With forests being wiped out worldwide by climate change, deforestation, pests and plagues, trees need all the help they can get. In this episode of the SciStarter podcast, we learn about three citizen science projects that monitor and protect trees. Also, with gift-giving season right around the corner, Bob also shares a few of his picks of the best books for your favorite tree lovers.
SciStarter Podcast S3E10: Citizen Forestry
Projects featured in this podcast are:
Check out this recording of the SciStarter Live show focusing on trees:Trees Please! Help the Girl Scouts and NASA/GLOBE Protect the Planet (Video)
Bob’s Picks for Top Tree Books:
by Jonathan Drori; Illustrations by Lucille Clerc
by David George Haskell
by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady; Illustrations by Robert Batemen
by Richard Powers
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Citizen Science: Stories of Science We Can Do Together
Season 3, Episode 10: Citizen Forestry
[THEME MUSIC]
Host: Bob Hirshon
Welcome to Citizen Science: Stories of Science We Can Do Together, coming to you from a wet, rainy forest in Maryland. This month we’re focusing on citizen forestry, and what you can do to help scientists studying and protecting these amazing and critically important organisms.
[THEME MUSIC fades out]
I am outside at longbranch Park in Southern Maryland on a wet breezy day, thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ian. I’m surrounded by sycamore, beech, tulip poplar, and oak trees. And there’s a beech tree just in front of me, maybe 50 feet tall. Its bark is smooth and light gray– kind of looks more like an animal hide than bark, like maybe the skin of an enormous dinosaur. And this particular tree has initials and hearts and all sorts of stuff carved into the bark. Which isn’t surprisinga: you know, beech bark was used as writing paper centuries ago. And the word beech actually comes from the ancient word bok/book. So it’s the book tree.
Now even though I’m inside Greater Washington, DC, not far from high rise apartments and a Metro station, this spot is just packed with a diverse assortment of healthy trees, maybe 50 to over 100 years old. But here in Maryland, as in most other parts of the world, the forests are dwindling and the canopy is shrinking. In the Eastern US, it all started with European settlers who just clear cut this entire part of the continent for timber, and to clear land for farms. And then they also introduced, you know, accidentally, but introduced all sorts of exotic pests and diseases that wipe out entire species like the American Chestnut and Elm. And none other than our old citizen science friend Benjamin Franklin– you may remember him from a few podcasts ago– Ben Franklin warned that we were scouring our land of trees, and that the denuded land absorbed more heat from the sun and melted snow more quickly, and might even be changing the climate.
Hmm, I wonder if he was onto something?
In any case, while we may never be able to restore the great forests to their original majesty, it’s still important– It’s really critical– that we do all we can to protect what’s left and expand forests where we can.
But if we’re going to protect trees, we need to educate young people about their importance. And that’s where our first guest comes in. Amanda Daly is the Director of National Outdoor Strategy for Girl Scouts of the USA and runs their Girl Scout Tree Promise Program. Hey, Amanda, thanks for joining us.
Amanda Daly
Hi. Thank you for having me. It’s nice to be here.
Bob
Yes. So what can you tell us about the Girl Scout Tree Promise? It sounds great.
Amanda
Oh, I’m excited to talk about it. It is our first nature-based climate solution. And it is a promise that girl scouts will plant, protect and honor 5 million trees in five years.
Bob
Wow, and how many Girl Scouts are there?
Amanda
Oh my gosh, we have over a million Girl Scouts…
Bob
Or five trees per girl!
Amanda
Yes, and our numbers are growing. So hopefully the pressure is taken off. But they, they have over five years to do it. So that’s a good thing. And they also are really positioned to be leaders in their community and engage their community in this work. So we can’t do it alone. We need family, friends, community partners and others to lean in and help us. But we are making progress. We’ve done it in all 50 states. So far, we just kicked off a year ago, and we are already planting in all 50 states.
Bob
Wow. And so why trees? There’s so many different aspects to to climate change and the environment. Why did you pick trees?
