Baltimore Ecosystem Study: Stewardship Mapping And Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) survey results 2011 and 2019

Addressing the challenges of sustainable and equitable city management in the 21st century requires innovative solutions and integration from a range of dedicated actors. In order to form and fortify partnerships of multi-sectoral collaboration, expand effective governance, and build collective resiliency it is important to understand the network of existing stewardship organizations. The term ‘stewardship’ encompasses a spectrum of local agents dedicated to the evolving process of community care and restoration. Groups involved in stewardship across Baltimore are catalysts of change through a variety of conservation, management, monitoring, transformation, education, and advocacy activities for the local environment – many with common goals of joint resource management, distributive justice, and community power sharing. The “environment” here is intentionally broadly defined as land, air, water, energy and more. The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is a method of data collection and visualization that tracks the characteristics of organizations and their financial and informational flows across sectors and geographic boundaries. The survey includes questions about three facets of environmental stewardship groups: 1) organizational characteristics, 2) collaboration networks, and 3) stewardship “turfs” where each organization works. The data have been analyzed alongside landcover and demographic data and used in multi-city studies incorporating similar datasets across major urban areas of the U.S. Additional information about the growing network of cities conducting stewmap can be found here: https://www.nrs.fs.usda.gov/STEW-MAP/ Romolini, Michele; Grove, J. Morgan; Locke, Dexter H. 2013. Assessing and comparing relationships between urban environmental stewardship networks and land cover in Baltimore and Seattle. Landscape and Urban Planning. 120: 190-207. https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/44985 Johnson, M., D. H. Locke, E. Svendsen, L