So I just gave an overview of i-tree and more specifically, i-tree Eco. Now, let s get into the nuts and bolts of how to prepare for an Eco project.

Transcription

1 So I just gave an overview of i-tree and more specifically, i-tree Eco. Now, let s get into the nuts and bolts of how to prepare for an Eco project. 1

2 This presentation walks you through the process of creating an i-tree Eco project. It is my hope that this presentation is used as a checklist for those wanting to create their own i-tree Eco project. 2

3 i-tree Eco projects can be quite involved, so being organized in your approach to your project is very important to its success. There are six main steps in Eco project development. We will talk about the first five steps in this section. You don t just wake up one day and do an Eco project. Some thought needs to go into what you want to gain from doing the project, what data do you want to collect and in which areas of the community, and how will the data be collected. Gathering preliminary information and data collection can be very time consuming and labor intensive. 3

4 Let s start with gathering preliminary information 4

5 Start from the end and work backwards. What do you hope to accomplish with these results and how will they be used? Is this going to be a one-time event or something that will be used every 5-10 years? Keeping these things in mind can keep you from going off on tangents. 5

6 In the 1970 census, the population of Desoto County was roughly 36,000. In 2009, the estimated population of the county is 159,000. That is a population increase of about 430% in 35 years. Because land is plentiful and affordable and because taxes are lower than in TN, people are leaving Memphis to live in Desoto County. With more people comes more infrastructure. In 2009, we sat down to discuss some of the concerns that citizens had regarding this increase in infrastructure. The two highest concerns dealt with increased stormwater runoff and erosion due to impervious surface cover and air pollution. Because of her familiarity with i-tree, the County Extension Agent wanted to use i-tree Eco to assess the county s forest resources and i-tree Hydro to assess water quality/quantity in the county. 6

7 A plan was devised to conduct a landscape scale project to assess not only the entire county, but to also assess the five municipalities within the county. Potential funding and partnerships were also discussed. The obvious partners were MFC, the county and the municipalities. Other potential partners included NGOs, other federal agencies, and MSU Forestry. 7

8 Define your area of interest by establishing study boundaries. 8

9 Are you interested in learning about how much plantable space you have available for stocking purposes? Do you want to know about how your urban forest is affecting energy use for your residents? Shrubs contribute to pollution removal and carbon sequestration. Do you want to capture that? How does your forest affect stormwater interception and run-off? The more things you want to know, the more time it will take to collect those data, so weigh what you really want against the time and funding you have for a project. You will also want to consider how the data will be collected. PDA s are convenient and efficient, but what about data loss and training time to learn to use it. Paper forms require little training time, but legibility issues and data entry time must be factored in. For complete inventories you may want to use GPS equipment to capture spatial data, however, as of right now, no data conversion procedure exists to get your data into the shell efficiently. 9

10 If your area of interest is relatively small such as a park, campus, or neighborhood, you may want to consider doing a complete inventory. For larger areas, putting in sample plots is the most efficient way to collect data. 10

11 Stratifying your area of interest is a good way to get better resolution of your urban forest. Using the National Land Cover Database, Eco has a built-in method of stratifying a community into up to 21 land cover types. There are trade-offs to this. Although the stratification is already done for you, the database uses 2001 land cover data which may be out of date for your community today. The database classifies cover types by using 30 square meter pixels, so the resolution for an urban area may not be adequate. It may be more meaningful to work with the planning department and sub-divide the city into residential, commercial, industrial, etc land use areas. You will also need to think about how you want to set-up your plots. You can randomly place all of your plots in the area of interest and stratify later if you would like to do that, but keep in mind that you may not have enough plots in a particular stratum if you do that. Another way to do that is to stratify first and then randomly select plots within each stratum to ensure enough plots are representing each land use area. You can set your plots in a grid or transect at equal distance among plots, or you can lay out a grid network over the city and then randomly select plot locations within each grid cell. 11

12 Desoto County chose to use NLCD imagery and randomly stratify plots within land use categories. Originally there were 15 land use categories within the county. Because interpretation of the data among all of those land uses could be complicated, it was decided to combine some categories to give a total of 9 categories. 12

