Innovations - 'Melbourne's Urban Forest Strategy'

“When the winds of change blow, some build walls and others build windmills.” – Chinese Proverb

Whenever problems arise, improvise – that’s the formula of survival. We humans as a race encountered tons of problems and obstacles in the path of survival. Facing every single challenge with the gift of innovations, we progressed. Thanks to the sheer determination and resilience of some awesome people, these innovations were brought to life. Their determination unveiled a new path in front of the whole humanity. In this new series, we will explore and understand some of the best modern-day innovations that can make huge problems look tiny!

Without further due, let us start with our first article on “Melbourne’s Urban Forest”!

Significance of forests for the well being of the whole planet is reckoned by all. With ever-increasing human population, we require more land every year. But over-exploitation of the forests to fill the abyss of our greed and desires is a risky business. Cutting down of forests darkens our future. Therefore, many unique ideas were put forth to cope up with this problem. One such very basic yet effective idea is the concept of urban forests. Urban forests are not only a medium for metropolitans to escape their hectic city life and pump up fresh air into the suffocating urban environment, these scattered green patches also help in keeping the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect in check by reducing urban temperatures significantly (a complete article on Urban Heat Island effect will be shortly uploaded on the blog). Melbourne’s ‘Urban Forest Visual’ is a very unique dataset maintained by Melbourne city council under its Urban Forest Strategy.

Melbourne has a vast tree population (70,000 according to the official government website). But due to the decade long drought and extreme heat, along with aging tree stock and effects of climate change, trees are under a serious threat. City’s Urban Forest Strategy seeks to manage and protect against future vulnerability by providing a robust strategic framework for the evolution and longevity of Melbourne’s urban forest. Of course, the highlight point of this whole strategy is the Urban Forest Visual – online database that determines the direction and intensity of planting of trees. The strategy involves local participation; locals are encouraged to adopt and plant trees in their residential area, each tree is registered and important information, like age, species etc, are stored in the database. This database is publically accessible.

The map available on Urban Forest Visual website showcases every individual tree data for city of Melbourne trees. Different colours represent different age classes and different species are represented by different shapes. Every tree is digitally marked with an id unique to that tree. When you click the tree on the map, it showcases the species, stage and life expectancy of that particular tree.

This whole representation makes it a whole lot easier for the locals to select a species and a vacant place to plant. This practice also enables the department to thoroughly maintain the trees; places with low canopy density can be given priority and places with majority of old age stock can be refuelled with young saplings. Urban Forest Visual assists in maintaining a green lush around the city, with minimum efforts and capital input. A good diversity of trees ensures a healthy environment.

Innovations like this are a need of hour and every major metropolitan city should develop such databases so that a better future can be corroborated. This is a fine example utilization of technology for saving the nature – which I believe should be the motto of all inventors so that we can provide our future generation a reason or two to feel proud of their ancestors.

Hope you learnt something new today…

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Article by: Skand Prateek Kaushik

Click here to visit Urban Forest Visual website...