City of Denton proposes tree-counting initiative

by Chris Speight of North Texas Daily

DENTON — The city of Denton is trying to protect its shade-bearing friends through the use of satellite imaging.

The City Council discussed a possible survey at last week’s meeting that would determine the average number of trees and how to add more to the city.

If the proposal is approved, the city of Denton will collaborate with UNT faculty and a graduate student to head up the research side of the project.

“The project aims to protect the trees already in the Denton area and ultimately add more trees because of the positive environmental effects they yield,” said Bruce Hunter, the director of the Center for Spatial Analysis and Mapping within the departments of geography and institute of applied sciences at UNT.

“An important first step in incorporating green infrastructure into a community’s planning framework is to measure urban forest canopy and evaluate management goals,” said Chuck Russell, planning supervisor for Denton.

The council said that the tree survey project will cost an estimated $30,000. The money for this project comes from the City Tree Fund.

As of April 30, the total Tree Fund balance was about $629,000. Almost $52,000 of the money in the fund is from interest income. At the city council work session on Sept. 15, the council discussed spending about $30,000 of the Denton City Tree Fund money for the proposal, Russell said.

The tree fund is used to perform and maintain trees citywide, as well as educate residents and developers on the benefits and value of trees, Russell said.

This proposal would support Denton’s ongoing process of updating its tree preservation techniques and create an accurate baseline measurement of the number of trees in Denton.

He said these measurements will provide valuable information for the city.

“The green infrastructure within the city offers a unique opportunity to provide benefits — environmental, aesthetic and fiscal — with minimal expense to the city,” Russell said.

To realize the goal, satellites will take aerial digital snap-shots of the Greater Denton area.

“There’s a lot of commercial satellites that take images and so we contract with one of those satellite companies to take an image for us,” Hunter said.

After UNT has these images, Hunter and his team will decipher them by dividing the images into different land use categories, such as water, pavement, rooftops, manicured lawns, and more.

“We’re working with satellite imagery, there’s no way to count the individual trees,” he said. “A certain percentage of the city is covered by ‘X’ percent of tree canopy.”

The satellite images will cost nearly $10,000 each.

Also Hunter said cities across the U.S. are interested in projects of this nature for quality of life issues.

“Most people know how many trees they have in their backyard, if they’ve got a small yard,” Hunter said. “It’s a way for the city to know: Are we doing good as a city? Do we have a lot of trees? Do we have very few trees?”

Hunter said Russell contacted him to discuss proposal details after hearing of a similar project he conducted around the Dallas/Ft. Worth International airport.

“We just completed a study for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport doing just this, 153 square miles of area around the airport,” Hunter said.

Clayton Troegle, a recreation and leisure studies senior, said he doesn’t “think the city [needs] to take $40,000” worth of aerial pictures.

“I’m all for some trees,” he said. “Let’s add some more trees.”