Internet of Nature Podcast

This week, Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Leslie Berckes, Executive Director of the Society of Municipal Arborists (SMA), to discuss the skilled labor shortage in arboriculture and urban forestry, her experience igniting passion in young minds to participate in tree planting and tree care at Trees Forever, her groundbreaking vision to build a sustainable urban forestry workforce, and practical care...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Vivek Shandas, Professor of Climate Adaptation at Portland State University and founder of CAPA Strategies, a global climate consulting firm, to discuss how urban forestry can revolutionize the way we think about promoting health and wellness, why it's different from the traditional "ecosystem service" model, and how it can appeal to non-traditional stak...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Alex Hancock, urban forestry consultant at PlanIT Geo, to discuss private tree ordinances, a hot regulatory topic as municipalities work to protect and manage trees on private land, how emerging technologies may offer new solutions, and the ethical line between using technology to help with management while also respecting citizens' rights. This podcast episode is...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Tobin Mitnick, actor, comedian, and naturalist, widely known on social media as @jewslovetrees, to discuss "treefluencers", a new breed of social media influencers that use trees as their subject matter of choice, how his widely popular @jewslovetrees account has garnered over 500,000 followers, the need for new, effective leadership in urban forestry, and h...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Dan Lambe, CEO at Arbor Day Foundation, to discuss Dan's start in trees and urban forestry, the history of Arbor Day and the Arbor Day Foundation, the world’s best urban forests, what we can learn from the most successful examples around the world, Dan's favorite urban forest, and how new forms of data and technology play a critical role in the protection of u...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Ian Hanou, Founder & CEO at PlanIT Geo, to introduce Season 5 of the Internet of Nature Podcast, taking listeners on a journey through the current state of urban forestry, its prospects for growth in 2023 and beyond, the most pressing issues affecting urban forestry today, and introducing listeners to the topics and guests they can expect on Season 5 of the show....

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Richard Louv, best known as the author of Last Child in the Woods , The Nature Principle, Our Wild Calling, and more, and founder of the Children and Nature Network, to discuss his 2005 bestseller that coined the phrase nature-deficit disorder, how his work sparked an international movement to examine the health benefits of spending time outdoors, why politics should...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Max Lerner, director of the Emerging Technologies team at the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and founder of GROW (Green Revitalization Outreach Workforce) Externships, to discuss his upbringing in New York City, how he cultivated his love for nature, his decades of experience developing green roofs and urban farms, how his passion for technology led him to est...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Giulio Boccaletti, author, scientist, and co-founder of Chloris Geospatial, to discuss his unconventional career path, from physicist to climate scientist to McKinsey partner to The Nature Conservancy’s chief strategy officer to writing his new book, Water: A Biography , we discuss his views on using technology as a force for good, especially for resource management,...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Monica Olsen and Jennifer Walsh, creators of the Biophilic Solutions Podcast, to discuss what connecting to nature means to them, how biophilic design can unlock an alternative method of suburban development like the Serenbe community near Atlanta, Georgia, how the pandemic changed people’s relationship with the natural world, and the technologies working to connect p...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Dr. Robert Zarr, board-certified pediatrician, founder, and medical director of Park Rx America (PRA), to discuss how seeing Richard Louv speak on his book, Last Child in the Woods, changed the course of his medical practice, why and how he prescribes nature to his young patients and their families, how technology can make nature-rich areas accessible to all, and why...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Tim Beatley, Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia and founder of “Biophilic Cities” to discuss why being in nature must be a daily, easy practice, his efforts to make every city in the world a “biophilic” one, fascinating stories of rewilding in cities, from the world’s largest urban bat colony in Austin to the world’s largest roost of sw...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Matthew Browning, founder of the Virtual Reality & Nature Lab at Clemson University, to discuss how growing up near nature shaped him, how working as a park ranger sparked an interest in academia, why he’s prioritizing nature exposure for his family, and recent research including how nature-based virtual reality is beneficial for people who cannot access the outdo...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Tim van Dam, co-founder and director of Smart Parks, to discuss how a chance encounter with a rhino sparked a career in wildlife conservation, the technologies he’s working on to arm park rangers in their fight against illegal poaching, how to prevent human-wildlife conflicts in cities and villages, anecdotes from his time in the field from collaring an elephant to tr...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Ben Wilinsky, Director of Partnerships and Innovation at the Arbor Day Foundation, to discuss how the Arbor Day Foundation is planting 500 million trees in five years to celebrate its 50th anniversary, how they’ll target their tree-planting efforts in neighborhoods and forests of greatest need, the role NatureQuant’s NatureScore™ data will play, why Ben is optimistic...