Amanda
Well, it’s so funny you ask: you know, Girl Scouts has been around for over 100 years. And we’ve always been strong stewards of the environment. And our founder in like the 1920s said that, you know, planting trees was imperative to the future of our environment. So it’s always been part of our history. And it felt as climate change is really showing its impact on us that our girl scouts were looking for ways to be active in their community. And so we knew planting trees was important. But if you really look at the Tree Promise, we’re also protecting and honoring trees, because we really know it’s also about– we want new trees in the ground, but we want to protect what is already there. And also what we plant. So we have a three-armed approach to Tree Promise.
Bob
Okay, yeah. And so what is that? What are the, um, three limbs?
Amanda
The three arms… yeah, the three branches, right? So we want to certainly plant trees. So far, we have about 77,000 trees in the ground across all 50 states and internationally. But we really also want to protect existing tree cover. And so we partner with citizen science groups through SciStarter. We have on our Tree Promise webpage, we have a link that girl scouts or anybody within the larger community can log in and learn about different climate action and tree-focused projects that scientists are doing around the world. And they can be data scientists and collect information and share it so that we universally can help to protect our existing trees. The third arm is honoring trees. So I don’t know about you, but I remember my favorite tree growing up when I was a kid the tree that I loved to climb. Many people have different connections to trees in their community for different reasons. Sometimes it’s planted in honor of someone or sometimes it’s just a place where you like to rest and read a book. And so making sure that Girl Scouts take the time, take a minute and connect with a tree that’s important to them is also a piece of this work.
Bob
Wow. And are there different levels? So if you’re a really young Girl Scout, then you do this. And then if you’re in the middle, and then if you’re an older… I assume you have different levels.
Amanda
Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot of variation. So I have seen everything from Daisy and Brownie troops, which are our youngest girls, working together, selling cookies, and then using the funds that they raised through the Girl Scout Cookie Program, buying a tree and working together to plant a tree in a community space, maybe in the garden of a hospital and doing that in partnership with others. And then I’ve seen older Girl Scouts working to plant 4000 trees on property owned by their Girl Scout Council as a reforestation effort. So they’re driving heavy machinery and actually plowing lines and planting trees and working for days on this work. So every tree matters. Every effort counts. And I think collectively, there’s a space for anybody of all ages to participate. If they want to get their hands dirty, we certainly know how to do that.
Bob
Oh, great. So they have some latitude, it’s not like “oh, you will do these three things to get your Brownie certification and you will do these three things to get your upper level one or something.
Amanda
No, this is a “we’re in this together,” right? Climate impacts everyone. And we are in this together. And so the one thing that we ask everybody takes the tree promise which just pledges to plant, protect and honor trees, and then you do what you’re able to. So for instance, for some of our girl scouts, they live in communities where there’s not enough water to plant trees and really maintain them. Or if you’re in an urban community, you may not have access to green space to plant trees. But you can still participate in the Tree Promise through our citizen science portal, thanks to our friends at SciStarter, or honoring a tree in your community. So really, the Tree Promise exists to make those connections between our Girl Scouts and the environment and with trees, but everybody can access it depending on how they experience the outdoors and what their opportunity is to engage.
Bob
Okay, and now, normally this is a fairly direct question when I say “well, how do people get involved?” Because you know, a lot of the citizen science projects, anybody would sign up. But this one’s through the Girl Scouts. So how do we tell people who want to be more involved how they get involved?
Amanda
Very easy. So you just go to Girl Scouts dot org backslash tree promise, or just go to our website and search the tree promise. And you’ll go to our web page. And on the web page, we have a bunch of different resources. One is just general information. There is a toolkit that you can download and actually get clear direction and includes everything from how to create a maintenance schedule for the trees you plant, how to plan a community event, if you’re going to go large, or just the different types of trees, you might want to plant from everything from a seedling to a larger tree. And then we have instructional videos. So we’ve worked with our partners at American Forests, and they have guided us as our tree partners that are the expert in this work. To figure out how best to plant a tree, maintain a tree, plan an event and through the pandemic do that safely. So there’s even guidance there in terms of how to have a pandemic safe tree planting event. So there’s all different resources, and all of our local Girl Scout councils have access to that and are hosting events around the country and can share that information.