13 You will need to figure out how many plots you want for the entire city or each stratum. Statistically plots per land use area will be adequate to represent it. Generally, the more plots the better, however, funding and other resources may play a significant role in this decision. The size of the plot can be whatever size you choose, but each plot will have to be that size. By default, a 1/10th acre plot (radius = 37.2 ft) is used. 13

14 For the Desoto County project, 200 plots were randomly selected and stratified by land use area. Of these 200 plots for the county, we had quite a few that fell within incorporated municipal boundaries. That s good because we are very interested in assessing each municipality separately from the county, and these plots can be used in those assessments as well. 14

15 Additional plots were placed in each municipality for a total of 290 plots. Not all plots will be assessed due to parcel owner s declining to grant access or because parcel owners could not be identified. However, we think we have enough plots in each land use category to provide good statistical representation. 15

16 You will need to consider who will collect the data for you. Can it be done in-house with summer interns and/or volunteer labor, or will it have to be contracted out? Again, this may be determined by finances and resources. Gaining entrance rights to private property can also be time consuming. Give property owners plenty of advance notice before entering their property. 16

17 For each plot, the GIS dept. was able to provide parcel ownership information so that permission could be asked for the data collectors to enter the property boundaries to inventory it. 17

18 With funding secured, Joy then advertised for project data collectors. Advertisement at MSU for forestry students and at other local colleges and universities for natural resources students was done as well as informing local volunteers. A word of caution about using volunteers, some plots can be quite overwhelming and intimidating especially in natural areas. From past experience, I have see where energy spent organizing volunteers adds a great amount of time to the project coordinator s day. So a potential plan for this project is for the volunteers to assess the more urban plots and the paid personnel will assess the more natural plots. 18

19 By viewing the aerial imagery for each plot, we can decide which plots to give to the volunteers and which to give to the students. 19

20 To get an idea about project costs, a cost estimation sheet was developed by Urban Forestry South. This sheet estimates costs of project that is contracted out to a professional organization. It does not include costs associated with quality assurance. 20

21 Consider time and resource commitments for the project. This time estimation table can help you plan for your project. 21

22 Consider developing a plan for the project including what steps need to be completed, when, and by whom. This plan will help keep your project stay on track and moving smoothly. 22

23 All of these helpful documents can be found at key word Eco. 23

24 From where will the money come to pay for this project? It is always a good idea to contact your state U&CF coordinator or partnership coordinator to see if grants exists for such projects. Try contacting the EPA, Department of Energy, NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service), and other federal and state agencies for grant funding. Talk with groups whose interests align with environmental stewardship projects such as land trusts, environmental action groups, etc. You may also want to talk with other municipal departments about sharing the cost of the project because the results from the study may assist them in their work. 24

25 For the Desoto County project potential funding and partnerships were also discussed. The obvious partners were MFC, the county and the municipalities. Other potential partners included NGOs, other federal agencies, and MSU Forestry. 25

26 One tool that may help you in establishing these partnerships is i-tree Vue. It is still in Beta testing as of 2010, but it is available for full projects. Vue uses those same NLCD 2001 land cover images for land cover type, canopy cover, and impervious surface cover to provide planting space and stocking levels for the city, carbon and pollution removal reports based on canopy cover data, and you are able to develop canopy change scenarios to help show how these numbers change. 26

27 A Vue project was done for the entire City of Savannah. These NLCD 2001 images show the various land cover types within the city, where the canopy and impervious surface cover is around town, and where the variable that you are interested in looking at is located. The various analysis options are located in the drop-down menu in the lower portion of the screen. 27

28 i-tree Vue produces easy to read reports that can be printed to show to potential partners to show the potential that the urban forest can provide. Having GIS in not necessary to use this tool, however, if you have an odd-shaped city boundary, you will need to work with your GIS department to create your cover area images. 28

29 If you have ArcMap 9.3 or newer, you are able clip your area of interest and analyze the entire area. Instructions in the user s manual walks you through this. Unfortunately, I have ArcMap 9.2 and do not have that clipping ability, so I downloaded imagery from the NLCD website as a rectangle to cover 80% of Desoto County which I call the urbanizing portion of the county. This is the area on which I did a Vue analysis. 29

30 Here are the basic results of that analysis. This information can be presented to potential partners as preliminary data with the understanding that i-tree Eco will provide much more accurate information. 30

