Caring for the Land and Serving People, Where They Live:
Improving the Lives of People through the Stewardship of Trees, Forests and
Related Natural Resources in Urban Areas 1
Michael T. Rains, Erika S. Svendsen and Lindsay K. Campbell
The Forest Service: Then and Now
The USDA (Department of Agriculture) Forest Service has a direct and indirect role on most of
the 850 million acres of our nation’s forests. When the Forest Service was created in 1905, only
13 cities worldwide had populations of one million people or more. Eighty years later, 230 cities
had one million plus populations. In the new millennium, it is projected there will be over 400
cities with a population of one million people and 26 mega-cities with populations of over 10
million. Looking nationally, our population was about 50 percent urban in 1920; today about 83
percent of our people live in cities and towns. Simply put, this is the first century in our history
that the majority of humans live in urban areas.
The Chief of the Forest Service has a responsibility to help ensure that forested landscapes,
including those in urban areas, are healthy, sustainable, and provide the required green
infrastructure that effectively links environmental health with community resiliency and stability.
In partnership with states, municipalities, and non-governmental organizations, the Forest
Service has been formally engaged with the management and care of approximately 103 million
acres of trees and forests in cities, towns, and communities since the early 1970’s. How federal,
state, and local governments and a wide range of other partnerships band together to ensure the
proper care of America’s urban natural resources is a fundamental part of improving people’s
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Prepared by Michael T. Rains, Erika S. Svendsen, and Lindsay K. Campbell, Northern Research Station, Research and
Development, USDA Forest Service, for the North American Forest Commission, Madison, WI, October 16, 2013.
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lives. The slogan that illustrates the mission of the Forest Service is “caring for the land and
serving people.” As we face the conservation demands along the entire rural-to-urban land
gradient, it is now altogether fitting to think of this motto as “caring for the land and serving
people, where they live.”
Rising Up to Meet a Changing Landscape and Constituency
The spatial extent of our urban areas is growing. Cities are no longer compact; they sprawl in
spider-like configurations and increasingly intermingle with wildlands. As a result, new forms
of urban development have emerged including a wildland-urban interface in which housing is
interspersed in forests, shrublands, and desert habitats. Along with this spatial change is a shift
in perspectives, behaviors, and constituencies. Although many of these habitats were formerly
dominated by agriculturalists and foresters, they are now populated by people from urban places,
who, in turn, draw upon a more urban experience. 2
Figure 1: Baltimore simulated forest land cover showing 200 years of urban growth in yellow.
While growth may be inevitable, smart growth should be the guiding principle if we are
interested in sustainability of our natural resources and its linkage to the protection of lives and
property. One of the most enduring lessons of cities is the important and vital relationship
between grey infrastructure (e.g., streets and buildings), green infrastructure (e.g., forests, parks
and open spaces), and the human communities that inhabit or benefit from them. Throughout the
history of cities, a wide range of people and organizations have competed over urban land use
2
Grove, J. Morgan. 2009. “Cities: Managing Densely Settled Social-Ecological Systems.” In F.S. Chapin et al. (eds.), Principles
of Ecosystem Stewardship. New York: Springer: 281-204.
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decisions. Yet, within this history, we have discovered crucial interactions between people, their
environments, and the health and well-being of both.
This notion may be particularly significant in our country, where demand for natural resources
and green space is high. If we take better care of what we have across all landscapes, the
benefits from our natural resources will extend to everyone across a broad spectrum of physical,
social and economic conditions. This approach embodies the notion of “All Lands, All People.”
“..Urban trees are the hardest working trees in America.”
Tom Tidwell, Chief, USDA Forest Service
Urban landscapes, trees and natural resources play a critical role in providing high quality places
for everyone, thereby reducing the development pressures at the urban fringe and improving
equity in neighborhood quality. Research indicates the important role that trees and urban
natural resources play in creating healthy places for people to live and has found linkages with
better school performance, reduced crime rates, and greater social cohesion. Engaging
volunteers and community groups in the stewardship of these resources can increase civic
engagement, neighborhood efficacy, ecological literacy, and market innovation. The body of
research is becoming too large to ignore. Healthy urban natural resources support healthy urban
places and people.
A Clear Role for the Forest Service and Federal Service
The driving questions we are faced with are: How can federal agencies, including and perhaps,
especially, the Forest Service, ensure the proper care of our natural resources across time, place,
and scale to strengthen the relationship between environmental health and human well-being?
How can we create the type of institutional and organizational support to carry forth our mission
into new and dynamic landscapes? How can we serve the local as well as the global? The urban
and the rural?
The Forest Service is a dominant force in the conservation of America’s natural resources. Yet,
we have a stewardship role in collaboration with others for management, protection, and use on
all lands. We recognize that this role extends along a rural-to-urban land gradient, but only
recently have we begun to understand and capture our unique role in urban landscapes. In the
same way that our agency has engaged in adaptive management on the National Forests and
Grasslands, we can adapt to this changing landscape of people, land use, market forces and
institutions.
Building on more than a hundred years of experience in managing multiple use landscapes, the
Forest Service understands how to manage for and with a dynamic environment. While
conservation is one important tool in the toolkit, and we preserve many valuable ecosystems and
landscapes, we also understand the need to manage for change and to manage for other values
including recreation, supporting livelihoods, and other uses. We have deep knowledge both as
managers and as researchers of disturbance and resilience cycles. For example, incident
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command teams are a well-known and well-respected model of multi-agency partnership and an
example of our ability to assess, respond, and restore using scientific data combined with on-theground observation. The Forest Service regularly assembles teams that include emergency
responders and scientists and technology transfer specialists, and deploys them to address
disturbances caused by fire, floods, and other severe storm damage. Our expertise in
understanding and adaptive management of landscapes disturbed by wildfire and other extreme
weather, invasive species, and prolonged human use and extraction can be applied to new
challenges related to the changing climate and other forms of disturbance in our cities, such as
the recent Hurricane Sandy that devastated the Eastern Seaboard. This expertise still stands in
places where our agency does not own or regulate land.
Research is built into the DNA of the agency
Our Experimental Forest system has enabled the collection of long term datasets about the
characteristics, function, health, and temporal change of diverse landscapes across the country.
Our research stations, staffed by scientists, technicians, and administrators, comprise the largest
“natural resource faculty” in the country. The Northern Research Station, alone, has more than
150 full time research scientists, working hand-in-hand with more than 700 university
cooperators. These scientists publish peer reviewed literature to the highest standards, attend
academic conferences, and advise graduate students. But they also have the added role of being
public servants, responsive to the needs, interests, inquiries, and quandaries of land managers -be they public, private, nonprofit, or community-based.
In a rapidly urbanizing landscape, our research collaborations have evolved to better address
issues related to urban natural resources stewardship and system dynamics, including
resiliency. The majority of our work takes place via partnership-based, collaborative models
focused on social-ecological systems research that produces useful knowledge for land managers
and decision-makers. For example, our program in Baltimore is one of just two urban National
Science Foundation (NSF) Long Term Ecological Research sites (along with Phoenix). Along
with the NSF, the Forest Service has provided core funding and support to the Baltimore
Ecosystem Study (BES) as it spans everything from conceptual models, to theoretical
development, to empirical studies, to research application, to community engagement. It offers a
model of an expanded view of the agency’s role in “urban forestry” research, broadly defined.
The research outcomes of the BES have transformed our understanding of urban climate and
how fluxes of energy and nutrients are regulated by the ecology of the city. Two critical
conclusions based on BES research are that:
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1. Lifestyle characteristics are more important than population density and socioeconomic
status in explaining patterns of vegetative cover.
2. Relationships among social groups and their ecologies is often the result of inherited
landscapes, dating back over four decades of urban development, decline, and renewal.
More recently, the Forest Service is growing the network of scientists working directly in
cities and advancing a research-in-action agenda, whereby scientists and urban natural
resource managers work iteratively to inform knowledge and practice. For example, there are
now Urban Field Stations in New York City; Chicago; and, Philadelphia. Work has also begun
in Los Angeles on establishing a field station there, and a solid program of urban research is
being conducted in Seattle and San Juan.
“…Each tree planted becomes a powerful engine to improve our environment
and enhance the quality of life in communities throughout the region…”
Drew Becher, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
About two years ago, federal departments and agencies launched an initiative to help revitalize
urban waters and the communities that surround them. This Urban Waters Federal Partnership is
the joint role of 14 federal departments and groups, including the USDA and Forest Service. The
Partnership enables all involved “…to band together, share resources, and avoid duplication.”
To date, 18 locations have been designated as special sites to focus restoration activities. In the
Forest Service, the Urban Waters Federal Partnership was designated as one of the top 10 PublicPrivate Partnerships. This initiative, a “Conservation Legacy Event,” helps address landscape
scale conservation in a more cohesive manner. Philadelphia is one of the most recent sites
selected. Baltimore (Patapsco River), New York City (the Bronx and Harlem Rivers), Northwest
Indiana (Lake Michigan/Little Calumet River), and Washington, D.C. (Anacostia River) are four
other designated sites in the Northeast and Midwest region. These types of partnerships,
combined with the infrastructure of our Urban Field Stations, are examples of our ability to
enable a much more comprehensive approach to contemporary natural resources stewardship
now and in the future.