Bob
And can anybody access these?
Amanda
Yes, everybody.
Bob
You don’t have to be a Girl Scout?
Amanda
No, we want everybody at the table, everybody’s got to lean in on this one. So Girl Scouts are great leaders and great stewards, but we’re also you know, good friends and partners in our community. And so we want everybody to come in and help us and work with us. And even if you don’t know a Girl Scout, you can still participate in the Tree Promise i You can track the tree on our website, you can track the tree that you planted and share a little information. And I can see on the back end of that are the folks who are participating and there’s like business improvement districts that are participating local community garden groups that are participating. And it’s not even clear if they’re doing that with any girl scout in their community. But perhaps members of that team were Girl Scouts at some point in their life. And once a Girl Scout always a Girl Scout so we welcome everybody to participate. And plant, protect or honor a tree in their community.
Bob
Great. Thanks so much for sharing that with us.
Amanda
Thank you so much, Bob.
Bob
Now while the Girl Scouts are energetic, numerous and powerful, we grown ups also have to do our part. And one way we can help is by joining NASA’s GLOBE Observer: Tree project, which asks us to find and measure as many trees as we can, using their handy app. Now earlier in the podcast, I said that the beech tree I’m standing near is, I don’t know, about 50 feet tall. But that’s just a guess. With the GLOBE Observer: Tree app, you can measure tree height accurately, and share it back to scientists at NASA and other research organizations. And here to tell us all about it is Brian Campbell, NASA Senior Earth Science Education and Communications Lead.
Bob
All right. Hi, Brian, thanks for being with us.
Brian Campbell
Hey, thank you. Thank you, Bob.
Bob
So let’s talk about GLOBE Observer: Trees. And I guess the first question I have is, why is NASA interested in trees, I think of you guys interested in, obviously, space stuff. So what gives?
Brian
We have lots of stuff that we do at NASA. And one of the big things we do is we send satellites into space. And when we do that, we either send them to look far out in the farthest galaxies, looking at other planets. But then we also have a lot of Earth Observing Satellites, where we send them up in space, and we kind of turn them around and we look back down at the planet. And there are several missions up there now that actually look at tree height from space.
One mission is called the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 or ICESat 2 Satellite. It’s an independent satellite that uses an onboard laser system to measure the height of objects on Earth. And one of those things happens to be trees. So we can, you know, basically, what we do is we send laser pulses from the satellite, we bounce off an object on the earth, and then we bring that laser photon back to the satellite, and we calculate the time it takes to do that. And when we do that, repeatedly, we can see changes in height. So trees happens to be one of those variables that ICESat 2 can measure. We also have an instrument on the International Space Station called the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation, or Jedi for all you Star Wars fans out there. But it’s spelled G-E-D-I not J-E-D-I. Okay. And what that does is, since it’s on the International Space Station, it’s an instrument on board, it measures at specific latitudes, basically the orbit of the space station, but it only focuses on forest canopy height.
So with that said, NASA sees it from space. But one thing we like to do as we try to take ground observations, because even though the satellites are super technologically advanced, they won’t be able to see every single tree, because there’s things in the atmosphere like clouds that can get in the way, things like that. So we need those ground-based observations. So we have the space-based from NASA. And then we have ground-based observations from students, teachers, volunteers out there doing, you know, tree height measurements from the ground.
Bob
Oh, okay. So this is what we’re doing with GLOBE Observer, we’re measuring how tall trees are. How do we do that?
Brian
With the GLOBE observer, we have an app, and we have something called the trees tool as part of it. And this trees tool basically turns your phone into what’s called a clinometer. A clinometer is an instrument used to measure basically slope and elevation of objects. And what we did was we plugged the trigonometry into the app. And we use your camera’s phone based on the height of the observer, and the pace of the observer. And we measure angles from the observer to the base of the tree, to the top of the tree, and then we walk to the tree using a normal pace. And we combine all these things, we get that really cool triangle, that helps us figure out the height of that tree. And all you have to do is you just use the phone’s camera, and little other couple things are inside your phone, there’s something called a magnetometer. And that’s what we can use to measure angles. That’s how we can convert, you know, using the app and convert your mobile device into clinometer. So we can measure things like height, and trees happen to be, you know, what the trees tool focuses on.
