Current Research Projects


The Britton Fund is proud to announce a request for proposals for its 2023-2024 Research Awards Program. January 31, 2024, is the submission deadline for pre-proposals. Detailed guidelines for developing comprehensive proposals can be found on The Britton Fund’s research webpage.


New Research Underway!

During the summer of 2022, The Britton Fund awarded new research funding in the amount of $8,000 (over 2 scholastic quarters) to Matt Ritter, Ph.D., Jenn Yost, Ph.D., Cami Pawlak, MS (graduate student and Western Chapter Scholarship recipient). Their project, Trends in Native Tree Plantings in Urban California: Where are trees native in the urban environment?, will use spatially explicit native tree ranges to determine the number and identity of tree species truly native to urban environments within California and to create native species lists for all urban areas in the state. This data will be used to assess what percentage of California’s Urban Forest is currently native in a select set of 80 species with high-quality urban tree inventory data. The results will be presented in print and at regional conferences and workshops.

Read the team’s recent article “Native to Where? California’s Native Trees and Their Use in the Urban Environment” published in the Western Arborist magazine, Summer 2023.


The Britton Fund is dedicated to the awarding of research grants in the field of arboriculture with emphasis on issues inherent to the geographic area of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii. Research outcomes are shared online and through publications, seminars, and conferences. 

Active and recently completed projects: