SIGNIFICANCE
This project, named the Forest Climate Visualization Partnership, advances understanding of university-community collaborations that center around the arts and design. By combining interdisciplinary expertise and leveraging cutting-edge technology, we have showcased the power of collaboration in effectively communicating complex environmental concepts to a broader and more diverse audience. Our work highlights the potential for arts and design to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and public engagement, fostering a deeper appreciation for sustainable forest management practices.
CONTEXT
Our project combines traditional and modern approaches to sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation. We take inspiration from past and present landscape management efforts while also drawing inspiration from emerging uses of virtual reality and data visualization to create immersive virtual landscapes and arboretums.
RESEARCH
Our university partners embrace a co-creative research approach that merges art, design, and scientific expertise to address science communication and knowledge transfer needs for various stakeholders. These stakeholders are diverse, including conservation organizations focused on biodiversity preservation, government agencies responsible for forest management and land use policies, and nonprofit environmental advocacy groups working on sustainability initiatives. Each brings unique strengths and perspectives to a project. Conservation organizations such as regional land trusts play a key role in identifying ecologically sensitive areas and conveying local priorities. Government agencies, including state and local forestry departments, provide essential policy frameworks and data on forest health and land management practices. Collaborating with forest scientists, landscape architects, and communications professionals, these partners help enhance the art and design process by ensuring that the visualizations are not only scientifically accurate but also resonant with the values and needs of diverse stakeholders. Such collaboration contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of arts and design in bridging gaps between academic research and community-based environmental action. Overall, by integrating the knowledge and priorities of these varied partners, we are more able to facilitate a more holistic and inclusive approach to visualizing sustainable forest management.
Our team's process typically begins by developing a narrative focused on relevant activities or ecosystem drivers, such as sustainable forest management, restoration-induced growth, and climate change impacts on forest characteristics. The team's forest scientists identify visual changes in the forest using peer-reviewed data, real-world photographs, and field expertise, communicating these details before, during, and after the activity or driver occurred. The team develops a script to engage the primary audience, highlight features of interest, convey key messages, and define technical terms using accessible language when possible.
Upon completing the script, the team's artistic staff creates a storyboard as a shared space to integrate project elements, including text, photographs, drawings, diagrams, and conceptual components. The storyboard allows iterative and asynchronous evolution of the project, including refinement of narrative and graphic elements. From the storyboard, the team identifies specific visual qualities to capture in each project phase that will in turn be modeled and rendered in 3D. Questions the team typically asks include: what do we want to ensure gets visually highlighted? How far into the future should we show, and with how many stopping points? What are the key forest conditions we want to show such as geography, species, age, health, and seasonality?
The storyboard is then transformed into a highly realistic 3D virtual reality forest using various visualization tools. Throughout the design process, the team meets regularly to iteratively enhance the visualizations for scientific accuracy and effective communication of the landscape resulting from specific forest management practices. Throughout the script, storyboard, and 3D modeling process, project partners and community members also provide input and critique.
INTEGRATION
The success of our collaboration stems from integrating diverse perspectives from university and community partners/stakeholders from multiple disciplines and backgrounds. We actively collaborate and follow an iterative design and review process, bringing together forest scientists, landscape architects, communications staff, community members, policymakers, and advocacy agencies. The artists and designers on our team play a crucial role, directly engaging with forest scientists to incorporate their qualitative feedback, criticisms, and real-world data into our immersive forest experiences. This integration enriches the project, making it inclusive, impactful, and relevant to the communities we aim to engage.
Our approach aims to use 3D forest visualization as a way to bring diverse stakeholders together. Our goal is to support the exchange of ideas and development of a shared vision for landscape management using environmental graphics as a unifying mechanism, one that can translate abstract ideas into visual form in an accessible way. Often the virtual forests present an opportunity for dialogue about potential future outcomes, in part due to the high levels of realism and detail in the virtual environments. In contrast to a more abstract visual approach, the site-specificity of our graphics present high levels of visual information as a medium for response and critique. Frequently collaborators offer feedback on specifics of form, material, lighting, and even sound. Incorporating this feedback allows the virtual environment to evoke the specific characteristics and qualities of the actual site being represented.
