Tree Cover

Have you used i-Tree components for your own project? This is the place to tell others about your experiences—and to link to online results, images, reports, and publicity. Relevant topics include project area, challenges, organization, methods, and effects.

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hdelaconcha
Posts: 50
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2016 8:10 pm
Location: Mexico
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Tree Cover

Post by hdelaconcha » Thu Jul 06, 2017 12:25 pm

I am in the process of writing my reports for 2 inventories and was looking for % tree cover per stratum and didn´t find a report that actually has it. The only tree cover % value, is the one I found in the Summary of the report is this correct?? can I calculated from other data? or how do you estimate tree cover, based on the the tree cover measured per plot? I tried the average in a project and it did not work it gave a different value. For the merida project the report value was 21.2% and the one I calculated (average of the percentage of tree cover of plots) gave me 21.02, let me know,
gracias
Horacio de la Concha
AGRINET SA de CV
Cuernavaca MEXICO
hdelaconcha@agrinet.com.mx
Jason.Henning
i-Tree Team
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:45 am

Re: Tree Cover

Post by Jason.Henning » Mon Jul 24, 2017 10:16 am

You are correct that only total tree cover is reported. In general we recommend i-Tree Canopy (https://canopy.itreetools.org/) as a more accurate means for finding canopy cover estimates.
That being said you can estimate canopy cover by strata by averaging the % tree cover of each plot within each stratum. The overall project average is calculated as the area weighted average the stratum averages. This is a typical calculation for stratified random sampling and accounts for that fact that some of your strata may cover more area than other. This is also likely where the discrepancy you mentioned is coming from.
A member of the i-Tree Team
hdelaconcha
Posts: 50
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2016 8:10 pm
Location: Mexico
Contact:

Re: Tree Cover

Post by hdelaconcha » Mon Jul 24, 2017 12:03 pm

But the problem is that I cannot use Canopy in Mexico, or has it been changed? Can we use it now?
Gracias
Horacio de la Concha
AGRINET SA de CV
Cuernavaca MEXICO
hdelaconcha@agrinet.com.mx
Jason.Henning
i-Tree Team
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:45 am

Re: Tree Cover

Post by Jason.Henning » Mon Jul 24, 2017 12:27 pm

The benefit numbers estimated in i-Tree Canopy are based on data from the US and may not be accurate. However, the canopy cover estimates rely on human interpretation of Google satellite imagery. Those are perfectly acceptable and have been used internationally in a wide variety projects. The one limitation is that you must use whatever imagery Google provides which may not exactly match the dates of your Eco project.
-Jason
A member of the i-Tree Team
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