122 Silvera Seamans: Grassroots Citizen Science in Urban Spontaneous Vegetation (Krasny and Tidball 2009). Commenting on the former mode, one participant said, “We are . . . working with a network of folks so we can be on the ground in more places . . . They can tell us, ‘Oh yeah, we also saw this particular plant grow- ing in the median on a local highway’” (R2). In terms of acquiring knowledge through interac- tion, one participant spoke about the acquisition of local ecological knowledge by working with the project’s co-leader: “When I started working with plants, I didn’t really know [them] . . . But then we started working together and I am starting to learn different species . . . and it’s really great . . . You talk about seeing a mass of green but you know a little bit and then you can see more” (R1). Monitoring is another motivation that emerged in the interviews. Three of the projects are actively tracking occurrence of urban spontaneous veg- etation via social media, and two of these three projects are using geotags in this work. One par- ticipant noted, “It’s been pretty fun to see what people are taking pictures of, what draws peo- ple’s eyes, and there’ve been some really cool conclusions that we’ve been able to draw” (R3). Activities & Outputs Activities in PPSR design refer to project infra- structure and implementation, while outputs are the data and the process of creating the data (Shirk et al. 2012). These two elements of PPSR design overlap significantly, and so for the purposes of this paper, the two categories have been combined. All four groups collected data about weedy species in urbanized settings, but the approaches to making the data varied. NESL’s seed library is organized into packets by species, date, collector, and location, and a collection of packets is pre- sented in different formats and sizes depending on the forum. The design of each component of the library was influenced by the concept of “taking something unwanted and elevating [it] through art practice and getting people to look at it.” The Feral Landscape Typologies map of landscapes from which the seeds in the library were collected also informs the project. In addi- tion to literal observations in the form of seeds, seed collection, and plant appreciation experi- ences (e.g., walks to explore the dispersal mecha- nisms of weedy seeds) are also among NESL’s ©2018 International Society of Arboriculture outputs. These experiences are also part of the project’s infrastructure and implementation. SUP used three sampling approaches to data collection. The first one was to literally highlight in yellow spray paint the urban spontaneous vegeta- tion growing on the lot on which its former studio was located, as well as the surrounding sidewalks. Whole plants were photographed alongside their leaf or flower detail against white paper, mimick- ing specimen sheets in an herbarium. A second sampling method was to walk transects in dif- ferent boroughs and use the Instagram account @spontaneousurbanplants to spatialize observed vegetation. A third method was to curate pho- tographs of spontaneous plants found on wan- derings. Photographs of spontaneous vegetation were also crowdsourced globally with the hashtag, #spontaneousurbanplants. The first version of the SUP digital plant map was automatically populated by images first uploaded to Instagram. Common Studio also uses Instragram (@the- commonstudio) to catalogue its collection of urban spontaneous growth. Plant specimens are prepared using the formal herbarium methodology, scanned at high resolution, and then uploaded to the social- media app. Each image includes a graphic indicator of position along two axes: native-exotic classifica- tion and whether the plant was growing isolated or as an agglomeration. Common Studio comple- ments the photographic record with the citizen sci- ence geolocating tool, iNaturalist. The design firm has three active, open iNaturalist pages represent- ing the locations of its plant observations: Weeds in La La Land (Los Angeles), The Roman Urbarium (Rome), and Urban Meadows of Bangalore; all three projects are part of the larger Global Urbarium. Gewildgroei began as an art project for one of its founders who walked transects across Eindhoven, Netherlands, was struck by the amount of sponta- neous vegetation, and began to ask what made it different and why no one was exploring it. More than simply looking at spontaneous vegetation, Gewildgroei, like the other three projects, evolved to change people’s perceptions about urban wild plants; this has driven the project manager’s own perception about data. When asked about its data collection strategy, Gewildgroei responded that it uses Instagram to send data, not to collect data: “Normally you would walk past these plants and
March 2018
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