Browse

Citizen science enlists members of the public to make and record useful observations, such as counting birds in their backyards. The large numbers of volunteers who participate in such projects collect valuable research data, which create an enormous body of scientific data on a vast geographic scale. In return, such projects aim to increase participants' connections to science, place, and nature. In this book, experts from a variety of disciplines share their experiences of creating and implementing successful citizen science projects, primarily those that use massive data sets gathered by citizen scientists to better understand the impact of environmental change. The book addresses basic aspects of how to conduct citizen science projects, as well as the nuances of creating a robust digital infrastructure and recruiting a large participant base. An overview of the types of environmental research approaches and techniques demonstrates how to make use of large data sets arising from citizen science projects. A final section focuses on citizen science's impacts and its broad connections to understanding the human dimensions and educational aspects of public participation. The book teaches teams of program developers and researchers how to cross the bridge from success at public engagement to using citizen science data to understand patterns and trends or to test hypotheses about how ecological processes respond to change at large geographic scales.

This book begins with the question of why PlaNYC2030—New York City’s municipal, long-term sustainability plan, launched during the Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration—had a robust urban forestry agenda, but lacked an urban agriculture agenda. PlaNYC launched the MillionTreesNYC campaign, investing over $400 million in city funds and leveraging a public-private partnership to plant one million trees citywide. Meanwhile, despite NYC having a long tradition of community gardening and burgeoning interest in local food systems, the plan contained no mention of community gardens or urban farms. In contrasting the top-down, centralized investment in the urban forest with the dispersed and decentralized social movement around urban agriculture, the book describes the ways in which political, discursive, and material processes intertwine to construct nature in the city. Urban greening unfolds through the strategic interplay of actors, the deployment of different narrative frames, and the mobilizing and manipulation of the physical environment—including other living, non-human entities. Understanding how and why the sustainability agenda is set and implemented provides crucial lessons to scholars, policymakers, and activists alike as they engage in the greening of cities.

This book is a work of creative nonfiction in which the acclaimed author integrates memoir, natural history, cultural critique, and spiritual reflection into a single compelling narrative. The book is framed around Aldo Leopold and his classic A Sand County Almanac, bringing Leopold's ethic—that some could live without nature but most should not—into the twenty-first century. The author follows the seasons through seventy-four tales set in a variety of landscapes from valley to salty shore. The book convinces us that we should all develop long attachments to the local, observing that the land can change us for the better.

This book explores how environmental education can contribute to urban sustainability. Urban environmental education includes any practices that create learning opportunities to foster individual and community well-being and environmental quality in cities. It fosters novel educational approaches and helps debunk common assumptions that cities are ecologically barren and that city people don't care for, or need, urban nature or a healthy environment. Topics within the book range from the urban context to theoretical underpinnings, educational settings, participants, and educational approaches in urban environmental education. Chapters integrate research and practice to help aspiring and practicing environmental educators, urban planners, and other environmental leaders achieve their goals in terms of education, youth and community development, and environmental quality in cities.