City Buzz

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.

July 24, 2023

By Nancy Cook, Writer, Teaching Artist, and Director of the Witness Project

July 24, 2023

Interviews with Leslie Brandt, Supervisory Climate Adaptation Specialist at the USDA Forest Service; and Willard Malebear, Jr., local Indigenous artist

March 22, 2022

By Mary Marek-Spartz, MSP LTER Information Manager and GIS Analyst

In the Spring 2022 "Data Streams" feature, MSP LTER Information Manager Mary Marek-Spartz explores what happens when trusted sources of open weather data disappear—and what it means for long-term research reproducibility. She shares how the MSP LTER is responding by building its own interface to open climate data, drawing on local resources and regional partners.

March 22, 2022

By Adrienne Keller, Postdoctoral Researcher in the the University of Minnesota Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, and the MSP LTER Urban Forests Team

Trees have an important role to play in creating more livable urban spaces. For example, trees can regulate water runoff, moderate extreme temperatures, and provide recreational and mental health benefits to residents. Here in Minnesota and across the globe, efforts abound to plant more trees in order to paint our cities green and increase urban sustainability. What has gotten attention is a more nuanced picture of the shades of green that line our city streets and populate our urban parks and yards—that is, the diversity of trees that make up our urban forests. 

March 22, 2022

By Emilie Snell-Rood, Professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, and the MSP LTER Urban Contaminants Team

Many of the unique land formations in what is now called the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area are sacred to indigenous peoples. This is true of a special place along a bend in the Mississippi River in downtown St Paul, where a series of springs flow from caves tucked into the sandstone bluffs. This place, named Wakáŋ Tipi by the Dakota, has been a sacred gathering site for thousands of years, with burial mounds at the top of the bluff. But now, this place is highly affected by urban development.

October 3, 2022

By Rebecca Walker, graduate student, and Hannah Ramer, postdoctoral researcher, at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School for Public Affairs

Postdoctoral researcher Hannah Ramer and graduate student Rebecca Walker share initial findings from the MSP LTER 'Coupling Between Urban Nature Investments and Wealth' Team's collaboration with the University of Minnesota's Mapping Prejudice Project. Amid growing awareness of environmental injustice, emerging historical research shows that unequal access to urban green space was no accident. The relationship between wealth, whiteness, and greenness was baked into the Twin Cities landscape as it was first developed. 

October 22, 2022

By Emily Dzieweczynski, Communications Associate at the Bell Museum

This summer, middle school teacher Lauren Reuss traded her classroom for the field—shadowing MSP LTER researchers to develop hands-on urban ecology lessons for students across the Twin Cities. Inspired by squirrel behavior research, she's designing a series of lessons focused on squirrel behavior and adaptation to the urban environment. Discover how this Bell Museum collaboration is helping kids see science in the world right outside their door.

July 29, 2026

By Mary Marek-Spartz, MSP LTER Information Manager & GIS Analyst

The "Plot A Pollinator" activity at the Bell Museum's 2026 Solution Studio makerspace introduces kids to GIS using real bumble bee distribution data. Designed for lower elementary students, the activity teaches foundational map-reading skills like reading coordinate planes, legends, and heat maps, while sneaking in more complex geospatial concepts like hexagonal tiling and map distortion. It's a hands-on entry point into spatial thinking, built around a question every good scientist asks: what patterns can we find in the world around us?