Bob
Wow, okay. Yeah, cuz I was gonna ask if you’re not like on a perfectly flat ground, it seems like that might throw it off. But I guess that’s what the magnetometer does. Now why do you walk towards the tree? How does that figure in?
Brian
When you when you take the height measurements, so you take, you use the phone and you, you use the camera at eye level, and you angle the phone to the base of the tree, then you angle the phone to the top of the tree, and then wherever you’re standing, you have to figure out basically what the distance is to that tree. Because on a flat surface, when you figure out using a traditional clinometer, the height of the tree is basically the distance from the base of the tree to where your feet are plus, where your feet are on the ground to your eye level. So you add those two numbers together and that gives you the estimated height of the tree. So because we’re using a phone to measure the angles to the base of the tree and the top of the tree, and then you’re walking to the base of the tree, counting your steps, that’s how we basically convert the regular clinometer measurement and we do it with your phone. So it gives us that that basically that that flat surface, and that other, you know, part of that triangle that allows you to measure the height.
Bob
Oh, okay, so does it matter if you’re particularly tall or particularly short or have long legs or short legs?
Brian
No, because I’m six foot seven. So and when my son first started using it, he was probably about 4’9″, 5-foot. But that’s what– I’m glad you mentioned that, Bob, because that’s super important in the app, because whoever’s using the mobile device to measure tree height, you have to make sure you change the height of the person. Because if I just hand my phone off to my son, when he was like five foot tall, when he uses it, and if it’s still set at my height at six foot seven inches tall, the angle is going to change dramatically when you’re looking to the base of the tree and the top of the tree. So you’re gonna get an error in tree height measurement. So it doesn’t matter how tall you are, you could be, you know, four foot five inches tall, you could be, you know, you could be like a professional basketball player and seven foot four inches tall, the app will still work perfectly well. It’ll adjust to your height.
Bob
Okay, well, so there are a lot of trees out there. So I imagine you need a lot of volunteers. How do people want to get involved?
Brian
So yeah, so we have, there’s about 3.03 trillion trees on the planet. And about 70,000 tree species within that 3.03 trillion. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, the satellite can see a lot of trees, we’ve literally measured billions and billions of trees, but not all of them, of course. So that’s why we need ground-based observations as well. So you know, that’s why we’re super excited. And with the NASA GLOBE program, we have the GLOBE Observer. So you can just, go to observer.globe.gov, and check it out.
Bob
Wow.
Brian
One thing that’s very cool that’s happening in, you know, a couple of weeks is the NASA GLOBE Trees Challenge 2022: Trees in a Changing Climate. And we’re going to be focusing from October 11 to November 11 2022 on getting as many observations of tree heights that we can, in that period of time. Because scientists at NASA look for what’s called data density, and it’s a lot of data in a small amount of time. So it can then be compared to the NASA satellite and instrument data from space. And if you want to check that out, we have a website on the NASA GLOBE Observer, it’s just observer.globe.gov, like before, but then just /trees-2022. And that’ll take you to how you can participate in the challenge, and get involved that way. But we’re really trying to focus it. With the GLOBE program, it’s essentially called a challenge. But it’s also can be referred to as an intensive observation period, where we try to get a lot of data in a short amount of time.
Bob
Wow. Okay. And explain to me again, because I understand that we’re ground truthing the satellite data, and that’s why it’s important. But why are you guys interested in tree height at all? I mean, what is that used for?
Brian
There’s lots of reasons why, you know, tree height is important in the science community, especially at NASA and the GLOBE program. One is, tree height helps scientists understand basically the biomass of an area or basically, how much living organisms are within a particular area. That helps us understand our planet’s carbon budget, because trees pull in carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. And the bigger these trees are basically the more carbon dioxide they can pull out of the atmosphere and, you know, convert it through photosynthesis into the oxygen we breathe. So there’s lots of different variables why we care about tree height, you know, from the ground and from space.
