Branching out: Teens help measure and map Springfield’s urban forest

Fredrick Phillips calls it “the beast.” 

It’s a massive maple tree near Clearwater Park in Springfield with towering offshoots rising from 15 trunks. And he was tasked with measuring the whole thing. 

“Gnarly to say the least,” he said. “It took us like 30 minutes” to collect the data.

Phillips is an intern with the Willamalane Park and Recreation District. He got the internship through a hands-on youth program run by Connected Lane County, a nonprofit that supports young people getting into the workforce.

He’s continuing the daunting work of cataloging the park district’s trees, building on an inventory project started last year by a previous group of young tree experts from Northwest Youth Corps. They collected data on 3,252 trees, surveying 26 parks. About 15 parks are left for this year’s work.

While the project supports workforce development, it also helps Springfield work toward regaining its Tree City USA designation, which it lost in recent years. The designation, awarded by the Arbor Day Foundation, requires communities to meet specific urban forestry standards.

Additionally, the project modernizes how urban foresters track trees — identifying both those that provide benefits and those that pose hazards.

Urban forestry challenges 

Before these young people took on the project, Willamalane relied on paper inventories stored in binders. Now the district is moving toward an urban forest management approach using a geographic information system (GIS), which allows trees to be mapped digitally and quantified for researching canopy cover. 

“Springfield has not had a sufficient, comprehensive, tree inventory at all,” said Sara Bouska, a GIS specialist at Willamalane. “It’s really hard to manage that when you don’t have data on it. So that is the impetus of collecting. It’s the first main necessary step for managing your urban forest adequately.”

Urban trees face stresses like heat, pollution and pests that may be more intense than in natural forests. If not properly maintained, urban trees can fall into power lines, damage property or injure people. But healthy trees help cool neighborhoods, improve air quality, support wildlife and generally make urban spaces more enjoyable.

Regular care — including watering, pruning and monitoring — helps sustain these contributions, which is why maintaining a detailed tree inventory is so important.

Bouska worked with youth tree crews directly, showing how to assess tree health, characterize a tree’s crown and identify hazards, all while teaching the value of data accuracy and environmental science. 

Youth help solve ‘urban forestry puzzle’ 

The project not only built a tree inventory but also introduced young people to a field — and to the outdoors as a way of life — many had never experienced.

“Even if you grow up in Oregon, there are a lot of youth that don’t get exposure the same way,” Bouska said. 

Throughout the process, she’s noticed young people’s interest in forestry develop, their “curiosity opening up continually throughout the process,” she said. 

Urban forestry wasn’t something Phillips had considered before his internship, but now it’s a career he’s thinking about. 

So far, he’s counted about 300 trees, including “the beast.”

At Island Park in June, he joined Bouska to quality-check data, looking for potential hazards such as cracks in bark, a sign that a limb could break. 

The two worked in tandem, wrapping a measuring tape around the base of a large black cottonwood, recording the data, and using a rangefinder while the other took notes on a tablet.

Soon, they will wrap up the inventory and put the data to work, drafting a plan that addresses dying trees and communities that don’t have enough green space — which helps keep neighborhoods cooler as temperatures rise.

While climate change can feel overwhelming, the project is an example of how young people are stepping up in ways they hadn’t been empowered to before. Bouska describes the young workers and the inventory as “a core piece of our urban forestry puzzle.”

And she added it’s “really just heartwarming to see them grow an interest in trees and nature and connection with the parks and outside.”