Contributed by LUFA research assistant Peter Dziaba.
This summer, two new students have joined the LUFA team to conduct fieldwork in Northwest Indiana. Rising junior Campbell and just-graduated senior Peter Dziaba will be continuing field data collection as a part of LUFA's CommuniTree research by conducting an inventory of the several thousand trees planted through the CommuniTree initiative. Peter and Campbell’s work focuses on trees provided to applicants by the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC), a "backbone" organization of the CommuniTree coalition. Campbell has spent the last few months compiling the vast amount of application data into an inventory map, while Peter contributes his background in plant identification and socio-ecological systems. Peter also drives the duo down to Northwester Indiana 2 - 3 times for the fieldwork each week using the ENV department van. This year, Campbell and Peter are using an EpiCollect5 data collection form put together and used by last year's summer field crew, Lukas Gilkeson and Nicole Puka. To prepare for this summer's fieldwork, Lukas and Nicole joined Peter and Campbell out in the field to train them through filling out the form, taking measurements, and conducting community engagement at each site. On the second day of training, the team met with U.S. Forest Service Chicago Region Natural Resource Liaison, Drew Hart out at Lost Marsh Golf Course in Hammond, IN, for further training and practice with the form and measurements. This training with Nicole, Lukas, Elene, and Drew (not to mention the high heat index and sunny weather of those first few days!) were invaluable to preparing Campbell and Peter for this summer's fieldwork. Lab director Dr. Jess Vogt was able to meet Peter and Campbell out in the field during their second week, and give some indispensable identification and measurement tips. Since then, this summer's field crew has been to sites throughout NW Indiana, from the Town of Dyer to Michigan City and sites in between. The data and insights from this research will be shared back to the organizations of the CommuniTree initiative. Peter and Campbell are now in the full swing of fieldwork, and are excited to continue the work through the end of this summer! Enjoy some photos of interesting sites from the students first couple weeks in the field in the gallery below.
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DePaul LUFA: Lab for Urban Forestry in the Anthropocene members and Environmental Studies majors Nicole Puka and Lukas Gilkeson recount their experience out doing fieldwork in Northwest Indiana as a part of Dr. Jess Vogt’s CommuniTree research. During the summer of 2021, Lukas and I drove out to CommuniTree planting sites around Northwest Indiana to inventory some of the 8,000+ trees the initiative has planted since 2017. I was usually in charge of filling out our data collection form through a program and app called EpiCollect, while Lukas took measurements of each tree’s DBH, caliper, total height, and height to crown. Data collection didn’t always go as smoothly as we wanted it to! After finishing up data collection at a site right next to Lake Michigan (Marquette Park), Lukas and I were greeted with a sudden downpour. While the rain was welcomed in the heat, we didn’t quite enjoy being soaked. Lukas has a knack for adding fun to fieldwork. From jumping in a lake on a hot day to swinging from ropes during our breaks, he made our heat exhaustion seem nonexistent. Lukas was also great at making friends! After finding a fairly deflated and barely-bouncing basketball at Sunnyside Park in East Chicago, Lukas threw some hoops during our lunch break. Two nearby kids decided to join in the fun! The kids say they won, but Lukas won’t admit to it. ;) Meeting members of the communities that we were inventorying in was one of our favorite parts of fieldwork. During a visit to what we thought was a site under the Gary Water Tower, we were surprised with a beautiful community garden. "Farm-her" Carmen Cita McKee welcomed us to Oases Botanic Gardens with open arms, giving us an in-depth tour of the gardens’ trees and plants and explaining the positive impact the gardens have on the local community. She also asked if we could help her mulch, so of course we said yes! Carmen would like to let others know that the gardens are a great fit for community or business projects, volunteer opportunities, event hosting and more. She welcomes you to follow the gardens’ Instagram: @oases_botanic_gardens! Lukas and I loved hearing stories from residents. We spoke to everyone we could, but most of the time they would come up to us to ask what we were doing! These individuals clearly loved their trees; many of them told us they never forget to water, and others showed their affection by displaying decorations around their tree. These moments always made our workday so much more exciting and left us smiling for the rest of the day. Lukas and I love talking about our fieldwork experience so we invite you to chat with us! Please enjoy some of the photos we took during fieldwork. This summer, we've welcomed to the LUFA team two new students who are doing fieldwork in Northwest Indiana as part of our CommuniTree research. Nicole Puka and Lukas Gilkeson (see their bios here) are conducting an inventory of some of the 8,000+ trees planted by the CommuniTree initiative. Nicole is our tree protocol expert: She spent May and June looking through the scholarly literature and existing tree inventory protocols to develop the protocol the team is using. The final protocol went through lots of revisions based on feedback from several meetings with CommuniTree partners and then testing during field work training at the beginning of July. According to the final version, at each tree CommuniTree planted, the team will document tree location and mortality status; verify species with CommuniTree records; measure the diameter at breast height, caliper (diameter 6” from the ground), total tree height, and the height to the bottom of the tree’s crown; look for and document any evidence of pests or diseases; assess