An example of this is a virtual forest visualization created for Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Video 3). The campus is bordered by the Mississippi River, and experiences flooding and erosion of its historic oak forest at an area called Scott's Bluff at the river's edge. The virtual reality depiction of this scenario includes two different futures, one with moderate flooding and the other with severe flooding. The early sections of the virtual experience take the viewer through a section of Scott's Bluff which includes mowed lawn, a large sculpture, and gravesites. The visualization of this section of the site was fairly straightforward and without debate. However, as the visualization continued towards the more wild edge of the riverbank, there was an increased level of debate about the biophysical and sensory aspects of the visualization. For instance, there was some difference of opinion about the current and future level of damage to the oak forest, as well as significant dialogue about the amount of light that would come through the diminished tree canopy. There were also differences of opinion about the ideal use of audio, with some participants preferring background noise of a simple river, and other participants wanting to include audio of wildlife in scenarios depicting a healthier tree canopy.
The differences in opinion that arose during these debates reflected the varying priorities and expertise of the stakeholders involved. Scientists, focused on ecological accuracy, often prioritized data-driven representations of the forest's health and future, highlighting factors such as disease progression and the regeneration capacity of the oak forest. In contrast, local community members were more concerned with the sensory and emotional experience of the landscape, debating how much of the forest’s aesthetic should be preserved in the visualization. For them, issues like the amount of light filtering through the diminished tree canopy were important for conveying how these changes might impact local recreational use and community identity. Meanwhile, environmental advocates pushed for a depiction that underscored the broader ecological impacts, including the role of biodiversity and wildlife in forest recovery. These diverse perspectives ultimately shaped the visualization process, though the final product did not resolve all differences. Rather, the process served as an important moment of dialogue, highlighting the need to balance ecological realities with the cultural and emotional connections people have to the landscape. The process also highlighted the ways that visualization can bring vast areas of expertise together for shared dialogue. Several stakeholders noted that the visualizations served to act as a universal communication tool between constituents to reveal areas where opinions differed. This highlighted the instrumental nature of graphics in bringing up important topics that otherwise might not have surfaced through writing or discussion alone.
While some of the virtual forests depict potential future scenarios, others directly connect to real-world landscape design, planning, and environmental stewardship projects. The visualizations created for these purposes allow their creators to convey the significance of their active project work. This is especially important for environmental projects involving tree planting which can take decades to fully develop and mature, where science-informed visualizations about the project's intended character can stand in for eventual photographs of the actual project site. In one example, the team created visualizations of a riverbed that had recently undergone reforestation efforts to show the growth of the replanted forest 15 years into the future (Figures 4 and 5). The project partners voiced appreciation for the way that these visualizations supported their communication and advocacy about the project.
DISCOVERY
Throughout the project, our collaborative team has made significant findings concerning both methods and outcomes. We observe that the degree of realism in our virtual forest visualizations plays a crucial role in viewers' ability to fully engage with simulated forest scenes. By meticulously incorporating scientifically precise visual and auditory elements, including details like bark texture, leaves, soil and water dynamics, light, and sound, we create immersive experiences that deeply resonate with our audience. Our collaborative approach facilitates the collection of input from diverse partners, which we then synthesize into a concise yet impactful narrative. This allows us to strike a balance between scientific accuracy and intuitive comprehension, producing visualizations that communicate the character and experience of the virtual forest under different management scenarios.
We are continually discovering the forms that our community partnerships can take. In some cases we work directly with the public, yet it is more common to reach communities through a network of partnerships. One example is an existing relationship we have with a national conservation organization, who in turn work with the foresters who communicate directly with landowners. Another example is a relationship we have with a national forestry association and an industry partner, who have connected us with community leaders who work directly with community members. A third example is our efforts to create content for hosted media libraries and websites which are accessed directly by the general public.
REFLECTION
The project significantly advances the missions and benefits the work of all partners involved. By effectively communicating the principles and benefits of sustainable forest management, our project empowers communities to engage in meaningful dialogue and make informed decisions to support a more sustainable future. The project enhances the work of forest scientists, landscape architects, communications staff, and local advocacy agencies by fostering increased awareness of sustainable forest management in a manner that is engaging and approachable, helping to reduce barriers to widespread adoption and implementation of such practices. By bridging the gap between science, design, and narrative storytelling, we facilitate a deeper appreciation and understanding of the interconnectedness between forests, climate change mitigation, and community well-being.
Working across different disciplines has influenced how each contributor has shared their expertise by evolving each individual’s approach to problem-solving and communication. By engaging in exchange of ideas between scientific and artistic disciplines through a co-creative process, contributors have been able to reshape their perspectives on their own work and that of others, developing ways of thinking holistically and finding new and unique solutions that they would not have encountered by working solely within their own discipline. As a result, collaborators have expanded their understanding of their own disciplines while discovering new ways that their own bodies of work are interconnected with that of others.
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