Community Forestry Home Page Community Forestry Planning Conducting a Street Tree Inventory Resources Site contact: Dr. Nina L. Bassuk Dept. of Horticulture Room 20 Plant Science Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 Phone: (607) 255-4586 Fax:(607) 255-9998 Email: nlb2@cornell.edu |
Community Forestry Conducting a Street Tree Inventory Training Procedure  Go
to the PR Documents
and Training Downloads
page for downloadable presentations. How to inventory the
community forest, Utility Line ID, and How
to identify street trees will be valuable in providing your
volunteers or staff with the knowledge necessary for this project.
The training should consist of a classroom portion to present the PowerPoint presentations, followed by a field exercise to demonstrate the concepts learned in the presentations. Treat the field exercise as a test. Take the participants to previously identified sites to record all data. Make sure that you have a variety of conditions that gauge their knowledge of tree species and data collection abilities. When the field exercise is finished, hotsync the PDA's and review the data collected for accuracy. Inconsistencies and mistakes should be dealt with before beginning the inventory. Conducting the Inventory To conduct the inventory send out participants in pairs. One person to ascertain the location and assess the tree size and condition, the other to record the information into the PDA. Each team should have a detailed map of the municipality with clearly defined rights-of-way. The municipal right-of-way is necessary to distinguish between trees that are "out of bounds". Some communities use the sidewalk as the boundary but this may not apply in all circumstances. A diameter tape (for measuring tree diameter) and a 50' tape measure should also be carried by each crew. Give each crew specific instructions on which streets to inventory. Duplicate records could be dealt with in the finished inventory but may complicate the data. Have crews scratch-off streets on their map after they've finished. It may be useful to have data recorders review their entries once in awhile. Suggest at the end of each street. Finally, announce the project to the community through a press release. This will notify home owners that people will be in their front yard and may prevent many time consuming questions. Outfitting volunteers with orange safety vests also gives the crew an official look and increases the visibility of volunteers standing in streets looking at trees. Crew tools (items to be carried by each two person crew, one of each)
For documents to help gain
support for this project from public officials and for tools to
train volunteers go to PR
Documents and Training Downloads.
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