Urban Soils Matter! Research Internship with TreePeople

Hector E., Spring 2025

Hello! My name is Hector, and I am a Senior double majoring in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and Environmental Studies. This semester I had the amazing opportunity of participating in a hybrid internship with TreePeople, an influential nonprofit organization that, obviously, plants trees but goes far and beyond in advancing and improving green, blue, and brown infrastructure in underserved communities in Los Angeles. During my time at TreePeople, I mainly supported the brown infrastructure aspect, which was perfect given my love for gardening and fascination with soils.

Although my academic and professional aspirations are aligned within the legal and political spheres, I wanted to have firsthand experience with environmental fieldwork. Interning with TreePeople was perfect for this! The most memorable fieldwork experience is seen in the photo above, where I had the privilege of helping to determine the physical, chemical, and hydraulic characteristics of urban soils throughout Bell Gardens. It involved lots of digging, amoozemeter measurements, characterizing seemingly similar soil, extracting soils, and more digging. There were also many other instances in which I supported data collection both remotely in compiling and organizing data for other projects and in person, such as visiting a USFS research site to help complete tests for a collaborative project. Generally, my time at TreePeople was defined by the nature of their current projects (fieldwork, collaborative academic work, conference planning, etc.). I’m grateful for having the opportunity to learn from and contribute to all of their exciting projects!