“ The Living Campus: Mapping UC Berkeley's Ornamental Trees”

Prof.  Maggi Kelly,  Cooperative Specialist, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

The UC Berkeley campus is kept cool year round by a large community of trees.  These trees are diverse in species, age, size, purpose of planting and abundance.  One of the buildings protected by these trees is Mulford Hall where the Geospatial Innovation Facility is housed.  Utilizing the tools of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to collect point locations with specific data on each tree, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for representing the tree data collected, we will create a living map of the UC Berkeley campus tree population.  The assessment of urban tree canopy benefits utilizing GPS, while collecting the critical parameters of tree type and species, is increasing in popularity as we enhance our understanding of its effective utilization.  This type of mapping has applications in a wide range of disciplines, but is most commonly being utilized for assessment of energy cost savings and urban forest management.  As the data for this GIS map continues to be collected it is our intent to incorporate a teen outreach program into this research.  These data will eventually be made available through the GIF Lab in an interactive webGIS for academic and public use.

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Camice is a Molecular Environmental Biology major in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley.  She attended City College of San Francisco, where she was an honors student and with a 3.85 GPA.  After completing her B.S. she intends to apply for medical school and to pursue her PhD as a Doctor of Osteopathy with a concurrent Master’s in Public Health.  She is the first person in her family to attend a four year college.