Working Session - Geo-located characteristics of urban trees

Working Session in ARGANS on estimation of Tree Height, Crown Diameter and Diameter at Breast Height from Very High-Resolution Satellite Images by spectral and textural classification.

For a realistic and proper quantification of the air pollution removal capacity of urban trees, a consistent tree inventory at city scale is needed. To date, the tree inventories of both municipalities, gather only “public” trees representing ab. 20% of the total number of urban trees. Without this consistent database, a large underestimation of the air pollution removal capacity will be carried out. Compared to field observations, the remote sensing allows quickly detecting and estimating the number of trees in a city (including private areas). Trees can be detected using a spectral signature i.e. an index of vegetation: Normalize Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the Near Infrared. The textural signature is used for the classification of tree species at high resolution.