A group of citizen scientists in San Diego has volunteered to be trained on how to monitor the health of trees in urban areas under a national pilot program. On Wednesday, 50 volunteers will gather in Balboa Park and meet with some of the San Diego Zoo’s plant experts, including arborists, to lear n how to assess the health of trees. The training is part of a program called Healthy Trees, Healthy Cities, which enlists volunteers to track tree health in their communities. Using cellphones and a special app, the volunteers will be asked to document trees they come across — reports that could potentially serve as an early warning for trees that appear stressed. The program is coordinated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service along with other groups, including The Nature Conservancy. The zoo’s involvement is through an American Public Gardens Association pilot that seeks to use public gardens as education and citizen science hubs for the app, a spokesperson said. Under the pilot, workshops have also taken place at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado and at The Arboretum at Flagstaff in Arizona. Fragrant pink flowers cover a pink trumpet tree (Handroanthus heptaphyllus) in Balboa Park in June. (Dawn Standke) When word of the program was released last week, volunteers in San Diego jumped at the chance to participate, with all slots filling quickly. The zoo team plans to teach volunteers how to use the app and make basic tree identifications and tree assessments. After the training, group members will spread out near the War Memorial in Balboa Park to try their new skills. “We’re not going to be turning people into plant experts overnight. That’s a long road,” said Adam Graves, director of horticulture at the San Diego Zoo. Rather, he said, volunteers will be trained to gather “useful information about the urban tree canopy” that could help identify illnesses and problems developing among plant groups. Data gathered and submitted by volunteers will create a tree inventory and map their locations, and they can track tree care such as watering. That information can later be shared with local governments as well as researchers. Zoo officials said the field observations can help prioritize the care of stressed trees locally and aid Forest Service researchers as they study the effects of the urban environment on trees nationally. “The whole idea behind the workshop is we want to be able to pull large amounts of information about some of the most common tree species in San Diego — regardless of whether that’s in a public or private space,” he said. “Even if it is in a private space, if we are starting to see overall signs of decline around a particular species or if we think there might be a new invasive pest that’s been introduced into the environment, the government is still going to be able to take proactive strides to help mitigate the effects of what that would be.” If many volunteers notice problems with a certain species of tree, such as jacarandas, he said their observations might indicate that the trees are being attacked by pathogens or pests. “We don’t expect people who are attending the workshop to be able to identify bugs or fungal pathogens, but we do expect to be able to train people to look at a tree and say, ‘Well, this tree looks pretty good,’ or ‘This tree looks like it is starting to struggle a little bit.’ With enough data, we would be able to figure out various trends and investigate further,” he said. Graves said he would like to see people who undergo the training go out and identify trees and assess them when they are “out and about,” with the goal of improving local green spaces. “We hope that, at the very least, the 50 people that come understand and appreciate the value of trees in our urban landscape… and understand the need for proactive managing of the urban canopy and all of those resources,” Graves said. He said participating in the effort could make volunteers feel they are “contributing to the cultivation of that green space for generations to come because trees last for quite a long time.” ...read more read less