What:  Campus Tree Map

Who: Tim Parsons, Horticulturalist

Technologies used: Hardware: Dell Axim Handheld PC with a Bluetooth GPS; Software: Handheld PC running ArcPad; Desktop: ArcEditor, ArcPad, ArcPad Application Builder, Microsoft Excel, Access, and Visual Studio, Google Earth and Picassa 3.

Assistance Received: Tim received assistance with ArcGIS from Bill Hegman, GIS Specialist; and Katie Clagett and Chris Rodgers, former GIS Interns at LIS.  He also received some help from students in the Geography Department’s computer lab.

Courses: BIOL 1003, Trees and the Urban Forest, and other classes in the Biology Department.

Reasons for using the Technology: The tree map is used primarily as a management tool but it has been central to a number of curricular projects as well.  The map is viewable in Google Earth.  Many commercial software packages are available for urban forest management, but they cost thousands of dollars and are not open enough for sharing data.

All of the urban campus trees (trees managed as individuals) are mapped.  In classes, the map is used by students interested in finding and/or analyzing tree species.  In Facilities Management, the map is used to track tree maintenance and health issues, for example pruning and insect problems.  See Campus Tree Map Updated in The Middlebury Landscape blog for details.

In Tim’s Urban Forest class, his students took the tree population and ran it through modeling software called iTree to look at carbon sequestration, pollution abatement, etc.  Students in other classes have used the map for tree identification.  For example, a student recently contacted Tim because she was looking for Cherry trees to evaluate for a plant community ecology class.

Learning Outcomes: The tree map, at least in the Urban Forest class, turned out to be a good introduction to mapping for students without any GIS or Geography experience. In addition, Tim considers ArcPad a valuable learning resource; he sees it as ArcMap Lite, with much less of a learning curve than ArcView.

Description: The tree map of the campus was started years ago as a student project (see the Geography Department’s Student Projects page).  Tim picked up the project again in 2006. After successfully applying for an environmental grant for the hardware, Tim went out in the field to verify and correct the trees that had been identified and add more. With help from the Geography Department and LIS, Tim created a map in ArcGIS which included attributes such as sizes and health status of the trees.

Tim maintains and updates the map and accompanying file geodatabase as the campus landscape changes. Meanwhile, he also has exported the map from ArcView to Google Earth using a free ArcGIS add-on called Export to KML. He plans to revise his ArcPad  data collection forms so that they are are more specific to plant care needs.

The project has evolved through time. Last fall, Tim worked with students in a Plant Biology class. They mapped about half of the Bread Loaf campus trees, and he hopes to finish that project next fall. Tim’s future plan is to establish a virtual tree tour online, either with Google Earth or a static map.

Technologies Used: ArcGIS; Stata (Statistical Analysis Software)
Course: Economics 1008 Deconstructing Discrimination (Winter Term 2009)
Number of Students: 20
Assistance: Jack Cuneo, a tutor in the media lab (ArcGIS help)
Anticipated Learning Outcomes: Experience with  collecting data and performing empirical analysis, familiarity with the  capabilities of ArcGIS software, ability to use  Stata software.

Summary: “My winter term class “Deconstructing Discrimination” carried out an empirical research project to examine whether retail gasoline prices are correlated with the racial and income characteristics of neighborhoods.  The project required obtaining, manipulating, and combining data from a variety of sources.  We purchased gasoline price data from Oil Price International (OPIS), used ArcGIS to identify the census tract for each station, and then obtained neighborhood characteristics from the 2000 Decennial Census using Geolytics software.  Finally, the students also conducted telephone surveys of the stations to collect information on station characteristics.  We used Stata software to combine all of these data sets and to perform the analysis.”

Learning Outcomes: “The students, many of whom were early in their college careers, experienced  the challenges of conducting original research and gained an overview of data  sets, several types of software, and statistical analysis techniques.   The resulting paper “Retail Redlining: Are Gasoline Prices Higher in Poor and  Minority Neighborhoods” will be coauthored with four students and submitted to  a scholarly journal for potential  publication.”

Recommendation to Colleagues: “Although this was a winter term class and did not  have formal “labs,” I found it to be helpful to hold class in the computer lab often so that we could all work together.  The students also worked in groups, and I made certain that each group had a similar distribution of  backgrounds and at least one member who had extensive prior experience with  Stata.

Copies of the atlases may be found in Special Collections, Armstrong Oversize and Stacks Oversize and may be loaned to other libraries through InterLibrary Loan.