When we only see the cost of something, and don’t fully appreciate its benefits, it’s really easy to make decisions, or fail to take positive actions, the consequences of which we may later regret. This is exacerbated when the benefits are universal, but the costs are borne by an individual budget.
 
So it is with trees. Urban forests* provide people with a range of benefits (“ecosystem services”) that help make our towns and cities better places to live. Trees filter air pollution, improve our health, store carbon and reduce flooding, whilst also providing important habitat for wildlife and so much more. For the bulk of their life, in an appropriate setting, these services are delivered naturally, at very little cost.

i-Tree Eco is professionally-developed free-to-use software specifically designed to assist anyone collecting data on trees to:

·       understand the composition of the urban forest;

·       quantify its environmental effects;

·       calculate the value of those effects - the services that these trees provide to our communities.

Treezilla is a citizen-science project that uses the equations developed for i-Tree and couples them with an easy-to use (online or app) recording system.

Both are collaborations with Forest Research, which is the research agency of the Forestry Commission (FC) and Great Britain’s principal organisation for forestry and tree-related research.

Our ChiTrees project aims to harness the enthusiasm of volunteers to identify, measure and record the trees around us, so we understand better what we have and can consider how we can sustain and improve it to continue to benefit us in future. Our results can help our urban forest owners/managers, planners and policy makers understand better the role trees play in our city; and our efforts encourage them to reflect this in their decision-making.

Your Enthusiasm + Chichester’s Trees + i-Tree Eco/Treezilla = the chance to plan for a better long-term future for trees and people

Information on our Information and Training Launch event and how to volunteer to help can be found here.