DISES: Integrating environmental justice into urban forest assessment and valuation tools: blueprint for the future

城市森林为社区提供了多种好处，包括减少空气质量差、雨水径流、过热和其他健康危害的暴露。据估计，这些好处或生态系统服务每年可为城市居民节省数十亿美元。城市越来越多地依靠数字技术来监测、规划和管理城市森林及其生态系统服务。从理论上讲，数字技术有助于城市森林管理决策，从而改善环境和人类福祉。在实践中，目前还不清楚这些技术是由谁、如何以及在什么背景下实现的，以及最终的结果。该奖项旨在了解数字技术在多大程度上：(1)促进公平获取基于树木的生态系统服务；(2)让城市居民参与城市森林的决策过程；(3)代表了人们对城市树木的价值观和偏好。该项目的总体目标是在人类技术前沿改善城市森林的可持续性和公平性。鉴于技术在城市绿色基础设施规划和发展中的重要作用，城市森林已成为社会、生态和技术系统之间相互作用和反馈的场所。在世界各地的城市中，决策者严重依赖城市森林评估和评价工具来量化城市森林的生态结构（如树冠）、功能（如去除空气污染）和经济价值（如节省的美元）。最近的进展允许用户优先考虑城市内的植树区域，进一步指导决策过程。因此，数字森林技术有可能影响城市树木的获取及其利益（分配正义），参与围绕城市森林的决策（程序和承认正义），以及通过将某些价值优先于其他价值来实现公平（承认正义）。该奖项提出的问题是：城市森林评估和评估工具如何将公平问题和参与性过程结合起来，以支持城市森林的程序、认可和分配正义？利用i-Tree作为模型系统，该奖项将调查数字工具影响森林治理和公平（即通过参与和认可）以及潜在的冠层污染清除（即通过效益评估和区域优先级）的机制。研究将在多个城市进行，采用多尺度混合方法，包括机构分析、旨在促进参与性过程的调查和访谈问题、树叶颗粒物质取样以及利用地理信息系统（GIS）、遥感和土地利用回归模型进行地理空间分析。该项目利用社会科学、生态学、地理空间科学和视觉设计的框架、方法和技术，以更好地了解城市森林规划和管理中人类与技术伙伴关系的发展及其影响。此外，通过创造性地将环境正义纳入城市森林评估和评价的主要模式系统，结果可以为其他城市提供一个可效仿的示例路线图，有可能将城市森林规划和管理转变为一个更公正的系统。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Urban forests provide communities with diverse benefits––including reduced exposure to poor air quality, stormwater runoff, excessive heat, and other health hazards. These benefits, or ecosystem services, are estimated to save urban residents billions of dollars annually. Increasingly, cities rely on digital technologies to monitor, plan, and manage urban forests and their ecosystem services. In theory, digital technologies aid in urban forest management decisions that improve environmental and human well-being. In practice, it remains unclear by whom, how, and in what context these technologies are implemented and the resultant outcomes. This award aims to understand to what extent digital technologies: (1) facilitate equitable access to tree-based ecosystem services; (2) involve urban residents in decision-making processes surrounding urban forests; and (3) represent peoples’ values and preferences for urban trees. The overarching goal of the project is to improve urban forest sustainability and equity at the human-technology frontier.Given the significant role of technology in urban green infrastructure planning and development, urban forests have become a locus of interactions and feedbacks between social, ecological, and technological systems. In cities worldwide, decision makers rely heavily on urban forest assessment and valuation tools to quantify the ecological structure (e.g., tree canopy), function (e.g., air pollution removal), and economic value (i.e., dollars saved) of urban forests. Recent advances allow users to prioritize areas within cities for tree planting, further guiding decision-making processes. Thus, digital forest technologies have the potential to influence access to urban trees and their benefits (distributional justice), participation in decisions surrounding urban forests (procedural and recognition justice), and equity through prioritization of certain values over others (recognition justice). This award asks: How can urban forest assessment and valuation tools integrate equity concerns and participatory processes to support procedural, recognition, and distributional justice in urban forestry? Using i-Tree as a model system, this award will investigate the mechanisms by which digital tools influence forest governance and equity (i.e., through participation and recognition) and potential canopy pollution removal (i.e., through benefits estimates and area prioritizations). Research will be conducted in multiple cities using a multi-scalar, mixed methods approach, including institutional analysis, survey and interview questions designed to facilitate participatory processes, leaf particulate matter sampling, and geospatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and land use regression modeling. The project draws on frameworks, approaches, and technologies from social science, ecology, geospatial science, and visual design to better understand the development and implications of human-technology partnerships in urban forest planning and management. Further, by creatively integrating environmental justice into a major model system for urban forest assessment and valuation, results could provide an example roadmap for other cities to follow, potentially transforming urban forest planning and management into a more just system.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.