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Climate Hub volunteers seek data from tree board for interactive story maps
Summary
Members of the Climate Action Committee and volunteer scientists asked the tree board to supply canopy and ecological data to support a touchscreen story-map project at the Climate Hub and Third Place Commons; board members signaled willingness to collaborate as data become available.
During public comment, Sarah Phillips, a member of Lake Forest Park’s Climate Action Committee, described a volunteer project to install interactive story maps at the newly opened Climate Hub in Third Place Commons and asked the Tree Board to consider providing data for the project.
Sarah Phillips said the Climate Hub group received coaching and signage support from the American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange and has two volunteer scientists—both Seattle-based and linked to the University of Washington—working pro bono to build story maps that visualize local stream, bird, fish and canopy data. “We got a grant of scientists from the American Geophysical Union’s program called the Thriving Earth Exchange,” Phillips said, and volunteers can visualize local science with an ESRI-based story map on a touchscreen display in a public space.
Phillips asked that the tree board and staff consider including canopy datasets in the pool of information the volunteers will use to build public-facing maps. She noted long-running community monitoring efforts—streamkeeper data and bird counts contributed to Cornell’s eBird—that could be visualized together with canopy results to make local ecological science more accessible.
Board members responded that the SFI-led audit and the KCD mapping work could dovetail with the story-map project; staff said they expect to share public documents and GIS outputs with volunteer partners once the data are prepared. The board did not take a formal vote on the request but encouraged collaboration when datasets become ready for public display.
