolis, MN. University of California–Davis. ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2018
| Title Name |
Pages |
Delete |
Url |
| Empty |
Search Text Block
Page #page_num
#doc_title
Hi $receivername|$receiveremail,
$sendername|$senderemail wrote these comments for you:
$message
$sendername|$senderemail would like for you to view the following digital edition.
Please click on the page below to be directed to the digital edition:
$thumbnail$pagenum
$link$pagenum
Your form submission was a success. You will be contacted by Washington Gas with follow-up information regarding your request.
This process might take longer please wait