A Strategy that Includes People: Key Benchmarks of a Unified Urban Natural
Resource Stewardship Strategy
The term Urban Natural Resources can be defined broadly to include air, water, wildlife, trees,
forests, and other natural features of the environment in urban, suburban, and urban-wildland
interface areas. The term Stewardship is the management and protection, including restoration,
of the Urban Natural Resources. Urban Natural Resources Stewardship is much broader in
concept than traditional urban forestry. In the Forest Service, Urban Natural Resources
Stewardship is designed to be an umbrella for all the actions involved in caring for urban forest
resources.
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Over the last few decades, the Forest Service has emerged as a leader in developing cutting-edge
research on urban environments, through a strategy that includes—and often begins with—
people. The following are the major interacting themes and measures of success or benchmarks
that represent the strong, unified Urban Natural Resource Stewardship program the Forest
Service helps deploy.
Themes
Sustaining and expanding urban natural resources
Environmental literacy
Job and career opportunities
Economic development and diversification
Environmental justice
Generating, managing, and applying information
Partnerships and intergovernmental coordination
Citizen engagement and volunteerism
Benchmarks
1. Complexities of the urban forest are recognized and addressed as part of a cohesive federal
role.
2. Sustainability and resilience of the urban forest resource are primary objectives.
3. Federal programs are well integrated relative to planning and caring for the urban forest.
This includes actions designed to improve the management, protection and restoration of a
wide-range of urban natural resources (air, water, wildlife, trees, forests, forest ecosystems,
parks, greenways).
4. State and local governments and grassroots citizen groups are actively engaged in planning,
funding, and caring for the urban forest.
5. Federal programs and services are supported by a wide-range of constituents and Congress.
6. Activities in urban natural resources stewardship, including the outcomes of major forums
and conferences, are well coordinated and linked.
Conclusion
Over 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas. As urban development continues to expand
over the landscape and change in form, the relationships between urban growth, population
change, and natural resources will become increasingly complex.
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The Forest Service fully understands the focus of caring for the land where most people live,
going back to the maxim of our first Chief, Gifford Pinchot, when he described the “… greatest
good for the greatest number for the longest time.” Urban natural resources stewardship may
address this maxim more completely than any other conservation imperative the agency
embraces. Yet, this federal agency does not own or manage land within most urban areas. It does
not regulate any aspect of the urban environment. Nonetheless, it has a crucial role to play as a
research entity, a convener of scholars and practitioners, and an ‘honest broker’ among the
literally thousands of entities engaging in the stewardship and care of urban trees, open space,
waterways, and built environment.
Science-based information has enabled a much more effective urban natural resources program
to surface and be deployed. We now can calculate the specific dollar value of the services and
benefits that urban trees and forests provide in terms of energy savings, reducing greenhouse
gases, mitigating floods, and improving people’s health and safety. We can measure the health
of urban forests. And we can demonstrate the full capacity of urban stewardship organizations
through mapping their spatial turf and social networks using STEW-MAP. Indeed, over the past
20 years, Forest Service research has been a leader in understanding and maximizing the social,
economic, and environmental services and benefits that urban trees and forests provide. The
years ahead will build upon this foundation by understanding and building markets and creating
jobs for the goods that can come from the urban forest, including food, fiber, and building
materials.
To harness our full capacity, a comprehensive Urban Natural Resources Stewardship program
addressing a coherent and integrated federal role is required now. A coalition of interests could
shape a way to address specific federal, state, and local contributions to improve urban areas and
livability within these areas. The Forest Service can be a key contributor to the success of this
strategy.
The involvement of people in the stewardship of trees and forests where they live, work, and
play not only will have a direct positive influence on the quality of life in our cities and towns, it
can also unify our commitment across all lands and strengthen our democracy. As Vibrant Cities
and Urban Forests: A National Call to Action (2011) states, “… at the root of every vibrant city
is an urban forest.”
Urban Natural Resources Stewardship just may be our final frontier to ensure the health of our
planet Earth. We must embrace the notion now and dedicate time to form a stronger program
direction for our land and the people we serve.
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About the Authors:
Michael T. Rains is the Director, Northern Research Station and Forest Products Laboratory,
USDA Forest Service. His contact information is:
Telephone: (610) 557-5017
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Erika S. Svendsen is the Northern Research Station Director’s Representative for the New
York City Urban Field Station and a research social scientist. Her contact information is:
Telephone: (212) 637-3598; Ft. Totten Urban Field Station: (718) 225-3430
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Lindsay K. Campbell is a research social scientist for the US Forest Station, Northern
Research Station and based at the New York City Urban Field Station. Her contact information
is:
Telephone: (212) 637-4175
E-mail: [email protected]
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