Estimates on the number of i-Tree studies conducted

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arahmlow
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 31, 2015 3:14 pm

Estimates on the number of i-Tree studies conducted

Post by arahmlow » Tue Aug 04, 2015 11:51 am

I am in the process of conducting a street tree sample in the US and was wondering, is there somewhere I could go to find an estimate of the total number of studies/projects which have been conducted using i-Tree software? What about a count of academic/scientific publications which incorporated an i-tree suite?

Thank You!
azelaya
i-Tree Team
Posts: 372
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:50 am

Re: Estimates on the number of i-Tree studies conducted

Post by azelaya » Thu Aug 06, 2015 6:20 am

Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to accurately estimate a total number of i-Tree studies since we really don’t have a good way of monitoring how people use i-Tree after they request a CD or download the software.

Since there are multiple tools in the suite, we don’t know which tool a person may be using or if they may be using multiple tools. Additionally, some may just request the software and never move beyond that. We also have schools that request 1 copy and load it on labs for class use, etc.

We can keep track of some i-Tree tools like i-Tree Eco since that currently requires processing on our server but that too is difficult to capture as a project could be submitted multiple times if a user is running multiple scenarios for the same project. It is also hard to distinguish a true project compared to single tree without digging into extensive server data for details. The following link is to a map of Eco users based on processing from our server combined with manually processed international projects from 2014 https://www.itreetools.org/eco/resource ... ly2014.jpg

We can also monitor our newer web tools like Design and Canopy through hits on certain pages indicating a user has engaged the tool beyond the entry screen. Nonetheless, we are limited in the true user details we can capture without crossing over privacy conventions.

We use i-Tree CD requests and downloads as a proxy to measure “i-Tree users” understanding that it is not a true metric. We have a couple i-Tree user maps on the i-Tree website that we point people to when they are interested in this type of info. These are probably from 2014.

https://www.itreetools.org/images/inter ... -users.jpg
https://www.itreetools.org/images/national-users.jpg

Here is a link to a document in the Resources - Archives section containing many i-Tree Eco related research journal articles and publications https://www.itreetools.org/eco/resource ... s_2012.pdf You may need to do a literature search/investigation to find more as this is probably what was known by the USFS Northern Research Station.

Al
A member of the i-Tree Team
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