31 Although the Vue analysis was not used to build support for this project, partnerships were established that included a $30,000 grant and assistance from various entities. 31

32 After getting the preliminary information procedure under way, you will need to create a project in the i-tree Eco application. 32

33 Using the Eco User s Manual, we will create a project and learn about the user interface. 33

34 After everything is set up, it is time to collect your field data. 34

35 Here are some basic field equipment needs for collecting data. 35

36 You may also want to consider including some of this additional equipment. 36

37 Each day a set of plots will be selected on which to collect data. Preferably they are all in relatively close proximity to each other. Select enough plots to keep you busy for the entire day. Usually selecting 6-8 plots (that are close together) at the beginning of the day will keep a crew busy for at least one day. 37

38 To help the field crews be as efficient as possible, it is a good idea to group the plots by location. This way the field crews know what they have for the day and where they are in relation to each other. Using good aerial imagery helps to identify landmarks. 38

39 Using high resolution aerial imagery for each plot is also needed to help establish plot center. These images are also helpful in the future for finding plot center when you re-inventory the plots. NAIP imagery can help crews determine % canopy cover, but hinder them from seeing landmarks under the canopy for establishing plot center. You may want to use leaf-off imagery to help crews see where plot center should be. 39

40 Here is an example of leaf-off imagery. Landmarks can be easily seen to help a crew establish plot center. Because of multi-path especially in urban areas, it may be advantageous to use GPS units to get you in the ball park of plot center and confirm it by using aerial photos. 40

41 Data can be collected either on paper out in the field, and then entered into the Eco Shell back at the office, or you can enter data directly into a data recorder or PDA and download to the shell. This depends on your preference. 41

42 The first bit of information needed by Eco is general plot information. Identifying the crew that collected the data is important for the QA/QC team because they may have some questions about what was collected. Being able to go back to the crew to get clarification is helpful. Using the paper data sheet, you are able to sketch the area around plot center to help others find it in the future. Always remember to put a north area on your sketch. The tree measurement point is used when plot center is not accessible (plot falls on roof top or in a body of water). Lastly, indicate whether the data collected are recorded in English or Metric units. 42

43 If a plot center falls on an area that is inaccessible such as a roof top, then you will need to set up a tree measurement point or a point from which to reference your trees. For remeasurement purposes, you will use this TMP as your reference point giving distance and direction to each tree. The user s manual gives a good explanation for you to refer when you need it. 43

44 The user s manual provides greater details on the data required for actual land use, plot cover percentages, ground cover percentages, and specific shrub data. The thing to remember with ground cover percentages is that everything must add up to 100%. Plot Tree Cover (%) and Shrub Cover (%) are for the entire plot. Plantable Space (%) can be different for each community. You will need to define what plantable space is for your project. 44

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46 At breast height sometimes you will encounter malformations on the tree that do not represent that tree, so you may have to record diameter from another location on the stem. Here are some special situations where you may need to adjust your height of diameter measurement. The user s manual gives greater details. 46

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48 The UFORE model knows what a tree looks like when it is open-grown and has a full crown, so we need to tell the model if the tree we are recording has less than a full crown. 48

49 Here are some examples of % missing. 49

50 Here are some more examples of % missing. 50

51 Here are some examples of % missing for utility-pruned trees. Notice that a topped tree is 0% missing because our crown measurements capture the tree s crown volume as it currently is. For trees that are pruned along a stem the length of the tree, you can measure the crown radius from the stem to the dripline on the intact portion of the tree, multiply it by two to get crown diameter, and give it a 50% missing. 51

52 Dieback is similar to %missing except that we are just looking for recent dieback to give the model an idea of the trees current condition. 52

53 Crown light exposure tells the model how much light the crown receives directly for growth purposes. 53

54 To ensure data quality, a quality assurance plan should be implemented. These are some tolerances as outlined in the user s manual. 54

55 Here are some more tolerances as outlined in the QA plan in the user s manual. 55

56 After collecting your data, you will need to get them into the Eco application either by hand keying the data through the desktop interface or by downloading them from the PDA. Once all of the data are collected and entered into the Eco application, the data will need to be sent to the Forest Service for processing. 56