Recent News

July 2023- Burney Fischer’s urban silviculture column appears in CanopyBloomington newsletter

CanopyBloomington is a nonprofit working with Bloomington residents to increase tree canopy coverage throughout the city of Bloomington and to engage area residents in tree stewardship. Their June 2023 newsletter includes Fischer’s editorial, aimed at increasing public knowledge about concepts of urban silviculture and how its practices can be applied to increase overall urban forest resilience. The entire editorial can also be viewed on the CanopyBloomington blog.

May 2023, part two- “BUFRG Article for Indiana Arborist Association Newsletter by BC Fischer”

See article “A New Frontier for Arborist: Urban Silviculture”

The Bloomington Urban Forestry Research Group (BUFRG) has been asked over the years to clarify/explain new urban forestry concepts and ideas. Urban silviculture is a developing/new concept being talked about by urban foresters that arborists also need to understand. It is the adaption of the forestry practice of silviculture to urban natural forest areas, forested patches, or woodlots (hereafter urban forested patches). Silviculture is the theory and practice of controlling the establishment, composition, structure, and condition of forest stands to meet landowner objectives. Historically, it focuses on timber production and other economic and environmental benefits of forests.

By definition a forest stand is a contiguous community of trees sufficiently uniform in composition, structure, age, size-class(es), spatial arrangement, site quality, condition, or location to distinguish it from adjacent stands.Larger forests are collections of forest stands.

Urban silviculture differs from traditional silviculture practice. Urban forest patches are a key component of the tree canopy in cities but often overlooked by city leaders and decision-makers, and often lack formal management frameworks. One approach to addressing this deficiency may be to borrow from traditional forest management frameworks and practices. Although urban forested patches share similarities with rural forests, the impacts of urbanization on forest stand dynamics may require modification of these methods and in some cases development of novel silvicultural guidelines. The article goes on to explain urban silviculture thinking for managing both forest patches and more broadly the urban forest.

May 2023-BUFRG Indy Redlining Paper/Presentation Spurs Student to Explore Fort Wayne Redlining

Professor Fischer annually gives a guest lecture to O’Neill’s E555 Sustaining Urban Ecosystems graduate class that includes covering the 2020 BUFRG publication “Exploring the ecological legacy of redlining maps used by the Home Owner's Loan Corporation in Indianapolis: 80 years later.”  At the end of the presentation he highlights the other redlined Indiana cities (Evansville, Fort Wayne, Gary, Muncie, South Bend, and Terre Haute) and encourages the students to explore one or more for a class project.  This spring O’Neill master’s student Mackenzie Hagedorn accepted the challenge, sought out advice from Professor Fischer, and for her GIS class explored the comparison of the change over time (2000-19) in NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) aggregated across each Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) score zone, hoping to investigate the relationship between HOLC grade and NDVI scores. Her final paper for the class “Redlining’s Impacts on Changes in NDVI Over Time in Ft. Wayne, Indiana” is here. Good work Mackenzie!

April 2023, part two-BUFRG researcher receives Research Grant from Ostrom Workshop

Stephanie Freeman-Day was excited to learn this month that she has been awarded a Research Grant of $3500 from the Ostrom Workshop for the year 2023-2024. The funding will support her work investigating urban forested patches in Indianapolis, the focus of her next dissertation chapter. The grant will cover salary for a master’s student as a Research Assistant, travel, and necessary equipment. Freeman-Day is also looking forward to continued collaboration with colleagues at the Workshop.

April 2023- BUFRG researcher Stephanie Freeman-Day to present at Ostrom Workshop Research Series

On April 19 at noon EDT, Freeman-Day will present her work on urban forested patches. She will discuss her manuscript in process, Urban forested patches as common-pool resources- key factors in successful governance for resilience and persistence. This piece is a future dissertation chapter and is theoretical in nature. The manuscript explores whether and in what cases urban forested patches may be common-pool resources, discusses governance practices of urban forested patches described in literature, and how the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) data collection tool might be modified for use in urban settings. The talk will take place in person at the Ostrom Workshop and is also available for viewing on Zoom. Details are here, along with a link to the manuscript for review.

