Geoffrey Donovan and Sarah Jovan

USFS, PACIFIC NORTHWEST RESEARCH STATION

“MAPPING AIR POLLUTION WITH MOSS”

"URBAN TREES, PUBLIC HEALTH, AND CRIME"

Dr. Geoffrey Donovan has quantified a wide range of urban-tree benefits. These have ranged from intuitive benefits—reduced summertime cooling costs, for example—to less intuitive such as crime reduction. More recently, he has focused on the relationship between trees and public health. He found that mothers with trees around their homes are less likely to have underweight babies, and when trees are killed by an invasive pest, more people die from cardiovascular and lower-respiratory disease. He has a number of ongoing projects including a collaboration with the women’s health initiative.

Dr. Sarah Jovan is a Research Ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Oregon. She serves as National Lichen Advisor to the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program, which monitors the condition of epiphytic lichen communities across U.S. forests for tracking forest health. Her research focuses on utilizing non-vascular bioindicators (lichens, bryophytes) as a supplement to air quality and climate monitoring stations to provide a fine-scaled view of conditions affecting forest and urban airsheds.

Watch the seminar presentation