IU Students Study Long-Term Impact of Campus Trees
IU Students Study Long-Term Impact of Campus Trees
Thursday, October 20, 2022
To understand the many benefits IU’s trees provide to campus, IU student researchers are studying and mapping all of IU’s 13,000+ freestanding trees – research which will help preserve the iconic campus for generations of Hoosiers.
| Video courtesy IU Vice President for Research |
Learn more about IU's commitment to caring for and preserving campus trees on the Woodland Campus website.
Description of the video:
0:02
For the tree inventory on IU's campus,
0:04
we did a comprehensive inventory of all of the freestanding trees.
0:08
Hi, I am Hannah Gregory. I'm
0:10
a tree technician and researcher with Indiana University's Landscape Services.
0:14
From the IU inventory, we can get a snapshot of the benefits that the trees
0:19
provide to campus, ecological benefits, economic benefits, social benefits.
0:24
So, things like the trees shade the buildings and lower the energy costs.
0:28
What we do is we walk up to a tree.
0:30
We locate the points that's in our inventory.
0:32
So, we have an iPad with all the tree points.
0:35
We select the point, make sure that it's the correct tree.
0:38
So, we make sure that the species is identified correctly.
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Then what we'll do is we will measure the tree and put the size into the iPad.
0:45
And the great thing about the
0:46
IU inventory is that it does have a long term impact on campus.
0:50
I'm Mike Girvin.
0:51
I'm the landscape coordinator for facility operations at Indiana University.
0:57
We knew we needed a tree inventory to manage these assets.
1:00
And this is really a critical component if we want to keep IU looking like IU.
1:04
Certainly the data is so valuable.
1:07
I like to think the groundwork we're laying today will be carried out
1:10
long into the future.
1:12
But what we've been able to do is overlay our tree inventory
1:17
with the Olmsted maps and see what trees still exist from that time period.
1:23
My name is Sara Carter.
1:24
I am an undergraduate studying environmental management
1:27
at Indiana University.
1:29
The map covers both topography and the trees on campus,
1:32
and it was my role to immortalize them through technology.
1:36
And they will forever be digital now.
1:38
This project was definitely the first step in painting that picture.
1:42
So, we have to have this historical anchor and baseline
1:46
to fall back on as we move through time and complete these new inventories.
1:52
I think doing this
1:53
sort of work really connects students with their communities.
1:57
It's hands on experience outside of the classroom.
2:00
And I think projects like
2:01
these are perfect because they benefit both the student
2:03
and the organization that the work's being done for.