Bob
Great. All right, well, thanks so much, hopefully, we can get a lot of people to, to sign up, especially with this tree challenge coming up. And add important information to this to this database.
Brian
Yes, that’s what we’re hoping for. We know we have lots of awesome people out there who really care about our environment, really care about our planet, and how it’s changing over time.
Bob
Great. Thanks so much, Brian.
Brian
All right. Thank you, Bob.
Bob
So while NASA is very concerned with tree growth and forest cover, there are also many scientists studying individual species of trees: where they are growing, where they are thriving and maybe where they are being challenged or even wiped out by pests and diseases. Those researchers can really use armies of helpers going out, pretty much everywhere, all over the world, and mapping which trees are where. And that’s where the app TreeSnap comes in. With TreeSnap, you merely say what trees are where. And if enough people participate, scientists can see where populations are spreading, where they’re declining, and even find rare or endangered trees. Ellen Crocker is at the University of Kentucky. She and her colleague, Margaret Staton at the University of Tennessee, developed TreeSnap. We have Ellen here with us. Hey, Ellen!
Ellen Crocker
Hey there. Thanks for having me on today.
Bob
Yeah, so just to get started, could you give us a quick overview of TreeSnap?
Ellen
Sure. The idea behind tree snap is to make it easier to connect people who are passionate about trees, to the researchers that are looking for special trees, trees that have something about them that maybe makes them resistant to an insect or a pathogen that’s wiping them out. And so, you know, if you think about it, people have been looking for those trees for a long time. We’ve had these epidemics, you know, we’re in an epidemic right now. But we’ve had tree epidemics in the past, like chestnut blight that wiped out chestnut, like Dutch elm disease that wiped out our elms. And people have been looking for those trees that have, you know, something special about them hoping that that could be part of the future of bringing those trees back. And when people did that previously, it was kind of a really cumbersome process, recording their location, information about them, mailing things around. And so our idea was tree snap was to streamline that process and make it easier for the people who want to report that information as well as the scientists who want to use that information.
Bob
Okay, so how do we go about finding these special trees?
Ellen
Well, we’re working with a really broad range of partners with TreeSnap. So there are scientists researching different trees across the country. Where I’m located in the eastern US, for example, you could be looking for American chestnut that’s still alive. And in the woods, we’ve got partners, the American Chestnut Foundation and others that want to know the locations of those, you could be looking for ash trees that are still alive and surviving, even when everything around them has been killed by the emerald ash borer. We have partners with the Forest Service and otherwise are looking for those. And so TreeSnap is kind of that compiler, where you can, you know, report any trees that you see around that kind of meet these different research missions, or just use it for your own purposes. It’s a really convenient kind of GPS data collection device to take with you. And easy to use.
Bob
Okay, well, okay, so I actually was just out walking and saw some chestnut trees.
Ellen
Oh, exciting!
Bob
So how do I get started? I want to get going.
Ellen
That’s so great! So if you’re out there and you see something that looks like chestnut, I’d recommend you open up your TreeSnap app and click on the thing that says American chestnut, we have lots of different trees that we have partners who are looking for information on them. But wherever you’re located, the TreeSnap app will just show you the trees that should be present in your area. Not all the trees on the West Coast if you’re in the eastern United States and vice versa.
And so you’ll see American chestnut listed there if you’re in the range of it, and you can click on it, and then it’ll ask you a series of questions about chestnut. Thing’s like how big is it? Is it producing burrs? Does it have blight symptoms? And if you’re looking at this and wondering, I don’t even know if I have chestnut, you can click on some information there. And we’ve got photos, where it should be, some more information about it. And if you go on the TreeSnap website, which is, I think the most fun thing because the app is on your phone, and you can report things that way. But then if you go on the website, afterwards, treesnap.org, you can see all of these observations that have been collected. And we have over 14,000 observations across the US that have been collected. Almost half of those are chestnut. You know, that’s a lot of American chestnuts. And you can kind of get a feel for where people are finding those, look at the pictures that they’ve collected. And, you know, just learn more about it that way.
