Led by: Mae Davenport
Community-Engaged Research Coordinator: Jessie Merriam
Research Overview
We plan to engage with, listen to, and learn alongside different urban communities to reduce disparities and achieve meaningful scientific and community outcomes for residents in the MSP Region. Further, we are examining how community-engaged research changes how research is done and even the researchers themselves over the long term.
Related Blog Posts
Partner Spotlight: Conversational Reflections on Rambles and Art-Science Engagements
July 25, 2026
A conversation with former MSP LTER artists-in-residence Jessie Merriam, now the MSP LTER Community-Engaged Research Coordinator, and Kimberly Boustead, local artist in the Twin Cities
The MSP LTER's Community Engagement Assessment team studies how inclusive research shapes both scientists and the communities where they do their work. From 2023 to 2025, artists-in-residence Kim Boustead and Jessie Merriam helped bring that work to life, fostering reciprocal relationships between researchers and the Twin Cities community through art and facilitated conversations. In this interview, Kim and Jessie reflect on their work with the MSP LTER over the past two years, the pitfalls and triumphs of community-engaged research, and look to what’s ahead.
Surveys and Soirees: Documenting Tree Stewardship Across the Twin Cities
December 15, 2026
By Sally Donovan, PhD Candidate in the University of Minnesota Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, and the MSP LTER Urban Forests Team
For decades, scientists have studied how biodiversity influences resilience—the ability of an ecosystem to resist and recover from disturbances, such as drought and pest outbreaks. Yet forest resilience also relies on social variables, like the capacity of communities and governments to care for, or steward, them. This is particularly visible in urban forests where trees and vegetation are tightly packed against human-built infrastructure. In this piece, PhD candidate Sally Donovan shares her research mapping local stewardship networks to track their capacities to support resilient ecosystems.
A Recipe for Restoration: How Biochar Plaster Could Help Transform a Former Superfund Site into a Neighborhood Pollinator Prairie
December 15, 2025
By Leta Landucci, PhD Student in the University of Minnesota Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, and the MSP LTER Urban Contaminants Team
PhD student Leta Landucci shares how community members and researchers came together at St. Paul's Jameson-Front Lot, a former Superfund site, to test biochar plaster as a tool for weed suppression and soil restoration, with the goal of establishing a new pollinator garden. This project can serve as a model for reciprocal, community-engaged ecological research in the Twin Cities.