Urban Center for People and the Environment Director Stephanie Pincetl and Arbol University students.
Local students learn to analyze the surrounding environment
Arbol University, a project of the IoE Urban Center for People and the Environment and Earth Systems Science and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology departments at UC Irvine, graduates its first class.
Four Los Angeles Conservation Corps members were trained to monitor the local climate and inventory the urban forest by UC Irvine Post Doc Heather McCarthy and Miguel Luna, founder of Urban Semillas, a non-profit organization that works to educate urban youth about the environment.
Workshops took place both outdoors and indoors. Indoor instruction included inputting data collected in 3 different field locations in Los Angeles. Outdoors students learned to identify trees, measure tree canopy, assess tree health, and determine tree size and age. They observed whether trees caused damage to sidewalks and streets and their density. Students also observed difference in tree canopy cover and species in the different neighborhoods of the city. All the data was entered into a data base serving to ground truth UCLA/UCI National Science Foundation research on tree functions in the urban environment, and the program was funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
Published: Tuesday, August 03, 2010
