Measuring urban forest benefits with a few swipes on a smartphone

Here we present a new, in-development mobile application and associated citizen science website that allows users to measure urban trees and instantly appreciate their ecosystem service benefits, including carbon... [ view full abstract ]

Here we present a new, in-development mobile application and associated citizen science website that allows users to measure urban trees and instantly appreciate their ecosystem service benefits, including carbon sequestration, pollution relief, and energy savings. The app is based on OpenTreeMap, but its features are simplified for citizen science use, and the phone itself is used to perform the diameter measurement that lies at the heart of the calculation of benefits. Also, we have developed a user-friendly field guide to urban trees that permits the citizen scientist to decide how specific about species identification to get. The app, website, field guide, and video tutorials have all been developed by students at Santa Clara University.