Following the plenary at IUWC 2019, this session focused on integrating urban ecology research with community engagement. The speakers here built on some of the ideas expressed by Chris Schell previously on this site.
Pigeons & Passers-by
Elizabeth Carlen, an editor for this blog and PhD student in the Biological Sciences department at Fordham University in New York City, was the first to speak on engaging with the community while capturing feral pigeons across the Eastern Seaboard. Movement and movement restrictions are very important to evolutionary processes, including genetic isolation due to barriers and distance. Of pigeons, Carlen asks: is there high gene flow due to dispersal? Or are there behavioral traits that limit gene flow?
Carlen has written here about capturing pigeons. Pigeon capturing is a noisy and rather attention-grabbing activity. Even on New York City streets, people stop. Carlen invites people to come look, and if they’re interested, gives them a task. Carlen teaches passers-by to place pigeons in bags, weigh bags with pigeons inside, record data, and let them go. No sample is so precious that small data issues are a problem–Carlen believes it is much more important to get people involved and talk about your research with EVERYONE. These interactions broaden the ‘impact statement’ in grant proposals!
With this data collected with the help of passers-by, preliminary results suggest that pigeons within 50km are highly related. Outside of this distance, they are not likely to be closely related. Pigeons in Boston also show many genetic differences from those elsewhere suggesting that distance may be the main driver of genetic differences.
Michigan ZoomIN
Nyeema Harris, Assistant Professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Michigan and head of the AWEsome Applied Wildlife Ecology lab, was next with a discussion of the Michigan ZoomIN project. Harris also announced the start of Season 3 for Michigan ZoomIN, with new images from Detroit!
The AWE lab currently has four study sites, from the Upper Peninsula to Detroit, each outfitted with a few dozen cameras each. Images from these cameras are collected, filtered, and then posted to Michigan ZoomIN to enlist the public’s assistance with species identification. The AWE lab uses community derived animal classifications from Michigan ZoomIN to answer questions about mammal species occurrence and the occupancy patterns of carnivores (including coyotes), among other questions.
But how accurate are the community’s identifications? Harris finds that about 90% of the images can be identified by the public using a consensus method. This greatly reduces the amount of work required by the lab. Additionally, there is a 97% overall accuracy for these images. There is some species variation in accuracy, however. Images of rabbits and squirrels are identified more accurately than those with minks!
Harris and the AWE lab also believe that the learning and benefit to the public are of critical importance. The lab integrates Michigan ZoomIN into two educational community engagement efforts: Wolverine Express and Science for Tomorrow. Wolverine express promotes access to higher education for under-served high-school communities, and Science for Tomorrow is a STEM career outreach program for middle school students.
Private property and problems of access
Karen Dyson and Tracy Fuentes, a recent graduate of and PhD candidate in the Urban Ecology Research Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle presented on private property and how who you are impacts where you can work. Dyson and Fuentes, along with colleagues Carly Ziter and MS Patterson, recently published a paper with advice for urban ecologists new to working on private property.
Dyson and Fuentes stated that private property needs to be researched–it is a large proportion of green space, and differs ecologically from public spaces. There are many challenges to working on private property, including multiple points of contact, significant communication requirements, needing to alter methods to fit private property, and when possible the need to design samples appropriately, not conveniently. Yet, there are even more opportunities. As Carlen noted, there is outreach built into every interaction. Community members are exposed to a broader diversity of scientists than what might be seen in media. Importantly, human residents of cities are agents of change and make important decisions about site vegetation impacting many other species. Studies including private property also have increased scientific validity–on the ground studies are needed to understand bottom-up processes–and allows researchers to work with people to develop useful science.
However, what you look like influences your access to private space. Researchers in the literature have stated that they felt unsafe in neighborhoods, yet resident hostility was likely due to fear. In one example, a white researcher taking photos of houses in a low-income neighborhood and not interacting with residents or building relationships with them. Fuentes shared that as a Latinx, a history of bigoted remarks made asking for permission to access private property very stressful. There was however one great experience that emerged: one household enthusiastically granted access based on shared identity as Latinx and a desire to support Latinx research.
