Date: Apr 28, 2020
Topic: Emerging Digital and Urban Technologies in Forestry
The management of urban natural capital is often challenging. In many cities, practitioners are struggling to make informed and strategic decisions about urban forests and green infrastructure in the face of constrained budgets, limited capacity and resources, conflicting priorities, and, importantly, environmental change. To this end, data-driven decision making and planning will be increasingly recognized a crucial component of urban forest management. We discuss how emerging digital and urban technologies can help urban foresters make better decisions about the trees under their care in the face of environmental change. We also discuss opportunities for open and big data to understand and assess citizen requests about urban trees, and hypothesize about the growing role of technology in supporting citizen science and promoting tree stewardship.
Speakers:
- James Steenberg – James Steenberg is an environmental scientist focusing on the ecology and sustainable management of both commercially managed forests and urban forests. He is the forest carbon and climate change analyst with the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry and is an adjunct professor at Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies. He received his PhD from Ryerson University.
- Sophie Nitoslawski – Sophie Nitoslawski is a PhD student in Forestry at the University of British Columbia, focusing on the intersection of smart city planning and urban forest management. She is excited by the potential for technology to enhance green benefits and drive citizen engagement in green space planning.