Bob
Wow. So it sounds like chestnuts are the poster tree, the one that more– I mean, it has its own organization– and has more people looking for it. Are there ones that you wish people would look for that are kind of neglected? And no one’s looking for these, but we really need to know about them?
Ellen
Oh, there are there are a lot. But I’d say it kind of depends on where you are, where you’re located, and what you are excited about what you’re seeing in your woods. TreeSnap’s one of those apps that– you know, some of the species that were asking about, you might not see that much. For example, butternut: butternut is related to walnut. In fact, people call it white walnut. But it’s been wiped out by a disease that’s really impacting it. But working with partners who are trying to bring it back and trying to see is there any resistance out there to to this butternut disease, this canker. And can they find trees that are still out there; we don’t have much butternut right now. So if you’ve got any, make sure to report that on there. And I think you know, you’re not probably going to stumble onto it all the time. But if you do, that’s a perfect place to record that and share that with other people. Once it’s in TreeSnap, you can easily share that location with others as well by email and you can have a link that way.
So another thing, I mean, we’ve got partners in the western US with Pacific madrone, Oregon ash, in the southwest with pinyon pine. Florida Torreya down in Florida. And that area is I think, the most endangered tree species that we have. And so there’s just a lot of different trees. And it depends on where you are and what you’re seeing.
Bob
Great. Anything else you’d like to share?
Ellen
No, I encourage folks to get out there and, you know, try out TreeSnap, visit the website, even if you can’t get out in the woods and try it out. Or if you do and you don’t find anything, you know, get online and check out what other people have found that way. Have fun. Looking around for new things. You never know what you might find when you’re hiking around the woods. What kind of new tree or new insect or you know, new flower you might see and hopefully TreeSnap can be a part of that, especially this fall. I mean, what better time to get out and have fun in the woods?
Bob
Great. All right. Thanks, Ellen.
Ellen
Thank you!
Bob
Just like Ellen said, these citizen forestry projects are not only useful for researchers, but they’re also a great way to discover new things and just get out and have fun in the woods. And we’ve got many more forest projects for you at SciStarter. I’m going to include some links in the blog associated with this podcast at SciStarter.org, and also a link to the video of a brand new SciStarter Live program on citizen forestry.
Now finally, I can’t resist sharing a few of my favorite books about trees, including Around the World in Eighty Trees by Jonathan Drori, with illustrations by Lucille Clerc. Drori starts in the UK and then heads east, with each chapter describing a different amazing tree. It’s beautifully written and illustrated and there’s something just astonishing in every chapter.
And then, instead of travelling geographically, author David George Haskell travels through the seasons in The Forest Unseen. Haskell spends one year visiting the exact same spot in a Tennesee forest, describing what trees and their tenants are up to there. It’s a book that will teach you to pay close attention, and reward you with startling revelations of true life adventures unfolding all around you.
Now David Suzuki has a book titled, simply Tree and it’s simply that: it’s the story of one typical yet extraordinary tree, growing from a seed on his property.
And finally, you may have heard of it, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory. It’s a sweeping novel packed with tree lore, about the intersecting stories of 9 very different people whose lives are all entangled and interconnected through trees.
Well, that’s all we’ve got for you this time. I’m Bob Hirshon, reporting from a wet, breezy forest in Takoma Park, MD. Thanks for listening.
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This podcast is brought to you each month by SciStarter, where you will find thousands of citizen science projects, events and tools! It’s all at SciStarter.org, that’s S-C-I S-T-A-R-T-E-R dot ORG. SciStarter’s founder is Darlene Cavalier. And thanks so much to you, the listener and the citizen scientist for getting involved and making a difference. If you have any ideas that you want to share with us, and any things you want to hear on this podcast, get in touch with us at info@scistarter.org. Once again, our email address is info@scistarter.org. Thanks again and I’ll see you next time!
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