So I figured it would be a good time to talk about what exactly I’m doing this summer, and no it’s not just counting trees like everyone asks. This summer I’m mapping the trees on the University of Richmond campus using GIS (Geographic Information System). During my first semester of college I decided that I wanted to conduct research over the summer so I talked with my advisor, Dr. Lookingbill. He suggested the tree mapping as a way to build upon a project an undergraduate student did several years ago creating a list of all the plant species on campus. The part of the project that really caught my attention was the idea of calculating the amount of carbon the trees on campus held and the overall carbon sink value of our campus.

To prepare for the project I took Introduction to GIS to learn the mapping software. I loved the class and was excited to advance my GIS skills over the summer. John (my fellow research) and I started by creating a plan for the summer, developing methods for collecting data, constructing a data dictionary for the GPS units, and learning to identify trees. We decided to only map the trees on the Westhampton side of campus as the entire campus would be too big of a project for one summer. We also decided that instead of measuring every tree within the forests we would collect several transects within each forest to use as representative samples in our final calculations.

John is leaving next Friday and I will be here for 2 more weeks to finish wrapping up the project. Unfortunately it looks like we won’t finish, so my job is to create procedures of further data collection during the fall semester. I’m a bit disappointed that we couldn’t finish everything but I am also excited to have learned so much in the process about GIS. I’ll post a link to the online map when it is up and running!