All About Trees’ owner Bob Everingham is a volunteer with the Vermont Forest Pest First Detector program. As part of their efforts to prepare Brattleboro for the arrival of Emerald Ash Borer, Bob and Antioch grad student John Ogorzalek undertook a survey of the ash trees along Brattleboro’s right of ways, and also a survey of notable ash trees in town. After researching mobile data collection systems, Bob implemented a mobile data collection tool that Google developed for android devices called Open Data Kit. Using an affordable Nexus tablet, Bob and John were able to collect species and size information, GPS coordinates, and take pictures of ash trees in Brattleboro. No mobile internet connection or contract was necessary. When they got the tablet back to a wifi zone, they could upload the data to a Google app server, which renders the data in a format that can be viewed on a map.
Or click here to see the data in a fusion table.