2020 News

December 2020- Moxley and Fischer (2020) paper highlighted on O’Neill SPEA’s Racial Justice research page

 Donovan Moxley and Burney Fischer’s 2020 paper, Historic HOLC redlining in Indianapolis and the legacy of environmental impacts is currently featured on the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs new webpage showcasing research addressing issues of racial justice. The webpage was created this fall and includes summaries of a variety of projects done by SPEA faculty and students. A quote from the webpage illustrates the importance of this work. “By studying relationships marked by racial injustice—like those between law enforcement and minority students, racial segregation and urban ecology, or COVID-19 and vulnerable populations—scholars at the Indiana University O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs are researching ways to create a path toward transformative, sustainable change”. 

November 2020- Google analytics report on use of BUFRG site

Since mid-September we have been using Google Analytics to assess, as examples, how the BUFRG site is used by visitors, how much traffic we get, and which pages receive the most views. We wanted to share some of the interesting findings from the October report. The month saw 112 users, 104 of which were new to the site. Many logged in more than once and on average viewed two pages on the site. While most site visitors logged in from the United States, people logged in from as far away as India, Portugal, and Bangladesh and represented four continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania). The homepage had the most views, followed by Publications, Recent News (this page), and People. The Projects page was also frequently visited, with attention attracted to several of the specific projects described. We will use the data from the reports to determine which areas of the website are most useful to our visitors, and also which areas may need to be given greater visibility, with the goal being to ensure our website it an effective communication tool.

August 2020-BUFRG Collaborator Dr. Sarah Mincey teaching Urban Forest Management for Fall Semester

See course syllabus here

Dr. Mincey will teach Urban Forest Management for the second year this Fall, instructing virtually due to the pandemic. The majority of students enrolled are undergraduates from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs focused on Environmental Management, but the class also includes students seeking master’s degrees in Environmental Sustainability or Environmental
Science from O’Neill as well as others in various departments across the university. Urban Forest Management (E422/E522) was first offered by Dr. Burney Fischer in 2006 and has continued to be a popular option for both undergraduate and graduate students.
The course is framed from a social-ecological perspective that will allow for nuanced evaluation of urban forest management decisions. Students will explore the ecosystem services urban forests provide, gain an understanding of tree data collected in municipal urban forest inventories, and learn about tree biology, morphology, and taxonomy while also delving into the complexity of the governance of urban forests. Guest speakers will visit throughout the semester representing a variety of actors involved urban forest management and include nonprofit leaders, GIS analysts, municipal urban foresters, and university researchers.
While the course will take place online, students will still get the opportunity to work directly with their surrounding urban forests when they conduct an inventory of trees in their own neighborhoods, whether these neighborhoods are in Bloomington or beyond. Additionally, each student will participate in a tree planting and reflect on the process based on what they have learned during the course.

July 2020- Sarah Mincey publishes new paper on socio-ecological systems and the urban forest

Dr, Sarah Mincey, BUFRG collaborator and Clinical Associate Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, is a co-author with former BUFRG research Mikaela Schmidt-Harsh, on a new publication in Ecology and Society, Operationalizing the socio-ecological system framework to assess residential forest structure: a case study in Bloomington, Indiana. Please see the abstract below for a summary of the findings.

Many actors, from the individual to neighborhood to municipal scale, influence the management of trees, grass, andother vegetation on residential properties. Recent work has been directed toward understanding the ecological characteristics ofresidential landscapes and the human drivers of landscape management; however, much of this work remains disciplinarily focused
and at a single scale of analysis. This study employs a mixed-method approach to examine household- and neighborhood-scale driversof urban residential tree species richness and tree canopy structure. A stratified sampling design was used to capture households inhomeowners associations (HOAs) and neighborhood associations (NAs) to better understand the informal and formal institutionshaving an impact on residential tree management practices. We used the social-ecological system (SES) framework to build a classificationsystem for identifying significant variables that influence residential tree composition and cover. Results of this work demonstratedtree species richness and canopy cover to be positively related to tree abundance and housing age, which is suggestive of the legacyeffect. Governance variables were more strongly correlated with tree species richness whereas variables reflecting socioeconomic status
and education were more strongly correlated with canopy cover. Rule compliance and fitting in with neighborhood landscaping normswas significantly more important to HOA households than NA households. Conversely, opportunities to work together to solvecommunity problems were viewed more positively by NA households than HOA households. For all parcels together, compliance withcity and HOA/NA rules was negatively related to tree species richness and canopy cover, a finding that may implicate the nature ofrules that focus on tree removal practices and barriers to plant (what and where). This work is timely given the rapid expansion ofneighborhood associations in urban areas, which parallels establishment of rules governing residential yard practices. If currentarboriculture and urban forestry standards are considered during rule formation and implementation, such rules have the potential topromote species diversity and the sustained provisioning of ecosystem services.

June 2020 Part Two- Statewide urban forest map featured in Indiana Public Media story

The work of Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute, including BUFRG collaborator Dr. Sarah Mincey, in creating a statewide map of Indiana’s urban forests was the subject of a story on WFIU. Mincey was interviewed for the story and emphasized how urban trees provide important ecosystem services such as reduced heat island effect, but that there is inequity in canopy cover - often a legacy of historical redlining - that leaves gaps in the presence of these ecosystem services for many urban residents. When municipalities do tree inventories, these gaps can be better assessed, and communities can take action to ensure greater equity in access to the benefits of urban trees. Having a comprehensive map of the state’s urban forests available to the public could play a role in encouraging more communities to complete inventories of their urban forests. The research team plans to have the map online and accessible to the public by the end of the summer.

