In an era of increasing complexity, the majority of local land-use decisions in the United States are made by volunteer citizen planners. Often these elected or appointed volunteers enter their positions with a passion for their communities but without appropriate background training. The Michigan Citizen Planner Program was developed to address…

SWAT (Student Weekend Arborist Team) is a program affiliated with Cornell University and Extension founded to conduct street tree inventories in New York State communities with 10,000 residents or fewer, a group of communities underserved in community forestry planning. Between 2002 and 2010, SWAT conducted 40 inventories, and data from these…

Using natural resources data from a system developed by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, an Extension program to educate public officials who make land use decisions was conducted in a series of workshops over three years. Program effectiveness is evaluated and positive and negative results are noted. (MF)