Urban forestry mapping

The AP reports that, as a part of larger efforts to improve the urban forest, a growing number of communities are mapping their urban canopies. The UVM Urban Tree Canopy project is a great example of ways that GIS and landscape architecture interface.

"If you don't even know what you have, you can't make any decisions," said Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, a geospatial analyst with the team. "It wasn't that people didn't want to plant trees or didn't want a tree canopy program. But they needed the hard data to make decisions. That's where we came in."