inforest

Farmers are trying to establish agroforestry systems (incorporating trees in farms to promote sustainability and improve climate change resilience) but investing in trees is a risky enterprise without support for tracking success and iterating on challenges of these long-term investments. We want farmers to be able to map their agroforestry systems and gather data on trees over time, with some farms/forests highlighted as examples that others may view and interact with. We propose extending the inForest App so that farmers can map and track the success of their experimental plots in terms of the health, survivorship of trees and other ecosystem health indicators that may be decided upon in collaboration between farmers and researchers. This project would impact farmers, particularly BIPOC farmers who are prioritized in the research study and who have been historically underfunded and discriminated against by the USDA. It will help highlight farmer projects and quantify the challenges that farmers face as people transition to low-input agroforestry systems that may promote the resilience of farms to climate change.