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A Map of the Trees of London
- amelius 7y agoIf I zoom out I get "73 species in view" and if I zoom in I get "313 species in view" ? Anyway, it would be nice if there was a filter so you could select all trees of a given type. Or view all the public trees versus privately owned trees.
- mrischard 7y agoYou can filter by tree type on the official map (which I think shows the same data): https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/parks-green-spaces-and-biodiversity/trees-and-woodlands/london-tree-map https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/parks-green...
- amelius 7y agoOk, but this only shows about 20 species.
- chrissdot 7y agoFor all of you interested: A Map of the Trees of Vienna https://www.wien.gv.at/umweltgut/public/grafik.aspx?ThemePage=11 https://www.wien.gv.at/umweltgut/public/grafik.aspx?ThemePag...
- gulbrandr 7y agoA map of the trees in Paris: https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/les-arbres/map/?location=12,48.88018,2.34919&basemap=jawg.streets https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/les-arbres/map/?lo...
- stefs 7y agohere's a game using this data: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.flamingos.woody https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.flamingos.w...
- hn3333 7y agoSource of data: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/local-authority-maintained-trees https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/local-authority-maintaine... - Which is super cool.
- cheeaun 7y agoFor Singapore, there's https://www.nparks.gov.sg/trees https://www.nparks.gov.sg/trees I've also taken the data and built https://exploretrees.sg/ https://exploretrees.sg/
- wclax04 7y agoFor NYC: https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map
- Random_ernest 7y agoI've seen several of these maps (they are available for most large German cities) and i always ask myself what the value proposition and applications for such maps are. It seems like they take large resources (e.g. manual collection of the data) to create.
- xiaq 7y agoAFAIK in London the data are extracted from the archives of the local councils that planted the trees in the first place and were responsible for maintenance afterwards. I can imagine a best-case scenario is that they already have maps of the borough where they mark all the trees, and it's a matter of digitializing those maps and combining them. It still takes time to combine all these data, presumably, but there were some useful studies on the ecologicical effects of different types of trees that came out of these data.
- Someone 7y agoI would think cities already have the data, as they have to do safety inspections on their trees, take them into account when doing street renovations, report on the ‘greenness’ of the city, etc. Opening up the data isn’t that costly, and fits “Open Data” policies. Apps around this often are third party.
- petr_tik 7y agoSince leafy surroundings and tree presence is one of the selling points for good properties, it would be great to align incentives of real estate agencies and such data collection efforts
- m-i-l 7y ago> "i always ask myself what the value proposition and applications for such maps are. It seems like they take large resources (e.g. manual collection of the data) to create" There was a survey a few years back to assess the economic value of the trees in London, for pollution removal, stormwater alleviation, etc. which put the total annual benefits at £132.7M[0]. [0] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/valuing_londons_urban_forest_i-tree_report_final.pdf https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/valuing_london...
- dynamite-ready 7y agoThis is an excellent find. Much more fun than Pokemon Go!
- Jaruzel 7y agoThere's a fair amount of trees listed on the map for my local area, but the main tree, that's locally famous[1] isn't listed, as it's technically on private property. -- [1] https://bigginhill.co.uk/cedar.htm https://bigginhill.co.uk/cedar.htm
- Gravityloss 7y agoI look to cities like London with awe and respect - that they have managed to keep so much old trees around. I get so frustrated at the local city and country level. It takes minutes to fell down a tree that took centuries to grow. That there are any old trees around is a sign of persistently maintained high values.
- dreen 7y agoCheck out the Noel Park Friendship Tree [1]. Seems like the road has been built around it since at least 1894 [2] (though maybe another tree was there before). [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5969952,-0.1033777,3a,15y,198.86h,67.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssvHxWpyBFjqefJqFz46P4g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5969952,-0.1033777,3a,15y,... [2] https://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/appendix_1_noel_park_caamp_finalised_3.compressed_0.pdf https://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/append...
- leonroy 7y agoOne of the things that still chills is me is how Palo Alto city council decided to fell an entire street of old trees to make it look tidy: http://www.paulgraham.com/californiaavenueoaks.html http://www.paulgraham.com/californiaavenueoaks.html That said if you ever fly over the UK you'll notice it's a beautiful quilted patchwork of green fields and hedgerows. The UK used to be covered in old woodland forests. Much of it was felled over the centuries, with most of it being cut down during the medieval period. Not a lot of ancient woodland is left here nor indeed in the US. That said California still has quite a bit. Muir Woods are on my bucket list of places to visit. A full list of old forests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests
- Gravityloss 7y agoSad. These investigations never go anywhere. In my city they have relentlessly pursued some people who graffiti painted some trains decades ago with massive retribution lawsuits. Yet any city official or workman can fell any number of trees with no permission whatsoever and the whole chain of command just shrugs. A paint factory (accidentally) poured a huge amount of poison to a river. All the fish died. Nothing again really happened, all the law cases were dismissed. (The company did voluntarily repent and support later conservation efforts.)