January 2023, part two- BUFRG leader, Dr. Burney Fischer’s Letter to the Editor in the Bloomington Herald-Times newspaper

As Bloomington grows, its urban forest shrinks

The recent removal of a nice row of maturing oak trees on Rogers Street highlights a continuing problem for the city of Bloomington. Economic growth, whether for expanded housing via multi-story apartment buildings, expanded roads and utilities, etc., means the removal of trees and less tree canopy remaining for Bloomington residents.

It seems inevitable that with economic prosperity the trees lose out, but this should not be the case. Yes, I know Bloomington is Indiana’s oldest Tree City USA, has a long-standing tree commission and other environmental/sustainability-oriented governance infrastructure that supports the urban forest, but we continue to lose canopy.

What we seem to need is a more forceful set of advocates for trees to fight harder to reduce tree loss. Just hoping that planting new trees will stop the loss is not enough, the canopy of young, small trees does not replace that of larger, older trees.

Burney Fischer, Bloomington

 The letter is linked here, scroll down to read.

January 2023- BUFRG Researcher StephanieFreeman-Day is a PhD Candidate!

Freeman-Day has passed her PhD Qualifying Exams and successfully defended her PhD Dissertation proposal and is now recognized by the IUB Graduate School as a PhD Candidate.  Her proposed PhD Dissertation “Urban forested patches: Governance practices for resilience and persistence” has an Introduction and a Conclusion chapters, a review of literature on urban forested patches, and three substantive chapters -  Indiana University’s Woodland Campus- A case study of urban forest patch sustainability (already published in Arboriculture and Urban Forestry), Drivers of resilience and persistence of urban forested patches- Bloomington and Indianapolis, and Urban forested patches as common pool resources- Design Principles for successful governance and development of a socio-ecological data collection tool. An anticipated completion is Spring/Summer 2024. 

September 2022- BUFRG researcher to submit paper on urban streams and forested patches

Gretchen Luchauer is preparing her manuscript, “Urban Stream Corridors and Forest Patches – The Connections: A Case Study of Bloomington, IN”, for publication in the journal Urban Ecosystems. The research done for this project connects with and builds upon BUFRG work investigating urban forested patches and includes novel findings about connectivity between these two resources. Please see the abstract below for more detail.

Abstract- Streams and forests are connected ecosystems, but few studies have looked at the connectivity between streams and forests in urban environments. City-made decisions affect connections between streams and forests by isolating both streams and forests. Streams are often channelized or buried to reduce flooding and increase potential developable areas. Forests become fragmented and are removed unless they are protected by the public ownership, private ownership, or mixed governance arrangements. Historical choices in land usage affect the sites and sizes of current urban streams, forests, and development. This affects the distribution of impervious surfaces, a ubiquitous urban land cover type, which separates streams from forests. Despite these barriers to stream/forest interactions, cities can experience stream/forest connectivity. Seven Bloomington watersheds are ranked on their proportions of buried streams, channelized streams, forested hydrology, forested streams, urban forest patch cover, and impervious surface cover, along with historical presence of urbanization. Several watersheds demonstrate stream/forest connectivity, with five of these watersheds containing 50% or greater forested stream segments. Bloomington canopy cover reduces stormwater runoff by approximately 127 kiloliters per year. These forested areas reduce flooding, reduce nutrient loading, and reduces stream conditions associated with urban stream syndrome. Streams provide incentive for forest protection, aesthetic value, and recreational value. Understanding urban stream/forest connectivity can improve green infrastructure design and green space design, which improves urban resilience and better connects residents to the environment.

August 2022- New Woodland Campus tour featuring trees on IUB campus 

Jeff Ehman, through Image Matters LLC, along with students Grace Pangburn, Kaitlyn Martin, Jules Wood, and especially Emily Faust, has created an enhanced digital version of the tour with navigational support. The eXperienceReality® (XR) Tour (Start Woodland Campus Tour) can be accessed through a web browser on any mobile device. Make sure to give permission for the application to access your phone’s location.

The tour is an opportunity to visit and learn about 23 trees, all located within walking distance of the Indiana Memorial Union building near the center of campus. The digital XR application directs users to each tree on the tour, with species including American beech, flowering dogwood, bur oak, and more. Many of these trees are estimated to be over a century old, with some predating the Civil War. Tour visitors can access a variety of detailed information using the application about each tree species, including background on history/lore, wildlife value, and expected habitat impacts due to climate change.