Tracking phenology data for urban trees?

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cvanegas
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2019 6:57 am

Tracking phenology data for urban trees?

Post by cvanegas » Thu Jun 13, 2019 7:05 am

My high school students have been working to identify and map the trees on the streets around our school (located in an urban area) and at a local park. We were using Google maps with ARC-GIS, but the maps are outdated and do not reflect the current trees, so we cannot pin IDs to them. I am considering using iTree, but have questions.

1. If we use iTree, is there a way to pin data to trees on the map? Students are doing weekly observations and collecting phenology data (dates of bud break, leaf color change, flowering, etc.). It would be great to have this data all available on the map for reference by students in future years.


2. Will the public be able to access our data? Can we publish it to the web? Or will it only be available on computers with the software installed?

Thanks for your assistance.
Jason.Henning
i-Tree Team
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:45 am

Re: Tracking phenology data for urban trees?

Post by Jason.Henning » Fri Jun 14, 2019 3:26 pm

Hi thanks for your question.
I am not sure which i-Tree tool you are considering using. The only one that will allow you to collect coordinate data would be the mobile data collection option of i-Tree Eco. However, i-Tree Eco is not intended to be an all purpose data collection tool. i-Tree Eco is meant to collect the data necessary to estimate the benefits of trees using the i-Tree models. This limits that data options but there are 3 custom fields that you can set up. The mobile data collection platform allows for map coordinate capture by tapping on a map at a given tree's location. It also uses free Google or Bing aerial imagery so you may still be limited in what you can see on that imagery.
Data collected in i-Tree Eco is not available to the public. You could make it publicly available by exporting it from i-Tree Eco and using something like Google's MyMaps functionality.
Since the i-Tree tools are free you may want to download the installer and give i-Tree Eco a quick test to see if it will work for you.
We have some video walkthroughs here to get you started, https://www.itreetools.org/support/reso ... o-learning.
Thanks,
Jason
A member of the i-Tree Team
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