Plymouth To Conduct ‘Smart Tree Inventory’ To Diversify Canopy
There are nearly 40,000 trees scattered throughout the city of Plymouth, according to City Forester Paul Buck.
“It’s probably the most impactful part for most people’s lives,” said Buck
The trees provide shade, help beautify neighborhoods and are important for wildlife.
“All those added benefits, it’s hard to quantify them,” he said. “You know it when you see it. People pay more for a wooded lot than they do for a field lot.”
However, in 2015, the destructive insect known as the emerald ash borer began wreaking havoc on the city’s ash trees.
“By using only one species, we left ourselves open to… nature finds a way to slap your hand and say, nope, shouldn’t have done that,” Buck said.
The city needed to treat, or in many cases, remove those trees, but they didn’t have an updated tree inventory.
“So we need to know where they are, we need to know how many, how big are they, what are we going to have to deal with,” said Buck.
It’s a tall task to do with the naked eye, which is why, going forward, the city plans to do what’s called a smart tree inventory.
Implementing new technology
In the coming months, a car equipped with a camera will drive through Plymouth and use artificial intelligence to take a digital inventory of every tree in the city, while also identifying deficiencies in the canopy. A smaller rover will drive through city parks to capture this data.
“Think of the Google car, that’s what it’s going to be doing,” said Buck. “It’s going to be sending out LiDar [Light Detection and Ranging], it’s going to collect the information of that tree down to even the smallest branch,” he said.
It’s the kind of information that will not only make Buck’s job easier, but every city forester that comes after him.
“Thirty years ago, I couldn’t imagine this, but now that I’ve seen it, I fully think we should embrace this kind of technology to make everybody more efficient,” he said.
The Plymouth City Council unanimously approved the contract with Davey Tree Resource Group to implement the smart tree inventory. It will cost the city about $80,000 a year for the next four years. Data collection will begin this winter.
An example of one of the 3D images that can be captured during the Smart Tree Inventory.
Related: Plymouth ‘Getting Hammered’ with Emerald Ash Borer Infestation
