A request from Kieron Doick Head of Urban Forest Research Group.
“My Research Group is heading up a national campaign to build a map of tree cover in our towns and cities. The information is needed to support tree management, and to guide tree planting at this time of climate emergency and huge enthusiasm for tree planting.
The project is a ‘citizen science’ project, i.e. volunteers of all age groups are taking part. It is home-based science, and so is an ideal activity in this challenging times of social distancing forced upon us my Covid-19. All you need is a computer, laptop or tablet with good internet connection.
I wonder if you might invite your colleagues to partake.
The 3-Steps to get involved:
Step 1:
Visit www.forestresearch.gov.uk/research/i-tree-eco/urbancanopycover to learn more about the project and to download our detailed User Guide, this provides all the information you’ll need.
Step 2:
View the ward(s) you are interested in on the webmap (bit.ly/canopy-cover-web-map) and download the ‘shape-file’ that you’ll need in Step 3. While you are here, why not search the map to see how much of the country has been assessed and by how much Canopy Cover varies. [NB. this might be the most challenging bit as much of Clanfield and Petersfield have been assessed; but please encourage people to do any Ward coloured Grey (i.e. still to be assessed). One option might be to think about where their relatives live and to complete the assessment for those areas].
Step 3:
Get assessing on the i-Tree Canopy web page (canopy.itreetools.org). It takes around one to one-and-a-half hours to complete your first ward, but as little as 30 minutes if tree cover is very low. Once completed, email us the results and we’ll upload them to the map for everyone to see.
35% of the UK’s urban wards have now been assessed, which is amazing – but there is still a lot of work to be done!
Thank you so very much for your time.
Keep well.
Kieron”