Earth Day 2009: An Invitation to Map 500,000 Trees

Given the need to preserve our planet, charting our eco-system's tree inventory is more crucial now than ever. To quench that need, the Edna Guenther Digital Arboretum welcomes communities, universities, horticulturists and tree lovers to plot their favorite trees this Earth Day, April 22, 2009. Online, the digital arboretum is also dubbed as PlantMapper.com. Evoking an acute awareness of our ecology, as well as its conservation, the goal is to map 500,000 trees over the next five years.

The concept behind the digital arboretum is a collaborative effort, requiring everyone's input. PlantMapper.com is like a hybrid of Wikipedia and Google. The difference is the site is all about trees. At Wikipedia, Internet users research and update information. On Google.com, individuals search for information. Plantmapper.com integrates both technological capabilities into its botanical search engine directory, or 'plant mapping' technology, enabling visitors and members to contribute and research tree information.

Although, the founder and horticulturist of PlantMapper, James Taylor downplays the extraordinary green initiative, he refers to the site as, "...merely harvesting the seeds of preservation." Intelligently-designed for anyone in the United States to upload a photo and other tree information, PlantMapper.com also doubles as a virtual commemorative museum.

Inspired by his late grandmother, Mr. Taylor named the digital arboretum in her honor: The Edna Guenther Digital Arboretum to symbolize and memorializes those who cultivated their seeds of benevolent offerings. One of the first female trolley drivers in Philadelphia, Ms. Guenther lead an exemplar life as a single mother, who adopted five children, and raised them along with two of her own.

After 32 years as a trolley driver, she landed a job, doing what she loved the most cultivating plants and trees. She shared her passion with Mr. Taylor and his mother (Ms. Guenther's adopted daughter). His appreciation for trees was also sparked by the fact that he grew up in an urban area, where trees were perpetually removed, and rarely replaced. He recalls, "I was fascinated by trees, because they give so much and ask for so little."

The inherit love for horticulture lead to Mr. Taylor's studies in landscape architecture at Temple University, where he worked to design a simple way for the average person to identify and map trees. With it being 1999, and the accessibility of the Internet, Taylor knew that a web-based destination was the ultimate solution for compiling and organizing botanical information in one national database.

Faced with exorbitant programming costs, Taylor had to restructure the concept. The only software available at the time was a $15,000 investment. For a college graduate without any grants, it was a hefty price to pay. Determined to create an easy method for universities, communities and others to chart the location of their trees, he returned to the drawing board while earning his Master's degree in Information Systems.

Today, he pursues a doctorate at Pace University Seidenberg's School of Computing Science in New York. Mr. Taylor advises everyone to plot these geolocation parameters using a cell phone with Google's Latitude, a GPS system, or the Google aerial imagery accessed on Plantmapper.com.

Meanwhile, at PlantMapper.com or the Edna Guenther Digital Arboretum, visitors are encouraged to sign on and add information pertaining to a cherished shrub (s) or tree(s) in their neighborhood and dedicate it to a loved one. End users upload photos and input the characteristics of each tree. For instance, there are fields for the following data: specimen, family, genus, species the date in which it was planted and other information.

As PlantMapper is a collaborative effort, novice tree lovers should not be intimidated to enter only the information they know. The free site has a forum, where members may pose questions or provide feedback about the search engine directory. Nevertheless, regardless of one's horticultural background, everyone is invited to help map 500,000 trees.

To learn how to chart your tree's latitude and longitude coordinates (geolocation), read about:

• Fast Fixes for Mapping Tree Geolocations: How to Calculate Latitude and Longitude Coordinates