- About S+EM
- Project Summary
- S+EM is an environmental mapping and social networking design project that links New York City trees with the people who care for them.
- The tree is perhaps the most common emblematic figure of contemporary environmentalism and sustainability. Yet, despite our daily interactions with trees and their by-products, there remains undeveloped potential for the general public to engage the tree. In addition, there is an extremely limited awareness of the importance of street trees for public health and proper care for the ecological health of trees.
- Our goal at S+EM is to re-connect people with trees by providing the database and networking software for tree stewards to record and track their work while linking to other tree stewardship initiatives at the individual or neighborhood level.
- Rationale
- Street trees provide New York City with a long list of ecological services. They shade city streets and buildings, reducing the urban heat island effect and cut energy consumption during summer months. They filter pollution from the local atmosphere, improving public health by reducing childhood asthma hospitalizations. They trap rainwater during heavy storms, preventing sewage overflows into local waterways. Though researchers are still daunted by the task of calculating the monetary benefits of the urban forest, estimates often fall in the range of billions of dollars and in New York City one study put the benefits at well over $5 billion. Recognizing the multiple benefits of a healthy urban forest, New York City has committed to planting 1 million trees, over 200,000 new street trees, throughout the city within the next twenty years as part of PlaNYC 2030. Indeed, many of the city’s plans to offset urban contributions to global warming assume that the urban forest will grow, mature and sequester an ever-increasing amount of carbon. However, limited funding for basic maintenance through the Department of Parks and Recreation is predicted to leave many new street trees susceptible to the stresses of the urban environment. In fact, studies of young street trees show mortality ranging from 10-30%. The tree as a solution to public health, stormwater retention, carbon storage, and the major “green” element in the city, is at risk. A growing and active tree stewardship is the most efficient solution to the problems facing our urban forest.
- Volunteer “stewards” have long played an important role in keeping street trees alive in New York City by watering, pruning, and cultivating patches of the urban forest beyond the reach of city employees. All too often, the least served patches are found in low-income and minority neighborhoods that would benefit the most from a healthy and robust network of street trees. As the stock of street trees in NYC grows, citizen stewards will play an increasingly vital role in making sure that individual trees survive and thrive.
- Despite recent advances in open-source, web-based mapping technology, citizen stewards lack access to a comprehensive map of New York City’s street trees and a way to interact with each other. In a similar vein, there is no central method of organizing or tracking the work of each individual steward. Some neighborhood groups have responded by organizing local stewards and creating a variety of mapping tools to help guide volunteer work. Yet for the most part, citizen stewards are acting as independent agents in the urban environment.
- Urban street tree stewardship exists as a local, privately initiated form of environmental management. Stewardship is often a spectacle, a highly visible performance on the urban stage that often elicits surprise, curiosity, and enchantment from an audience of passers-by. Pruning dead branches, planting flowers, and aerating soil can focus a spotlight on an element of the urban environment that’s easily overlooked and ignored. This simple tree care is one of the most direct ways for New Yorker’s to physically interact with their environment. It is can be one of the most rewarding actions an individual can make towards increasing urban sustainability. Stewardship makes street trees visible, creating a wider constituency of concern for their health and wellbeing. Likewise, stewardship offers an opportunity for what Jason Corburn calls “street science” – a participatory approach to neighborhood-based ecological research that has a direct impact on public policy and environmental justice. Citizen stewards are steeped in the ecology of their local urban forest, grappling with issues ranging from soil quality to canopy cover. Their knowledge of local street tree health can help academic researchers develop a more comprehensive understanding of the structure and function of the urban forest – and the relationship between stewardship and forest health.
- Our overarching goal is the development of a healthy, mature, and robust urban forest throughout all of New York City’s neighborhoods. More specifically, we aim to develop a set of web-based tools to organize, support, and track the work of New York City’s burgeoning community of citizen street tree stewards in order to motivate and mobilize a socially connected network of tree stewards. The S+EM Project seeks to blur the lines between environmental stewardship, socio-ecological research, and engaging design with a focused, interdisciplinary, web-based approach to stewardship mapping and networking.