University of South Florida (Tampa)
IN-4: Innovation 4

The sustainability of Florida's urban and community trees and forests requires meaningful public participation. As evidenced by successful citizen-based scientific monitoring efforts, public participation can include environmental mapping and monitoring. In Florida and nationwide, the majority of communities and college campuses lack the resources to develop one the most fundamental urban forest management tools: the tree inventory. This project developed the technology and training materials to enable citizen-based tree inventory initiatives, and make this technology available to all college campuses and communities in Florida. This project leverage existing partnerships between individual and organizations engaged in education, research and management efforts focused on urban trees and forests. Project collaborators included: faculty, staff and students from the University of South Florida; researchers from the University of Florida (UF) and the UF-IFAS/ Hillsborough Extension Service (Extension); Natural Resources staff from the City of Tampa (Tampa); and representatives from the USF Tree Campus Advisory Committee. The project was funded by a grant from the USDA Forest Service under the management of the Florida Forest Service, as well as the City of Tampa, Florida. This project implemented and customized an existing open-source web-based tree inventory data mapping and management technology, implemented and tested a smartphone enabled field data collection application, and imported and exported tree inventory data to and from existing software applications in the Tree Inventory Data Mapping and Management Tool. The TampaTreeMap.org (a version of the open-source OpenTreeMap project) is a web-based tree inventory data mapping and management tool for the geographic area of the City of Tampa and the University of South Florida. This open-source software was designed to provide the fundamental technology necessary for online mapping of field-based tree inventory data collected by the public and professional foresters such as City of Tampa and USF staff. The tools developed, implemented and tested for this project can be shared freely and used by all Florida communities who implement the software. This project leveraged the local knowledge and expertise of university faculty and staff who created training materials that shows users how to conduct a tree inventory using the TampaTreeMap.org technology developed as part of this project. The training materials include a visual key of common urban tree species found in the Tampa area. Future users will be able to modify the tree key to add species found in other regions of Florida. The training materials also include an illustrative guide to collecting additional tree measurements, including D.B.H., tree height, crown height and width, crown condition and measurement of surrounding environmental variables. Short training videos are being produced by Extension that demonstrates the use of the technology and the collection of field data. A training program is currently under development that will teach neighborhood association members and other groups of people lacking forestry experience how to conduct a tree inventory using the technology. Finally, the visual key and training materials are accessible to mobile users via an iOS (i.e., iPhone) app and web pages designed to be compatible with mobile devices. The success of this project will be measured by the use of the final products to facilitate successful tree inventory efforts in Florida campuses and communities. A central strength of this project is that USF students and volunteers participated by testing the technology and training materials to conduct a tree inventory of a portion of the University of South Florida's Tampa campus. Students provided guidance to improve the design of technology and training materials, and learned important concepts and practices.