USE OF ‘MACHINE LEARNING’ TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN TREE CANOPY AND TREES: “Trees are pretty hard to map. So, what’s the solution if we want to map tree canopies in places with complex geographies? How do we fill in the gaps between official street tree census and trees in parks and on private property?” – Tim Wallace, geographer for the New York Times
“(Tree) surveys are expensive to conduct, difficult to maintain, and provide an incomplete picture of the entire extent of the urban tree canopy. Both the San Francisco inventory and the New York City TreesCount! do an impeccable job mapping the location, size and health of street trees, but exclude large chunks within the cities, like parks,” wrote Tim Wallace. “This data gap is neither accidental nor purposeful. The trees they mapped were a product of bureaucratic choices and limitations.”