Can nature and technology — long viewed as opposing forces — work together to stabilize our climate, sustain our urban environments, and benefit our health? Internet of Nature Podcast is on a mission to find out. Join me every Wednesday as I interview top CEOs & innovators on their technologies for building greener, healthier, and smarter communities. Each episode contains powerful stories beh...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Dr. Thomas Crowther, founder of Restor and the Crowther Lab at ETH Zürich to discuss why his early obsession with snakes sparked a fascination with ecology, why he struggled in school, how one professor changed the trajectory of his career, why publishing the notorious "trillion tree paper" was the "best and worst week" of his life, what he's learned about nuanced yet...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Julietta Sorensen Kass, Founder of Our Nature, to discuss what a tree would say if it could talk, why people find it easier to open up to trees rather than other people, how text messaging can be used to promote human-nature relationships, the ins-and-outs of her viral Text-A-Tree initiative that saw 3,000 Haligonians send nearly 11,000 texts to 15 different trees, an...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Mark Bode and Willem de Feijter, Co-Founders of TreeCollective, to discuss what happens when you combine an urban forester and a business developer, why trees make an essential and valuable contribution to our dense cities, how blockchain technology and tokenization can register the value of trees, monitor their ROI, and help transfer “tree ownership”, and why trees n...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Ron Schneidermann, CEO of AllTrails, to discuss how AllTrails grew its community to 30M+ registered users across 200 countries, how COVID-19 supercharged the "outdoors trend" and accelerated the app's growth, how the responsible use of technology can help foster human-nature relationships—and what its limitations are, how AllTrails hand-curates each of its 300,000+ tr...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Carlotta Conte, Lead of TreesAI and the Nature-based Solutions Mission at Dark Matter Labs, to discuss what urban forestry gets wrong about carbon sequestration, why trees are assets, not liabilities, how to change "tree accountancy", and how Dark Matter Labs' Trees As Infrastructure (TreesAI) is establishing nature as a critical part of urban infr...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by René Voogt, Founder of ConnectedGreen, to discuss the problems facing newly planted urban trees, why overwatering trees is just as damaging as underwatering trees, why a nuanced understanding of soil biology is critical to applying sensors correctly, and how nearly 2,000 sensors across the Netherlands and beyond are helping landscaping companies, municipalities,...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Lucy Almond, Director of Nature4Climate, the world’s first coordinated effort to address the totality of natural climate solutions — across forests, farms, grasslands, and wetlands, to discuss the case for "nature tech", why technology should be applied to help enable, accelerate, and scale-up nature’s ability to combat climate change, and the biggest nature-technolog...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Josh Behounek, Business Development Manager at The Davey Tree Expert Company, to discuss how arborists and urban foresters can embrace technologies for tree care, which technologies hold the most promise, the history of The Davey Tree Expert Company and its entrepreneurial spirit, why he likes to go by "theoretical arborist", the favorite parts of his job, and hard le...

Dr. Nadina Galle is joined by Jared Hanley, co-founder and CEO of NatureQuant, to discuss why nature exposure makes people healthier, why living near nature could make you live longer, the patent-pending technology he developed to leverage nature's impact on public health, how he created "NatureScore", which rates nearby nature for any location and "NatureDose", a groundbreakin...