- eythian 7y agoThe Amsterdam city maintains maps of many things, including its trees: https://maps.amsterdam.nl/bomen/?LANG=en https://maps.amsterdam.nl/bomen/?LANG=en
- mprovost 7y agoLondon has its own tree, the London plane. It's a hybrid of the American sycamore and the Oriental plane that supposedly grew when they were planted next to each other in Vauxhall Gardens in the 17th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus_%C3%97_acerifolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus_%C3%97_acerifolia
- tantalor 7y agoThese are all over Pittsburgh! https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2019/03/28/the-trees-are-snowing/ https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2019/03/28/the-trees-ar... > planted in Pittsburgh in the late 1800s because they’re tolerant of air pollution
- stevage 7y agoThey are all over everywhere! They're one of the most popular street trees in many cities around the world. Incredibly robust, hardly susceptible to any insects, etc etc.
- delibes 7y agoThere's also this which might be based on the same data: https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/parks-green-spaces-and-biodiversity/trees-and-woodlands/london-tree-map https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/parks-green...
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoLooks like they use that as a data source, https://www.treetalk.co.uk/about https://www.treetalk.co.uk/about amongst others.
- schedutron 7y agoWhat's also cool is we have two posts about this and both are trending!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- WJW 7y agoMaybe interesting to the HN crowd: https://www.20tree.ai/ https://www.20tree.ai/. Startup doing ML on satellite images to recognize trees, crop health and a bunch of other stuff.
- anfractuosity 7y agoNeat, will have to read what they're doing. I've heard of this simple approach before - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalized_difference_vegetation_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalized_difference_vegetati... using the ratio of IR / red light. It sounds like they have very high resolution imagery though "up to 0.3m resolution", which sounds cool.
- saystupidthings 7y agoThat's a simple rules based approach and any undergraduate can click a couple buttons and classify land cover with different spectral reclectances (at X wavelength) on a pixel or superpixel basis. The more interesting stuff is when you feed this information into ML
- paganel 7y agoDo you happen to know if there's anything similar for trying to extract similar stuff (i.e. forests-related information) from older paper-maps which have by now been digitised? For example the old (old as in from the 1950s-1960s) Soviet maps for my country (Romania) are quite accurate, you can quite clearly see the extent of forests back then, and I think it'd be helpful if one could extract that information in an "automated" way. For those curious the maps can be accessed here [1] by selecting the "Harti sovietice 50k" layer and by de-selecting the default layer, called "Planurile directoare" (there's a menu button on the top-left corner of the screen). [1] http://www.geo-spatial.org/harti/#/viewer/openlayers/10 http://www.geo-spatial.org/harti/#/viewer/openlayers/10
- WJW 7y agoI'm not sure the technologies are quite compatible, since the site you linked to has actual maps rather than satellite imagery. That said, it seems like something ML/computer vision should be able to do, although I'm not good enough at either ML or GIS tools to do it myself.
- simonw 7y agoOne of my favourite datasets to play with is the city of San Francisco's tree database. 190,000 records each with lat/lon, species, plant date, caretaking organization and more. Out of curiosity I set up a script to grab a new copy every day and diff it - turns out they post an update to it nearly every working day! https://simonwillison.net/2019/Mar/13/tree-history/ https://simonwillison.net/2019/Mar/13/tree-history/
- dionidium 7y agoThis is really great, especially the change tracking. I've been doing something similar with some public city real estate data. Maybe I'll set it up in a similar way. Thanks for posting this!
- twic 7y agoGlad to see there are no trees in Finsbury Park. At least that might keep the bloody slackliners out now. (I understand that there are gaps in the data. In this case, i think it's that there is no data for the whole of the borough of Haringey, for whatever reason)
- dreen 7y agoCheck out the Noel Park Friendship Tree [1]. Seems like the road has been built around it since at least 1894 [2] (though maybe another tree was there before). [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5969952,-0.1033777,3a,15y,198.86h,67.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssvHxWpyBFjqefJqFz46P4g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5969952,-0.1033777,3a,15y,... [2] https://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/appendix_1_noel_park_caamp_finalised_3.compressed_0.pdf https://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/append...
- haack 7y agoI'm surprised by the stark difference in density between some of the boroughs. E.g. Dalston has very few trees compared with Islington. Is that because of actual difference in density or difference in tracking between various councils?
