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Campus trees are a beloved part of the ɬ�﷬ campus. They provide year-round beauty for us to enjoy and homes for squirrels, birds, and other wildlife. Students read in their shade in the warmer months; in the winter, ɬ�﷬ians welcome the shelter trees give us from icy winds. Trees even serve as campus landmarks (“Meet me by the big cottonwood tree”). 

Senior Lecturer in Biology and Sustainability Planning Committee co-chair Liz Queathem led a Mentored Advanced Project (MAP) to develop a virtual map of campus trees. Queathem was inspired by a campus tree map developed in the 1990s by Larissa Mottl, former manager of the Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA).

On the Dot

“She did a beautiful job, but of course, time has passed,” Queathem says of Mottl. “We thought it was time to update it.” She also wanted to make the campus tree map available digitally. 

Queathem worked with several students who remapped every tree on campus and created a map using a specialized map-making computer program (ArcGIS). Biology major and QuestBridge scholar Marianna Cota ’22 did most of the mapping work during a summer research project with Queathem in 2021. It was a very intense summer of work for Cota, Queathem says. “She was a great student.” 

Over the past couple of years, Queathem has continued adding trees to the map and double-checking species identifications with her Sustainability Planning Committee co-chair Chris Bair ’96 and students Samantha Drake-Flam ’25, Sara Garcia ’25, and Julia Smith ’26. 

With help from Vivero Fellows Bruno Sica ’27 and Gabriela Roznawska ’26 (a college program that works to increase the diversity of the digital liberal arts community), the team plans to make the map accessible to anyone who has an interest.

The map, which Queathem says will be available in the spring, will show users where they are on campus, with dots representing the trees. They can click on any dot to find out what kind of tree it is and access any other information that has been entered in the database.

Ecological Services

Queathem says she wants to include not just a specific tree’s species, but also the ecological services that the tree performs. For instance, she says, “We can say a mature tree of this species over a 20-year period has taken this much CO₂ out of the air and has intercepted this amount of rainfall that prevents downstream flooding.”

It’s an ongoing project, Queathem says, because the environment is never static. “We just had a windstorm the other day that blew down a really beautiful, enormous linden tree onto the Forum. It’s constantly changing, so it’ll be ongoing.” 

Heroes with Branches and Bark

After the derecho windstorm of 2020, ɬ�﷬ians mourned the devastating loss of 35% of the town’s tree canopy. Derechos can generate hurricane-strength straight-line winds that wreak havoc on trees, structures, and power lines. 

Queathem understands the emotional attachment to trees. “There’s an amazing cottonwood that’s over in Ward Field,” she says. A lot of alumni have fond memories of that tree, Queathem says. Maybe they had their first kiss under its branches or regularly met friends there. Whatever the memories, alumni often love to revisit their favorite trees on campus.  

“You get attached to particular trees,” Queathem says. “There’s one sycamore that is my hero. It probably lost two-thirds of its mass in the derecho. The trunk snapped off, and it looked really pathetic. I thought, well, that tree is probably not long for this world.”

But the sycamore didn’t give up. The next year, it busted out new branches and leaves, straight out of the trunk. 

“It just went nuts,” Queathem says. “There’s a lesson there for me. I hope I can be that resilient if change comes.”