The reality of identity based discrimination means that it is unethical for researchers in positions of power to send graduate or undergraduate students into the field without having hard conversations around research identity and likely challenges. Not having these conversations is unsafe for the students, and disrespectful to the neighborhood. Dyson and Fuentes also stated that researchers need to avoid parachute research. While the term is often used for scientists from wealthy nations studying ecosystems in developing countries without participating in capacity building, it can also happen in cities. The neighborhoods where ecologists work should also benefit from research!
Seattle’s urban carnivores
Katie Remine and Robert Long, of the Woodland Park Zoo, along with Mark Jordan, an Associate Professor at Seattle University, presented on the Seattle Urban Carnivore Project. The project is a partnership between Woodland Park Zoo and Seattle University. It will explore how coyotes, foxes, raccoons, bobcats, cougars, and bears live alongside and interact with human residents of the Seattle region.
The team hopes that the project will answer questions like: Which neighborhood characteristics attract certain species to certain areas? How can we better design parks, trails, and habitat connectors to enhance wildlife habitat and promote positive carnivore-human coexistence? Currently, the camera traps are set in a linear transect across the city, after the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Information Network’s design. The team will also be creating a web-based carnivore reporting site to facilitate community reports of carnivores.
The team conducts a lot of middle school outreach and have just received a new grant for outreach to the community at large. However, while the students and undergraduate communities are fairly diverse, the team faces ongoing challenges with diversifying the broader community engaged with the project.
Birds, vacant lots, and environmental justice
Charles Nilon, Professor at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Missouri, described new research on integrating bird habitat and environmental justice on vacant lots. Nilon made the important point that environmental justice includes people’s day to day interactions with nature and wildlife.
Nilon learned from previous research in Baltimore that vacant lots were often associated with crime and dumping. However, the weedy, shrubby vegetation could also provide good bird habitat, which was valued by the community. In St. Louis, MO, Nilon conducted similar research to help inform the Green City Coalition, a collaboration working to install amenities on vacant properties.
Nilon and his students interviewed participants attending meetings about Green City Coalition events and found a number of key themes emerged, many related to environmental justice. They found that residents talked about community change, the city’s lack of interest in vacant land, population decline, loss of businesses, and the threat of gentrification. These changes were often tied to discussions of green space. For example, wildlife presence indicated a legacy of decline to residents as they get in the house, however, birds were seen as a positive sign. Residents preferred current vacant lots with good visibility, no litter, mown grass, and fencing–all antithetical to habitat. Residents also preferred future greening options that would be safe places, places that looked cared for, would enhance the neighborhood, and be useful.
Nilon and his team see an opportunity to use public engagement to work with residents to create places that they value. In Baltimore, places that are valued include bird habitat, and this could be true for St. Louis as well.
Community science and environmental injustice
Finally, Madhusudan Katti, an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, presented some fascinating results on behalf of Deja Perkins and Michael Caslin, graduate students at NCSU.
eBird is a community science tool allowing anyone to record bird observations for use by scientists, researchers, amateur naturalists, and others. The tool has been widely adopted and gone global. There is a large user base, which generates lots of data. The data is potentially very useful for urban planning, as it identifies which parks and green spaces are being used by birds.
However, while examining eBird data for another project, Perkins and Katti noticed an interesting pattern suggesting that using community science in this way could help perpetuate environmental injustice. Cities are places with gradients of socio-economic inequalities and histories of segregation. eBird data largely follows an economic gradient–areas with more observations in nicer parks, which are often in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.
Perkins and Katti suggest that while eBird and similar tools are fantastic for large scale comparisons, at smaller scales the users can reflect inequality already present in the city. Alternatively, systematic point counts like the Tucson Bird Count require significantly more effort to coordinate, requires more effort from volunteers, but the sampling design is better. When comparing the two in Tucson, the Tucson Bird Count had much better coverage.
Finally, Perkins and Katti state that who inputs eBird and other community science data matters. How we can include all communities is an important concern. Perkins and Katti suggest developing partnerships with communities from across the city to start–not just people in the “Audubon demographic.” Building capacity for birdwatching, including K-12 student curricula and working with museums is also important. Katti’s lab now builds in entry points for beginner, intermediate, and advanced birders into their community research projects.
- IUWC 2019: Inclusive Urban Ecosystems - June 10, 2019
- IUWC 2019: Community Science - June 7, 2019
- IUWC 2019: Urban Raptors - June 6, 2019