Nic WilliamsonUniversity of Kentucky trees are critically important – they provide ecosystem services, human health and wellness benefits, and community cohesiveness. These tree benefits and many more are important all around our increasingly urbanizing world, and together these concepts are at the essence of the Undergraduate Certificate in Urban and Community Forestry (UCF), a new offering out of the UK College of Agriculture, Food and the Environment.
This certificate program explores many facets of urban and community forests and the relevance of city trees and greenspaces across a variety of career paths, from infrastructure and public health to sustainability studies and natural resource management. There are two required courses in the certificate, UCF 300 (Urban and Community Forestry) and UCF 410 (Urban and Community Forestry Capstone), along with a list of potential electives, all aimed at providing and enabling a cross-disciplinary experience to the field – which is itself inherently cross-disciplinary!
Have you heard that community forests…
- alleviate stress and promote wellness
- capture and store carbon emissions
- minimize the urban heat island effect
- reduce flooding and stormwater runoff
- provide habitat for pollinators and wildlife
The trees and greenspaces right outside our campus doors enhance the places we live, work and play in ways that are easily overlooked. One study out of UC Berkley (Piff et al. 2015) which gave participants two views, one of the front of a nearby college building and the other of a tall grove of campus trees, found that the group with the “greener” view was more likely to assist when another person was in need – scale that up across the human landscape and we can understand why we need trees!
In addition to a host of benefits, nearby trees and greenspaces offer a living laboratory for our exploration in the UCF certificate. UCF students may find themselves sampling soils in a tree protection zone just outside their very own dormitory to explore the effects of construction on soil carbon, or mapping trees in a Lexington park in concert with a local non-profit preparing for a tree planting project. Students will interact with urban and community forestry professionals such as city planners, environmental educators, and epidemiologists, developing questions along the way. How did it happen and what does it mean that some neighborhoods have abundant tree canopy while others are virtually tree-less? For the UCF Certificate, nearby trees often serve as a portal for engaging broader community and societal challenges stemming from the built environment.
If you are reading this article, the UK Undergraduate Certificate in Urban and Community Forestry may be for you! Visit the UCF program website (https://ucf.ca.uky.edu/) and email the UCF Program Directors and Coordinator at ucf@uky.edu.
