Past Webcasts

Empowering Communities for Effective Urban Forest Stewardship

(11am CT, 10am MT, 9am PT)

Urban forests are comprised of the trees where people live, work, and play. Their management and stewardship rely not only on a working knowledge of the trees that are within these greenspaces, but also on a firm understanding of the attitudes and behaviors that varied stakeholder groups have towards urban trees. This presentation will review the diverse perspectives that youth, adult residential stakeholders, and urban forestry professionals have about urban tree cover. It will also explore how patterns from among the three can be used to develop stewardship strategies that ensure collective buy-in for sustained urban forest conservation across all groups.

Guest

Asia Dowtin

Michigan State University

Assistant Professor of Urban and Community Forestry

Dr. Asia Dowtin is an Assistant Professor of Urban Forestry in the Michigan State University Department of Forestry. Her work explores the relationships that exist between urban forest structure, spatial context, and water and nutrient cycling in metropolitan areas. Through this work, she aims to broaden our understanding of the influence that species composition, related physical tree traits, and surrounding land use have on urban forest function and ecosystem service provision. A major goal of Dowtin’s work is to utilize this knowledge to inform the development of urban forest management plans, specifically aspects of these plans that are intended to optimize the yield of ecosystem services provided by urban trees. Her work at Michigan State University includes research, teaching, and extension related to urban and community forestry, with her extension efforts largely focused on creating educational and workforce development programming for K-12 students and adult learners. She holds a B.S. in Meteorology from the State University of New York College at Oneonta, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physical Geography from the University of Delaware.