San Francisco's Urban Forest Map is Census For Trees

Want to know how many Guadalupe palm trees are in San Francisco or how much CO2 is saved by Monterey cypress trees in the city? A new wiki-like website might soon have all the answers. The Urban Forest Map, launched this week, combines tree information from Friends of the Urban Forest and the city of San Francisco with citizen-collected data--users just snap a picture of a tree, upload it to the website, and tag it.

The reasoning behind the ambitious project is simple: San Francisco has only 90,000 trees in its database, but there are hundred of thousands in the city. It costs city governments $3 to catalog a single tree. So instead of wasting city cash on the issue, the UFM intends to harness the power of community for a comprehensive  database.

The Urban Forest Map doesn't just provide tree counts. It also offers up information on greenhouse gas benefits, water benefits, energy savings, and air quality benefits for each species. A search for the Monterey cypress, for example, tells us that the 445 trees counted in San Francisco save 82.767 pounds of CO2, 1,924,095 gallons of water, $72,556 in energy, and 765 pounds of pollutants.

Once San Francisco has more trees in its database, city planners will be able to promote better urban forestry projects. Getting the masses to log and capture every tree they see might not be so easy, but we're guessing the enthusiasm of local nature buffs will be enough to at least get the project off the ground.

[Urban Forest Map]