Arboriculture & Urban Forestry 44(2): March 2018 Inputs Scientific interests and public interests are the two subcategories of interests or inputs identi- fied by Shirk et al. (2012). Given the collegial nature of the projects explored in this study, there were not distinct scientific and public com- munities, as one would find in other forms of citizen science. The project designers brought both science and public interests to bear in for- mulating their research questions (Table 3). The unique nature of the collegial model, where the researcher is a public participant, makes it challenging to parse motivations. There is exten- sive literature on the motivations of environmental volunteers (Caissie and Halpenny 2003; Evans et al. 2005; Measham and Barnett 2008; Shirk et al. 2012), but the projects in the current study are not traditional environmental volunteer programs. Likewise, there is literature about the motivations of scientists participating in citizen science projects (Rotman et al. 2012; Shirk et al. 2012), but again, although the projects in this study have contributory components, they are qualitatively different than typical contributory or collaborative citizen-science projects. However, the study participants did express similar motivations to what has been found in studies of conservation volunteers and scientists. Excerpt 121 One motivation expressed by the participants was learning about urban spontaneous vegeta- tion: “I know all these other landscape plants . . . and I know a lot native plants when I walk through the forest, how come I don’t know the name of any of these [plants] that I see every single day?” (R3). One participant went further, asking, “Why is this [vegetation] different and why is no one looking into it?” (R5). The latter question speaks to another motivation driving the projects in this study—knowledge produc- tion. There are two aspects to generating knowl- edge about urban spontaneous vegetation. One is to create information and to disseminate it. The second aspect of knowledge generation is to bring the study of urban spontaneous vegeta- tion on par with studies of other urban flora. One respondent noted that, “People are shocked and appalled that [spontaneous vegetation] could be considered very serious forms, worthy of scru- tiny, worthy of ecological conversation” (R4). One goal of knowledge production is learn- ing. Study participants were not only motivated by personal learning goals, but were also moti- vated by social learning. Social learning encap- sulates learning through work done by others as well as learning by doing work with others Table 3. Quotations from interviews, depicting the research question addressed by the project. Interview question If you had to formalize a question of your collection, what would the question be? “The general question that we are interested in asking with the urbarium [sic] is what’s growing in our cities and why. There are so many different factors that have influenced the emergence and development of these plants…. There’s something really interesting about adaptation to the urban abuses that exist whether it's very hot, very dry, very salty, all of these really extreme conditions that characterize the urban environment. These plants are thriving without any human intervention and under these crazy extreme conditions. It’s very interesting to think about them as a snapshot of a new type of ecology for the twenty-first and twenty-second century.” What was the motivation for the project? “There is one category of green which nobody pays for or actually uses which is spontaneous vegetation or weeds . . . . Why do we not use this? Why is this a different category? Why is nobody looking into this? . . . It’s actually what you could call urban nature, and why is this overlooked and can we at least see an opportunity in this? Can it have a different role in the city? Can it have a role in the city? And what would this role be?” Can you go deeper into the issues you wanted to address or solve or communicate with the project? “Trying to trouble those attitudes of ‘weeds’ being the same as trash. If the same as trash, then we want to cut it down, get rid of it, but what are we losing when we do that? And how might we start to shiſt that understand- ing by going a little deeper into what exactly is living there and starting to be really specific about context rather than ‘Oh, it’s all green, it’s all weeds. It’s all non-native, therefore it’s all trash.’ [Instead we could consider that] sometimes these plants might be classified as invasive, sometimes they might be problematic, but in a huge other variety of situations they might be positive. Let’s…start understanding those situations. . . .” How would you frame your hypothesis? “I would argue that spontaneous urban plants dial right into that matrix of patchwork spaces throughout the city which are contributing kind of performatively to the way the city is functioning, and oſten, what makes the plants themselves really interesting is that they are existing on the streets which are these natural connective threads that run through the city that connects these dislocated patches…so you can begin to see a system of patches, threads that begin to emerge and create corridors, and moments for wildlife to come in or for eco- system services to function.” ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture
March 2018
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