- tomgp 7y agoMy guess is the latter. There are several woods and parks around where I live in Harringey that are showing no trees on the map
- detritus 7y agoHello fellow Harringey/Haringay-ite! I was surprised the other day on a long-ish walk that skirted around the base of Ally Pally, just how green the built up areas of Harringey are. I often get the impression that Haringey (and Hackney) are making every effort to pull down old-growth trees to make way for new developments, but this view of the borough 'side on' allayed my fears. Still, I'm always sad to see old trees chopped down (as is happening now in Woodberry Down and happened a few years back around Hornsey, all in the quest to pack more people in).
- jlarcombe 7y agoYes I hate it when they pull down old-ish trees on the street, though to be fair they have conscientiously replanted lots near us. As for the maps it seems to vary quite sharply from area to area, presumably just because bits haven't been filled in yet. They've got a lovely old oak at the end of our road on there, and long may it last...
- mattlondon 7y agoYep - Hampstead heath is apparently a tree-less dustbowl according to this map, despite it actually being heavily wooded.
- max_likelihood 7y agoLogistically speaking, I wonder what's the best way to create a tree map/database for my own town? Google maps will go a long way towards getting location. Is the rest just driving/walking around collecting data (species etc..) manually?
- mymythisisthis 7y agoStart entering the data in Open Street Map. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/43.68930/-79.44241 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/43.68930/-79.44241
- pabs3 7y agoThe docs for entering trees on OpenStreetMap: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tree https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tree
- mymythisisthis 7y agoHere is a map that covers a neighbourhood in Toronto, collected by the residents, https://theara.org/Interactive-Tree-Map https://theara.org/Interactive-Tree-Map The city of Toronto has 500,000 trees mapped, and the data open https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/street-tree-data/ https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/street-tree-data/
- altitudinous 7y agoMelbourne has the same thing, except they gave each tree an email address so the public could send alerts about the trees condition. But instead they sent love letters and messages to each tree. Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-12/people-are-emailing-trees/10468964?nw=0 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-12/people-are-emailing-t...
- catlas3r 7y agoHow is that working out? One challenge it seems ever locale is dealing with is a large faction of people who cannot see the forest for the trees, so to speak. It seems everywhere I've lived, there are large factions of folks who cite individual trees in their neighborhoods as fodder to shoot down environmental projects. I've seen light rail, bus lines, and other public transit; bike and pedestrian facilities like sidewalks; dense sustainable housing on transit corridors; PV and passive solar energy projects; contaminant removal and other soil/water quality mitigation efforts; and a slew of other projects backed by environmental organizations and non-profits get shut down because of neighbors defending individual trees. It's gotten to the point where I've become very cynical towards efforts to "save the trees" because so often it means "save the trees in my direct viewshed, even if it means cutting down hundreds of trees outside of town to build sprawling subdivisions there instead." Are there places that are getting this balance to be healthier? Fostering a love for an urban canopy while also a general recognition that some trees coming down is necessary to repair ecologically poor planning decisions of the past 70 years or so?
- freyfogle 7y agoHere is a service that aggregates the various public, opendata sets https://opentrees.org https://opentrees.org
- freyfogle 7y agoHere is a project to aggregate all the various open city and regional tree datasets: https://opentrees.org https://opentrees.org
- LoSboccacc 7y agoI wonder what changes between the detected tree on the north side and the undetected trees just south https://www.treetalk.co.uk/map/#xyz=17.18/51.45268/-0.300569 https://www.treetalk.co.uk/map/#xyz=17.18/51.45268/-0.300569
- 9wQJs3wWewQk 7y agoThe City of Vienna has the Baumkataster [1] a database of all trees that are taken care of by the municipal gardening service (Wiener Stadtgärten). It even tells you when a tree was planted. [1] https://www.wien.gv.at/umweltgut/public/grafik.aspx?ThemePage=11 https://www.wien.gv.at/umweltgut/public/grafik.aspx?ThemePag...
- stevage 7y agoTurns out "when a tree was planted" is kind of a fuzzy concept. Do we mean, when the seed first germinated? Or when the sapling was first installed on the site?
- zimpenfish 7y agoMost interesting but alas, missing a whole bunch of trees around where I am. Says "66 trees of 13 species" but I can see at least 20 trees it's missing. Someone needs to prod the councils to update their records, I think.
- jessalfredsen 7y agoA Jupyter Notebook with the trees of Copenhagen: https://hub.gke.mybinder.org/user/jessalfredsen-notebooks-8k7y2kcv/notebooks/Open%20trees%20in%20Copenhagen.ipynb https://hub.gke.mybinder.org/user/jessalfredsen-notebooks-8k...
