Behind the Symposium: i-Tree

We’d like to give you some more context into one of the issues being presented during the Tree Canopy Symposium on October 18th. One of our speakers will be Scott Maco from the Davey Institute, as well Dave Nowak from the U.S. Forest Service, who will be discussing i-Tree: what it says about D.C.’s trees, as well as how it can be used by others in the D.C./ Metro area. But were you to ask i-Tree yourself, it would quickly tell you what it does: as it’s very own Twitter handle states, “i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the US Forest Service that provides urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools.”

But what does that really mean? What is Casey Trees’ history with the software?

i-Tree is a collection of softwares that has been designed to be universally used – by community canopy enthusiasts and industry professionals alike. It’s central focus is to attempt to quantify the environmental services that trees provide, as well as the overall structure of the urban forest they’re within (in fiscal values). It’s designed to be versatile: able to assess individual trees all the way up to entire forests, or in the more recent cases, entire countries worth of forests. In addition to its initial U.S. designation, a Australian-compatible version of the i-Tree Eco application was introduced at the 2011 ISA Conference in Parramatta, Australia. Similarly, numerous i-Tree projects have been completed by municipal governments, universities, students and consultants in cities across the world, including China, Italy, Canada, Spain, Chile, and Russia.

The developmental offspring of the USDA Forest Service and a variety of other contributors, i-Trees exists as a cooperative partnership between the Forest Service, Davey Tree Expert Company, National Arbor Day Foundation, Society of Municipal Arborists, International Society of Arboriculture, and (of course) Casey Trees. The intent is to further develop, disseminate and provide technical support for the software suite.

Scott Maco and Dave Nowak will be discussing what the software has come to conclude about the District’s canopy, as well as how it can be better utilized throughout city’s many communities and neighborhoods.

Make sure that you’re there to learn and engage in the conversation – the more voices, the better!

The symposium will be held at the FHI 360 Conference Center, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. There will be a reception afterwards at the Hillyer Art Space from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Register for your tickets to either event (or both) so that you can be a part of the discussion, and the future.

Story and photo credit: i-Trees (homepage & Twitter, respectively).

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