Boston College Tree Project:
As the world becomes ever more monitored, mapped, and surveyed, students have the opportunity as never before to use the same tools as scientists . One tool essential for analyzing environmental and social issues is a Geographic Information System (GIS).
GIS allows the user not just to create computerized maps, but also to analyze patterns, linkages, and trends that exist in both the natural and social sciences domains. In fact, GIS is now becoming widely used across a range of disciplines. Oceanographers, geologists, geographers, seismologists, climatologists, biologists, chemists, zoologists, and other scientists regularly use GIS to help them make decisions about the planet. So the question becomes how to tap into this powerful tool for teaching and learning?
The urban tree project capitalizes upon the increased recognition that city street trees have significant positive ecological impacts (McPherson et al., 1997). The urban street tree inventory is conducted using pocket PC’s and CITYgreen, a software package develop by American Forests that plugs into the Geographical Information Systems software package, ArcView. CITYgreen allows students, through the use and labeling of satellite images, to link each tree location to a database of geographic, classification, and health information and to conduct analyses regarding the economic and ecological benefits of urban trees (see http://www.americanforests.org/productsandpubs/citygreen/ for a description of CITYgreen).
