Treezilla

Home research Quantification and valuation of benefits provided by urban trees Treezilla

Summary

The Open University, in partnership with Forest Research and Treeconomics, has recognised the need to better educate people about the role of trees in the community, and the neccessity of involving citizens in their protection and conservation.

In June 2013, the partnership launched Treezilla: a free, online multi-purpose platform designed to support tree-related science projects as part of the Open Science Laboratory in the Science Faculty of the Open University.

Status

This project began in June 2013 and is ongoing.

Funders and partners

This work is part-funded by the Forestry Commission, in partnership with the Open University and Treeconomics.

Research objectives

The objective is to create an online map of all the trees in the UK that can be used for 5 types of activity: Education, Outreach, Research, Inventory and Biological Surveillance.

Development

In February 2016, the ViTAL project received NERC funding to expand the functionality and coverage of Treezilla.

Through the COMMUNITREE project, funded by the Geospatial Commission, a new app and webmap were developed to make it easier for contributors to add trees to Treezilla. Intelligent Tree Data Validation was developed to check tree data as it is entered in Treezilla. This is a world first in tree data collection.

The Individual Tree Data Standard will increase the interoperability of tree data, enabling it to be collected once and used many times.

Themes

Ecosystem services, Urban trees and greenspaces

Research Status

current

Research Groups

Urban forests

Contacts

Phillip Handley

GIS Specialist

Funding & partners

Forestry Commission
Open University
Treeconomics
Natural Environment Research Council
Geospatial Commission

COMMUNITREE: Connecting tree databases to the public, improving urban tree data for business, government and research

Status completed