American chestnuts were once considered the “redwoods of the East.” A highly valued native tree, it comprised as much as 70% of some forest stands from Maine to Florida and west to Ohio. But, its populations were decimated in the early 1900s by a non-native fungus called chestnut blight, which destroyed an estimated 3-4 billion American chestnut trees.
To addresss this problem, The Citizens Restoring American Chestnuts project was created in 2013 as part of FieldScope. Citizen scientists follow a protocol that have them plant one or more chestnut tree seedlings or seeds from known sources and then track them a few times each year, collecting specific data points important to the researchers.
