Community Engaged Internships: Three Students Focus on Tree Mapping and Coastal Acidification

Community Engaged Internships (CEI) is a Sea Grant initiative that aims to broaden participation in marine and coastal professions by providing training and mentorship to the next generation of scientists, decision makers and citizens. The program recruits and engages students in place-based research, extension, education and/or communication that respects and integrates local ways of knowing.

This summer, MIT Sea Grant supported three students completing Community Engaged Internships focusing on local tree mapping and coastal acidification:

• Isabella Yeung, a senior at MIT, worked on a Coastal Acidification project funded by MIT Sea Grant.
• Thomas O’Connor-Golden, a sophomore from Brandeis University, was funded by the National Sea Grant College Program and focused on a Coastal Forests project in collaboration with the MIT Resilient Communities Lab.
• Ben Caldwell, a senior from the University of Maine, was funded by the MIT Climate Sustainability Consortium and also focused on the Coastal Forests Project. 

The Coastal Forests project, currently focused on the Emerald Necklace park system of Boston, is an extension of the activities funded by the FY2022 Sea Grant Coastal Resilience funding obtained by MIT Professor Janelle Knox-Hayes and collaborators including MIT Sea Grant research scientist Carolina Bastidas. 

Image: Hundreds of trees, some aging over 250 years old, have been mapped through the Coastal Forests project. The mapping effort spans Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system, which includes 1,100 acres of green space from Back Bay to Dorchester.

The CEI program provided professional development opportunities for the interns, and all three presented their research on August 8, 2025, together with 55 other CEI students from 26 out of the 34 programs across the Sea Grant network. Thomas O’Connor-Golden also joined in-person field trip activities in North Carolina this July through the CEI program. “This summer I participated in MIT Sea Grant’s Coastal Forests Community Engaged Internship, working with a team from the MIT Resilient Communities Lab under the direction of Professor Janelle Knox-Hayes,” said Thomas. “My work focused on the urban tree communities of the Emerald Necklace park system in Boston, which serves as an important urban greenspace and whose waterways connect to the Boston Harbor.”

“The landscape of the Emerald Necklace, in part a former saltmarsh, has changed significantly since its inception and initial planting, with rivers losing tidal influence from the construction of dams, highways being built over parks, and soil conditions evolving due to increased pedestrian and vehicle traffic. These changes have had significant impacts on the tree communities of this park system, which I’ve worked to uncover through a combination of archival research and geospatial analysis.

Our project’s findings will help inform future park management decisions to keep the Emerald Necklace and its ecology in good condition, lending to the climate resilience of local communities.”

—Thomas O’Connor-Golden (CEI intern from Brandeis University)