Ecological engineer Nadina Galle at her book launch in Amsterdam: ‘Moisture is the single most important factor in the wellbeing of an urban tree.’ Photo: Alaïa Fonk
Nadina Galle is making great strides. Through podcasts, public appearances, and now a new book, the Canadian-Dutch ecological engineer is spreading her concept of the Internet of Nature far and wide.
She holds her left hand vertically and presses her palm against the outstretched fingers of her right hand, causing them to bend back. This is how ecological engineer Nadina Galle (born 1992) visualises the way in which, in Boston – where she carried out her doctoral research – the asphalt typically runs all the way to the base of street trees on the city’s pavements. ‘That creates a concave shape, which channels water and fallen leaves away from where the tree is rooting.’ It is just one of the many problems she sees urban trees facing worldwide. Another is the lack of healthy soil. ‘In Toronto, where I studied, half the city is built on a landfill site. Everything I learned during my soil science lectures at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) simply doesn’t apply there. The idea that you could take a soil core and neatly identify the different layers is laughable. In Boston too, the trees are growing in rubbish, rubble, all sorts – but not in normal soil!’
Sensors
In her new book The Nature of Our Cities (published in Dutch in October 2024 as De natuur van onze steden), the first few chapters focus primarily on urban trees and the considerable challenges they face alongside city dwellers. But above all, the book is about the technology needed to monitor the sometimes millions of trees a city contains. Sensors, for instance, she says. ‘With these you can read out oxygen levels, temperature, pH, and moisture data in real time. That last one in particular is the single most important factor in the wellbeing of an urban tree. Many trees can cope well with heatwaves or insect infestations, but only if they have sufficient moisture.’ This is an example of what she means by the term she coined and champions: the Internet of Nature – the use of technological networks to monitor, manage, and protect the living and non-living nature of cities.
‘In Boston too, the trees are growing in rubbish, rubble, all sorts – but not in normal soil!’
Her book – which she apparently managed to write in under nine months: she mentions that she signed the contract in the same week she became pregnant, and delivered the manuscript to her publisher on the very day her son was born – is packed with examples from around the world. From Singapore, where seven million trees are monitored using LiDAR (Laser Imaging Detection And Ranging), reducing incidents involving falling branches and trees by 90 per cent. From New York, where the municipal parks department developed a method to express in dollars how much public green space contributes to ecosystem services – the free benefits that nature provides us with, such as improving air quality, retaining rainwater, and reducing heat stress. From Melbourne, where seventy thousand trees were given email addresses – ostensibly to report problems, but also, to everyone’s surprise, to receive love letters. Alongside vegetation, the stories cover the urban heat island effect, the physical and mental health of city dwellers, forest bathing, fire risk, biodiversity monitoring – everything relevant to a technological approach to making the modern city more liveable.
Much of the book is told through personal encounters with local residents, ecologists, engineers, or practitioners. And it is here above all that her fine writing stands out: she writes with a disarming honesty and reveals a great deal of herself. In this way, her Internet of Nature comes to life all the more vividly. She takes the reader to Maastricht, for example, where she confronts the traditional land managers of the urban greening project De Groene Loper – a motorway decking scheme. ‘No sensor can tell me anything I can’t already see with my own eyes,’ is the initial reaction. But after an experiment – and a bet involving a meal of zuurvlees – in which all the trees fitted with a sensor survived whilst many of those without one withered away, even the most entrenched old-school arborists were won over to the added value of the technology.
Her book is not the only channel through which she spreads her message. ‘I try to bring all the trends together and communicate about them as widely as possible,’ she says. She holds or has held academic positions at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, the University of Amsterdam, and University College Dublin, taught a winter course on the Anthropocene at the UvA, presents her Internet of Nature podcast – now in its fifth series – and is a TED Talk speaker. And it shows! Forbes selected her in 2020 as one of its 30 Under 30. National Geographic devoted a lengthy article to her, and she was appointed a National Geographic Explorer.
‘The coming year promises to be busy once again,’ she says. ‘The promotions and presentations around my book are continuing, and I am co-organising the very first City Nature Challenge on Curaçao, a four-day global community science competition that encourages people to record urban biodiversity.’ The past year – in which she became a mother and launched her book – was intense, but it has only given her more strength and determination to spread her message: ‘Technology can bring nature and people in the city closer together’.