Berland_Lange_2017

Berland A, Lange DA (2017) Google Street View shows promise for virtual street tree surveys. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 21:11–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.11.006

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Keywords: Urban trees, species identification, tree inventory, methods

Google Street View has been used to quantify urban greenery by quantifying green pixels. They assessed species, geographic location, and manually estimated dbh. Data from manual virtual survey was highly correlated with field data and took less time and effort from techs. GSV can be used pretty accurately to identify tree species to the genus level, especially large trees. Species identification is less reliable. It may be possible to use image measurement software to automate DBH estimation. There are ongoing efforts to automate the use of GSV imagery to measure trees.