| 22 April 2010
We've had a great outpouring of responses and a lot of interest in the Map. Thank you everyone who has stopped by to explore San Francisco's urban forest. A number of you sent me questions using our Contact page, but didn't leave your email addresses so I could respond. I thought I would tackle a few of your questions here because others may be wondering the same things (new questions at the top):
I live in Toronto and am close to a variety of urban living groups. We also have a LOT of trees. Is there now, or in the future, a model to license this platform to other municipalities? Is there a way we could share costs, etc.
If you're interested in bringing the Urban Forest Map to Toronto, there are two routes forward: (1) The underlying software is open source and will shortly be available to anyone who wishes to make use of it. (2) Unfortunately, our grant is about to run out, but for projects with funding, our team can also be available to help. One little glitch to an international expansion relates to the eco impact values that are calculated for each tree. These are estimated using a U.S.-specific model created by the US Forest Service. There has been some talk recently of expanding the models to other countries and I would be happy to discuss more with anyone who is interested.
-----------
I don't see any of the Mayor's Trees for Tomorrow Trees that have been planted in the last 5 years. That's a lot of missing trees.
Right now the trees on the Map are only from the databases of the Bureau of Urban Forestry and Friends of the Urban Forest. And of course any that have been added by tree lovers since yesterday. We reached out to many city agencies asking for their data and have had great support from BUF and FUF. We hope now that other agencies have seen the Urban Forest Map they will want to contribute.For some reason, I can't seem to sign up. I keeping getting an oops.
In cases like these, please leave your email address so I can ask you a few questions. If you really don't want to, give us a few more details. What were you trying to use for a user name? When in the process did you get the oops? How many times did you try? Since we have just launched our site to the public there will be a few bugs along the way and more details will really help us figure out what is causing them.
Hi! I believe that the tree in front of my condo is a Princeton Sentry Ginkgo. I do not see this scientific type as an option for ginkgos in the drop-down menu. Would you mind adding it?
I'll be adding new species in the next week or two as requested, but in the mean time, feel free to add your tree as a ginkgo of the regular sort.
Add "has been cut down" to tree status field.
One of the choices under "Actions" is "Tree has been removed."
More as they come in...
