A transdisciplinary, mixed methods research agenda for evaluating the collective impact approach for tree planting: The CommuniTree initiative in northwest Indiana, U.S

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the theory and research design for a new collaborative tree-planting initiative in northwest Indiana in the Midwest United States. The CommuniTree initiative is attempting to alleviate some of the social and ecological issues experienced by post-industrial Rust Belt communities. Northwest Indiana was dominated by heavy industry, particularly steel, throughout much of the 20th century, until the decline of manufacturing and the closing of plants in the 1980s and 1990s, causing well-paying jobs to disappear, population to decline, and leaving residential and commercial vacancies and a decimated tax base. The communities in northwest Indiana are still feeling the social, economic, ecological legacies of this post-industrial history, including environmental degradation, high industrial land use and impervious surfaces, and low tree canopy cover, creating air pollution, stormwater quantity and quality, urban heat island issues, among other problems. With a goal of helping alleviate some of these post-industrial challenges, the CommuniTree initiative was launched in 2017. CommuniTree is a new multi-organizational, collaborative urban forestry partnership that engages in grant- and donor-funded tree planting in several underserved northwest Indiana municipalities. The effort is loosely based on the collective impact model. Collective impact is a means of coordinating multiple organizations around a “shared vision” to solve a specific issue – in CommuniTree’s case, the lack of urban forest governance and resources in northwest Indiana compounding the aforementioned post-industrial social and ecological issues. Supported by over a dozen stakeholder groups, CommuniTree plants and cares for trees and engages communities in urban forestry training. This paper describes CommuniTree programming in more detail, as well as presents an applied, transdisciplinary, mixed methods research agenda. Through research with stakeholders, we seek to understand the mechanisms through which CommuniTree activities translate resources into outcomes in the social-ecological context of northwest Indiana and evaluate the sustainability of CommuniTree.