Measuring the Benefits of Large Numbers of Proposed Trees

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mmoffa
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:31 pm

Measuring the Benefits of Large Numbers of Proposed Trees

Post by mmoffa » Wed Aug 31, 2016 4:55 pm

I work on large scale land use plans in GIS. I am aware that i-Tree and GIS are not compatible, but I am looking for creative ways to estimate the benefits (C02, air quality, etc.) of large numbers of proposed trees. If I were to convert my GIS trees to points with gps coordinates, could I upload those coordinates to i-Tree and measure the benefits in one of the I-tree programs? Alternatively, perhaps it would be better to measure the acreage of trees in GIS and then enter that acreages (as well as species info and planned canopy size, I'm assuming?) into i-Tree?

Thank you!
Jason.Henning
i-Tree Team
Posts: 337
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:45 am

Re: Measuring the Benefits of Large Numbers of Proposed Tree

Post by Jason.Henning » Thu Sep 01, 2016 12:09 pm

I think you have a couple choices here.

If you already have a way of estimating the acreage of canopy you could use the benefits multipliers in i-Tree Canopy. You wouldn't actually need to complete an i-Tree Canopy project you could just use the multipliers which give things like tons of air pollutant removal or carbon sequestration per acre of canopy. This forum post includes a description of how to get to those benefits and value multipliers, https://forums.itreetools.org/viewtopic ... 2304#p2290. You will want to make sure that you select the county closest to your study area because those locations do impact the benefit multipliers and their values.

Alternatively, you can import large inventories of trees from a spreadsheet to i-Tree Eco. This video covers the import process in i-Tree Eco v6, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3riZhE_uSg.

Let us know if you have any questions about those approaches or if you give them a try and run into any issues.

Thanks,
Jason
A member of the i-Tree Team
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