{"id":6278,"date":"2025-02-04T13:29:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T18:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/?page_id=6278"},"modified":"2025-11-25T12:29:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T17:29:41","slug":"atherton-speak-for-the-trees","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/atherton-speak-for-the-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Identifying where private trees can benefit the public"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t<ul class=\"profile-listing profile-format-advanced\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\n<li class=\"profile-item profile-item-advanced has-title post-2480 profile type-profile status-publish hentry\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/profile\/kathryn-atherton\/\" class=\"profile-link profile-link-advanced\">\n\t\t<figure class=\"profile-photo profile-photo-advanced\">\n\t\t\t<img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-150x150.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"Kathryn atherton headshot\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-768x764.png 768w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-550x550.png 550w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-710x710.png 710w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-600x600.png 600w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2020\/08\/KAtherton-100x100.png 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/>\t\t<\/figure>\n\n\t\t<h6 class=\"profile-name profile-name-advanced\">Kathryn Atherton<\/h6>\n\t\t<p class=\"profile-title profile-title-advanced\">Policy Associate, Institute for Global Sustainability<\/p>\t<\/a>\n\n\t\n<\/li>\n\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\n<p><strong>Project Partner:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/treeboston.org\/\">Speak for the Trees Boston<\/a>, Summer 2024<\/p>\n<p><strong>Project Description: <\/strong>Speak for the Trees is a non-profit that plants trees around the City of Boston. To maximize the benefit of the trees they distribute, they aim to plant trees in the front yards of private properties. Here, trees can provide shade to both the private property and the public street and sidewalk, and complement the tree planting work done by the City of Boston.<\/p>\n<p>During her internship with Speak for the Trees, Katie utilized Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to segment land parcels and identify yards. She then integrated the front yards into Speak for the Trees\u2019 internal decision-making tool. With this tool, they can filter front yards by fields such as the current canopy coverage of the area and whether the city has designated the area as a tree planting priority zone. These filters will help to maximize the impact of Speak for the Trees\u2019 budget, prioritizing the community members whose yards are most in need of trees. Future work on this project will aim to filter out front yards that do not have space for trees.<\/p>\n<p>Katie&#8217;s tool has earned Speak for the Trees a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation to sponsor their tree plantings in the yards that are most in need of trees.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Project Deliverables:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Create a database of Boston parcel front yards<\/li>\n<li>Integrate database information into the Speak for the Trees internal decision-making tool<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_6279\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6279\" style=\"width: 646px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/urban\/files\/2025\/02\/SFTT_Boston-Parcel-Front-Yards-636x313.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"313\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/02\/SFTT_Boston-Parcel-Front-Yards-636x313.png 636w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/files\/2025\/02\/SFTT_Boston-Parcel-Front-Yards.png 712w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-6279\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screenshot of Katie\u2019s tool highlighting the front yards of Boston\u2019s parcels in blue. The green represents the backyards, and the gray represents buildings on the parcels. The red buffers represent area too close to buildings, where trees cannot be planted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Watch Katie&#8217;s URBAN Internship Lightning Talk <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/S1J1g8Zz7xU\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Partner: Speak for the Trees Boston, Summer 2024 Project Description: Speak for the Trees is a non-profit that plants trees around the City of Boston. To maximize the benefit of the trees they distribute, they aim to plant trees in the front yards of private properties. Here, trees can provide shade to both the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16792,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":16,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6280,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6278\/revisions\/6280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/urban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}