mulching, pruning, or staking (maintenance) needs; categorize planting area type and ground cover around the base of the tree; and make a variety of tree condition assessments including crown dieback, lower trunk damage, and any other visible damage. A copy of the full protocol will be available from the CommuniTree project page soon. Lukas is our GIS database expert: He spent May and June gathering pre-existing tree location data from CommuniTree partners, including the Student Conservation Association (SCA), Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC), Wildlife Habitat Council, and others, and collecting all this information into a single file of all CommuniTree tree points, and loading the data into ArcGIS Online for viewing during fieldwork in the ArcGIS Explorer app. For some planting sites where individual tree points weren’t available, Lukas compiled lists of sites with tree numbers and species information, and the team will gather precise location data on site during fieldwork. Lukas also pulled together a geodatabase of not only tree location data but existing land use/land cover data, U.S. Census data, and other social-ecological data, which will be used during postprocessing and data analysis this fall. Lukas is also the driver during field work, getting the team to and from Northwest Indiana 3-4 times per week using the DePaul Environmental Science and Studies Department van. Nicole and Lukas then worked together to set up a form for tree data collection in EpiCollect5, a free spatial data collection software that allows us to set up a custom data collection form for this project. We chose to use EpiCollect over a variety of other possible data collection apps (e.g., ArcGIS/ESRI’s Survey123, iTree Eco) because we wanted a free, easy-to-customize form and application that could be turned over to CommuniTree partners for their own future use after summer data collection is over. In the first week of July, we tested the protocol down at Lincoln Elementary School in East Chicago with the help of Drew Hart, the US Forest Service Chicago Natural Resources Liaison and a key CommuniTree organizer; Joe Exl of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC), a CommuniTree “backbone” organization, and the four members of the Student Conservation Association (SCA) Calumet Tree Conservation Corps. The SCA crew spends most of their summer months working on tree watering, mulching, and pruning, but we’re excited that this summer they will also be helping us out on the research by doing some tree inventorying whenever they can! Thank you, SCA! So what will be doing with the data that Lukas, Nicole, and the SCA gather this summer? Come this fall, we’ll be analyzing the data to figure out what social-ecological factors might be influencing the survival of CommuniTree-planted trees. Learn more on the CommuniTree research project page here. And stay tuned for more updates throughout the summer! It's finally spring...or at least warm enough for trees! While it may still be a few degrees below average and one of the colder springs we've had in a while, it's time to start planting trees!
This April and May, members from the LUFA team will be heading down to Northwest Indiana nearly every Saturday to plant trees with the Student Conservation Association's (SCA) Calumet Tree Conservation Corps, which is part of the grant-funded CommuniTree program. CommuniTree and SCA are in the midst of a multi-year effort to plant thousands of trees on public properties and post-industrial brownfield lands in order to provide benefits to the people and ecosystems of the cities of Gary, Hammond, Whiting, and East Chicago as well as surrounding communities. Not only will we be planting trees in parks, golf courses, along streets, and in other public spaces, but LUFA is also conducting a survey of the volunteers that show up to these tree planting events. This is part of the CommuniTree Program Evaluation research being conducted by Dr. Jess Vogt & LUFA students. We're trying to learn more about the types of people that volunteer, how they find out about the event, and what motivates people to come out and plant trees, in order to evaluate the outcomes of grant-funded tree planting for people and ecosystems, as well as help CommuniTree (in only its second year) improve their programming. At these tree planting events, we're conducting our version of participatory-action research, where LUFA team members attend the event not only in our capacity as researchers to learn, observe, and collect data, but also as full participants in the tree planting activities itself. We get our hands dirty planting trees right along side the SCA crew members and volunteers from the community! See the photographic evidence below from recent plantings in Gary, IN. For the April 7th planting at IU Northwest, we (Jess, LUFA research assistant Mimi Payne and ENV freshman Tyler Bogartz-Brown) joined the SCA crew, USFS's Drew Hart, SCA's Daiva Gylys, and a large group of volunteers from IUN, the Calumet Artist Residency, Girl Trek, and many more (42 people in total!) to plant 52 trees along Broadway St. This past Saturday, April 20 we were at Washington/Reed Park where we planted 20 trees with the small-but-mighty group consisting of the 4-person Calumet crew and SCA staff CM Tena, plus myself (Jess), LUFA RAs Kaitlyn Pike and Becca Brokaw, and ENV sophomore Taylor Gold). For both dates - and all Saturday tree plantings this season - the day was led by the fantastic 4-member SCA Calumet Tree Conservation Corps: crew leader BreShaun and crew members Joe, Jerome, and Jasmine. Follow along with the spring CommuniTree activities at the Calumet Tree Conservation Corps Facebook page, the CommuniTree Facebook page, and the SCA Chicago Midwest Facebook page. We'll also keep posting updates and more pictures here at the LUFA blog (and next fall, tune in for the results of the research we're conducting with CommuniTree). And...come join us some Saturday down in Indiana! |
AuthorJess Vogt, Associate Professor, Env. Science & Studies, DePaul University Archives
July 2022
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