TreeTag - Vanier College

TreeTag is a mobile application for Android that helps you document, interact with, and better care for trees in your community. This first version of TreeTag was developed for Vanier College by a multidisciplinary team of students participating in a special 3-week summer project to create an educational and management tool for the College. The application was used to locate, photograph, and measure over 250 trees, which are preloaded on the database.

The objective of TreeTag is to maintain an active inventory of all campus trees with a trunk diameter over 2cm. The application provides data sheets for each tree with information on species, location, age, physical characteristics, and planting status. These data sheets can be accessed using the interactive map or search tool.

The zoomable map has an overlay to reflect the most recent changes to the physical environment at Vanier College. To assist with orientation, the map indicates the location of your mobile device in relation to the surrounding trees. If there is a wireless connection, you can access or input data from the field in real time. Tree icons on the map differ according to their planting status. Hovering over any tree icon will bring up a snippet identifying the tree species and ID number.

The data sheets for each tree include a health assessment and care recommendations, which may be completed by a tree specialist. There is also a maintenance log for college staff to record work completed or to note observations. Adding or modify information on the database requires a password, which may be requested by contacting the TreeTag administrator. To publish all data sheets to pdf, use the report function on the main menu.

TreeTag is an information sharing initiative with the goal of promoting biodiversity at Vanier College and creating the management tools necessary to ensure the long-term health and succession of our campus trees. You are encouraged to contribute feedback. Please submit observations, corrections, or images on specific trees in the comments section of the tree data sheets – especially comments that build awareness about tree health and the many ecological services that trees provide. General comments about the TreeTag application may be submitted using below.

PROJECT CREDITS

TreeTag development team:

Adrian Todorov, Lead Programmer
Connie Luu, Programmer
Daniel Kuzev, Map Overlay and Data Collection
Moises Alvarez Paredes, Programmer
Stephanie Becerra, Data Collection

Richard Klopp, Project Coordinator and Mentor

This mobile application emerged from a multidisciplinary and multi-course collaboration initiated by Richard Klopp, co-teacher of the 2014 Sustainability-in-Action course. The initial project of developing a tree survey database was awarded a prize at the 16th edition of the intercollegiate Delirium Durable Competition in March 2015. Many thanks to all those students and teachers that contributed to getting the project that far, including Michel Descoteaux and Stefan Penton, the graphic designers of the TreeTag home image.

Funding and support for this project was provided by the Director Generals Office of Vanier College.

Special thanks to Director General, Normand W Bernier, for his confidence in the professional skills and creative abilities of our students.