San Diego County Urban Tree Map - How to Calculate Tree Values

San Diego County Urban Tree Map - How to Calculate a Tree's Value

Public workshop -  March 1, 2012
5:30pm-7:30pm

This workshop introduces the public launch and is the primary public workshop offered to learn about the San Diego County Trees Urban Mapping project. This program collected street tree data from thirteen San Diego regional cities and two college campuses to calculate their climate and environmental benefits. Aspects of the various menus, fields and tree benefits will be explained, and some background about the development of this project will be shared. Participants in this class will learn how to locate various tree species, update the data for existing county trees, as well as learn how and why to enter new trees into the existing county wide database.

A portion of this class will teach how to properly measure tree diameter used to determine tree/climate benefits, and several tools and books will be shared to help identify unknown tree species. There will also be an opportunity to see what tools are available in the urban forestry visitor center to aid municipalities, citizen scientists, teachers and students to participate in this ongoing public service project. These items will be available on loan and free of charge through the on-site urban forestry book/resource/tool lending library - which is open weekdays from 8:00am to 5:00pm.

The shortcomings of the existing street tree data will be shared, but it is hoped that citizen scientists can help enter missing or out-of-date fields, as well as enter additional trees from public and private schools, churches, private residences or parks.

For cities that contributed data to this effort, this class will provide an overview of how this project has progressed, and how a city might utilize or amplify their contributions over time, or how to better understand the statistical results. This class may also be suitable and should be of special of interest to various municipalities who may not have adequate knowledge about the vital value of their trees, are in the process of developing a new tree inventory, or as well as a teaching tool for local educators, students, arborists and horticulturists.

ISA Certified Arborists can accrue two CEU's for their participation in this class, and we hope to train and enlist citizen scientists to help teach others how to add more trees to this extensive database.

This workshop is completed.