- habi 7y agoBinder needs a link to the root, like so: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/jessalfredsen/notebooks.git/master?filepath=Open%20trees%20in%20Copenhagen.ipynb https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/jessalfredsen/notebooks.git/maste... The link to the started notebook is not persistent :)
- emptybits 7y agoOpen data for Vancouver tree lovers, including map, export, API, etc.: https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/street-trees/map/ https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/street-trees/m...
- dharma1 7y agoThis is wonderful, thank you for posting. So many times I have wondered what certain trees in parks near me are. And now I have been able to locate 3 mulberry trees near me - will be visiting at harvest time this year
- dia80 7y agoI live in South Hampstead about 3-4 miles from dead centre of London. We are very fortunate to have a garden. It is surrounded by many other gardens. Our building was constructed in the 1880s. There are many very old beautiful trees in the adjoining gardens, our garden has a forest feel at times. I'm filled with gratitude to some late Victorians who, 140 years ago, planted some small sapplings in their new back garden and probably didn't see them grow to anything very impressive.
- DonHopkins 7y agoThis, your Majesty, is the Linden tree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqlYGuZGVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqlYGuZGVM
- stevage 7y agoThought it was going to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kZoTcYYio0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kZoTcYYio0
- genmon 7y agoNeat fact: the UN definition of a forest is 20% coverage. London is 21% trees. London is a forest. https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/did-you-know-that-london-is-the-worlds-largest-urban-forest https://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/did-you-know-tha...
- stevage 7y agoFor a map of the trees of Adelaide, Agen, Ajax, Alblasserdam, Allentown, Amersfoot, Amherst, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Anaheim, Antwerp, Arganda del Rey, Arnhem, Assen, Auburn, Aurora, Austin, Bakersfield, Ballarat, Barcelona, Barendrecht, Barrie, Basel, Bayonne, Belfast, Bendigo, Berkeley, Berlin, Birmingham, Bologna, Bonn, Bordeaux, Boroondara, Boulder, Bozeman, Bretagne, Brimbank, Bristol, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Burnside, Calgary, Cambridge, Cape Coral, Cary, Champaign, Charlottesville, Chemnitz, Chestermere, Chile (OSM), Colac-Otways, Colombus, Colorado Springs, Copenhagen, Corangamite, Cornell University, Craig-y-Nos, Cupertino, Cáceres, Delft, Den Haag, Denver, Divonne-les-Bains, Dordrecht, Dundee, Durango, Edinburgh, Edmonton, Eindhoven, Escondido, Fingal, Frankfurt, Geelong, Gelsenkirchen, Gent, Glen Eira, Glenelg, Grand Paris Seine Ouest, Grand Paris Sud, Grenoble, Groningen, Guingamp, Haarlem, Halle, Hamburg, Hamburg Hafen, Hilversum, Hobart, Hobson's Bay, Hudson River Park, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Jena, Kamloops, Karlsruhe, Kelowna, Kitchener, Köln, Las Vegas, Launceston, Leipzig, Lelystad, Lethbridge, Linz, Lisbon, London, Longueuil, Luxembourg, Lyon, Madison, Madrid, Manlleu, Manningham, Maple Ridge, Marysville, Melbourne, Metz, Missisauga, Moncton, Monterrey, Montpellier, Montreal, Mountain View, Mulhouse, Naperville, Nevers, New West, New West, New York, Nice, Nichols Arboretum, Nijmegen, North Vancouver, Oakville, Orléans, Oslo, Ottawa, Oxnard, Pacific Grove, Palmerston North, Paris, Perth, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Placentia, Port Phillip, Portland, Portland, Oregon, Prince George, Prospect, Prospect, Providence, Quebec City, Regina, Rennes, Rennes, Repentigny, Richardson, Rochester, Roosendaal, Rostock, Saint Quentinois, Saint-Egrève, San Francisco, San Jose, San Jose, San Jose, Santiago de Compostela, Sarasota, Seattle, Seine-Saint-Denis, Sevilla, Shepparton, Sherwood Arboretum, Sioux Falls, Sliedrecht, Southern Grampians, Springfield, St Augustine, St Catharines, Strathcona, Surrey, Sydney, Three Rivers, Tilburg, Toronto, Torrent, Toulouse, Troisdorf, Trädportalen, UNT, Ulm, Umea, Unley, Utrecht, Valencia, Vancouver, Versailles, Victoria, Victoriaville, Vienna, Villa_Manin, Waite Arboretum, Wake Forest, Wallonie-Bruxelles, Washington, Washington DC, Waterloo, Welland, Wesel, West Chester, Westerville, Weston, White Rock, Winnipeg, Wodonga, Wylie, Wyndham, Yarra, York, York, York, Zaanstad, or Zvartewaterland, you can try https://opentrees.org https://opentrees.org
- knolax 7y agoLooks like there's a tree from Madrid on null island.
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