DENTON, TX, June 27, 2023 – The City’s Parks and Recreation Department has contracted cutting-edge green tech company ‘greehill’ to assist in their efforts to manage the local urban forest by conducting an inventory of Denton’s trees within maintained areas of parks, City properties, and public rights-of-way.
Beginning the week of June 26, the inventory will be conducted using a NASA-grade mobile LiDAR (light detection and ranging) system mounted to a vehicle. With the additional help of Artificial Intelligence, the survey will provide a three-dimensional digital twin of each tree, including, tree diameter, crown height, species, tree condition, and location. Additionally, the survey will provide each tree with a unique ID number and calculate its economic value.
The City’s inventory and tree management is being overseen by Urban Forester Haywood Morgan. “The complete inventory of trees managed by the City will enable effective management, sustainable planning, and the promotion of a healthier, greener urban environment,” said Morgan. “We are thrilled to be one of the first in the nation to conduct this type of advanced and informative inventory for our community.”
Gabor Goertz, greehill CEO, said, “We are very excited that the greehill team will drive through Denton’s streets and provide the city with the most advanced digital public tree inventory. “
With year-one data collected within 30 days, the LiDAR system allows for a much faster and more precise inventory than the more traditional, manual methods. A second data set will be collected in year three, allowing for analysis of the growth of public trees.
“A tree inventory helps our staff make decisions on how to direct our financial and staffing resources to maintain our urban tree canopy,” said Director of Parks and Recreation Gary Packan. “The integration of the LiDAR technology speeds up the data collection process while gaining critical information, such as growth patterns, with each updated inventory by creating a digital twin of each of our trees in which we manage. We are excited to integrate this new technology to our Parks system by using best practices to improve the services to our residents.”
