Urban forests as a community science platform

Volunteered geographic information, urban forests, & environmental justice

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) has been heralded as a promising new data source for urban planning and policymaking. Some have promoted VGI as an empowering and democratic new form of citizen science that allows data collection tasks to be distributed to a large group of people; however, concerns have emerged about whose geographies will be volunteered, and for what purpose. This research begins to address the social and environmental justice concerns around uneven levels of participation in and spatial coverage of urban forest VGI in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and San Francisco, California. Specifically, we examine the spatial distribution and data richness of user-generated tree maps in both cities, using ordinary least squares, general linear models, and spatial autoregressive models. Findings reveal that sociodemographic and environmental indicators are strong predictors of both densities of attributed trees and data richness, presenting potential environmental justice concerns if policymakers use these incomplete and uneven datasets. Given the significant novelty of research into VGI, urban forests, and environmental justice, we conclude by outlining directions for a future research program that can help VGI live up to its potential while avoiding the perils.