June 2020- Jess Vogt publishes two new urban forestry papers

Jess Vogt, BUFRG collaborator and Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Studies at Depaul University, has recently published two new papers, Urban Forests: Biophysical Features and Benefits, and Urban Forests as Socio-Ecological Systems in the journal Encyclopedia of the World’s Biomes. The abstracts for each are included below.

Urban Forests: Biophysical Features and Benefits-

Urban forests are all the trees, forests, associated vegetation growing in or very near the cities, towns, and communities where people live, work, and play. What makes urban forests different from forests outside urban areas is their existence in dense areas of human settlement—cities, towns, suburbs, etc. What qualifies as urban from the standpoint of urban forestry includes a range of population sizes or densities (parallel to the Ellis et al. (2010) mapping of anthropogenic biomes, or anthromes, to human population densities): There is no minimum threshold for how many people must live in a community for it to have an urban forest, and the term urban forestry is applied to the management of populations of trees in communities of all sizes. This article discusses the definitions of urban, urban forests, and urban forestry, describes the biophysical characteristics of urban forests and what makes urban forests different from non-urban forests, and details the ecosystem services and disservices provided by urban forests

Urban Forests as Socio-Ecological Systems-

Urban forests are all the trees, forests, associated vegetation growing in anthromes with higher levels of population density (e.g., dense settlements and populated woodlands). This chapter describes the important human elements of urban forest ecosystems, including actors, ownership regimes, and management, the distribution of urban forest benefits, the direct costs of urban forests, and current conceptions of urban forest sustainability. The chapter concludes by presenting a comprehensive framework for understanding the many factors that shape urban forests as social-ecological systems of inseparable natural and human components.

May 2020- Burney Fischer provides tree planting advice for Sycamore Land Trust Arbor Day celebration

Link to article here

For this year’s Arbor Day celebration, Sycamore Land Trust has gathered together a collection of useful resources and information so that anyone planting a tree this spring can experience a successful planting, whether in their own yard or elsewhere. Many of their suggestions come from the City of Bloomington’s Tree Care Manual , and the group also shares Burney’s advice for those planning on planting a tree this spring “As Burnell Fischer, a member of Sycamore’s Advisory Board and a clinical professor emeritus in clinical and urban forestry at IU, explains, we strive for a broad diversity of species to encourage overall ecological health and biodiversity. There’s no one perfect tree for every situation!” The article closes with species suggestions and details on care of newly planted trees.

April 2020- Donovan Moxley and Burney Fischer published in O'Neill School's Journal of Public and Environmental Affairs

Link to article here

Historic HOLC Redlining in Indianapolis and the Legacy of Environmental Impacts

March 2020- Fischer and Freeman-Day interviewed by Indiana Daily Student about IUB’s Tree Campus USA recognition.   https://www.idsnews.com/article/2020/02/iu-earns-tree-campus-usa-recognition-for-12th-consecutive-year​

Indiana University-Bloomington was recently awarded Tree Campus USA for the 12^th consecutive year by the Arbor Day Foundation.  IUB was a member of first Tree Campus USA awards in 2008 and has submitted its credentials and met the standards in each succeeding year. 

Professor Fischer reflected on IUB’s history of being a Tree Campus USA.  He was a member of the Arbor Day Foundation’s committee that designed Tree Campus USA in 2007 and was able to assist IUB during that period to prepare them for the upcoming five standards.  The five standards are “a tree advisory committee, campus tree care planning, dedicated annual expenditures for the campus tree program, having an Arbor Day of observance and provide a service-learning project”; all needed to be addressed quickly for IUB to achieve qualification. BUFRG PhD student Stephanie Freeman-Day briefly explained her research work examining the history of protecting urban forest patches on IU’s campus.

February 2020- BUFRG Researchers Vogt and Mincey present at Indiana Arborist Association’s 72 Annual Conference - Urban Forestry Program, January 21, 2020

Collective impact for tree planting and research in Northwest Indiana -The CommuniTree effort

CommuniTree is a multi-organizational, collaborative, grant-funded tree planting effort in Northwest Indiana, led by NIRPC and the Student Conservation Association (SCA) and modeled after Collective Impact. In this presentation, I will discuss the framework behind the initiative, and present the results of research examining motivations for individual and organizational involvement in CommuniTree. 

Speaker: Jess Vogt, Assistant Professor DePaul University, Department of Environmental Science & Studies          

Urban Forests as Urban Green Infrastructure: A new spatial data platform to assess the resilience of the Indiana’s urban forests 

This talk will address the work of the Urban Green Infrastructure Working Group within the IU Environmental Resilience Institute. The working group has partnered with Davey Resource Group and the IDNR Community and Urban Forestry Program Office to collect spatially referenced urban forestry data for a new spatial data platform available to the public. The platform will be discussed and the statewide data analyses are in process and will be presented. 

Speaker: Sarah Mincey, Clinical Associate Professor, Indiana University, O’Neill SPEA