forestsquare

Full document online at Hackpad

Mission
Engage people in science for sustainability

Team Contact
Gitte Venicx (Earthwatch), [email protected]
Mark Chandler (Earthwatch), [email protected]
Andy Hall, game developer, [email protected]
Paul Lam, data engineer, [email protected]

Motivation
"Trees within urban landscapes make up the urban forest. These trees provide a wealth of benefits called ecosystem services. These services include climate change mitigation, storm water filtration, and energy conservation. But a city is a harsh environment for a tree. Many will fail to grow into a healthy mature tree: some may contract diseases or be victim to harmful pests; still more may be removed before ever reaching full size. Just a few simple measurements tracked over time greatly improve knowledge about the health, longevity, and impact of trees in our urban centers." -- Earthwatch (http://earthwatch.org/expeditions/exploring-bostons-urban-forest)

Problem
Using data to improve our knowledge about urban trees involves 3 activities.
1.Data collection -- volunteers go around the city taking measurements of urban trees
2.Data analysis and modelling -- lots of data in different places and different shapes
3.Taking actions on the data -- existing projects like Earthwatch's http://mytreetracker.org

We were brought together through the Space Apps Challenge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA on April 12 & 13, 2014. We volunteered our weekend and collective brainpower to tackle this issue.

For the full document and how we tackled this problem see the Hackpad at: http://bit.ly/earthwatch-spaceappsboston2014

Project Information

Resources