Melbourne’s Urban Forest, Emailing Trees, and the Internet of Things
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This archive podcast article explores Melbourne’s urban forest, the City of Melbourne’s tree data project, and the unusual idea of emailing trees as part of an early Internet of Things conversation.
Trees lining Bourke st in full leaf mid-summer Melbourne, Australia
Many people build quiet relationships with the trees around them — walking beneath them, resting in their shade, noticing them during storms, or returning to the same streets and parks across different seasons.
In a city like Melbourne, these everyday encounters help explain why urban trees matter. They are not just part of the streetscape. They shape how a city feels, how people move through it, and how public spaces become more liveable.
Trees are a defining part of Melbourne.
We live in the world’s most liveable city, and our parks, gardens, green spaces and tree-lined streets contribute enormously to this status. Melbourne’s urban forest is facing two significant future challenges: climate extremes and urban growth.
Map of the tree data an important part of the urban Forest Visual powered by cartodb.com
I am suddenly just being as the tree is, just being.
After storms and heavy rain, Melbourne’s trees also show how closely the urban forest is connected to the wider city environment. River levels, wind, heat, drought, shade, and street design all affect how trees survive and how people experience public space.
Watching trees move in the wind or recover after rain is a simple reminder that urban trees are living infrastructure, not decoration.
Then there are the trees that I like just to watch and see the wind gently blowing through the branches and leaves for some reason.
I have always enjoyed that, and I have always found it to be relaxing. I’m not even sure why.
Perhaps it’s because I’m not looking at the computer screen, or I am outside not connected to a device; I’m not plugged-in. I’m not sending, not receiving, not producing, consuming, posting or creating.
I’m not even having timeout,
I’m just hanging out,
Just enjoying my time with the trees,
I am suddenly just being as the tree is, just being.
The first time I ever heard of anybody emailing trees was in a meet up put together by Charlie Woolford for MUDM on urban design, and I must confess I didn’t know what I was walking into.
It just looked like fun, and it involved landscaping, and so you can now tell that I never entirely read the full details of some emails.
So, I signed up and arrived late as usual
To the meetup, be greeted by a room filled with smiling and enthusiastic faces and the remaining pizza and a cold beer at the Collective Campus.
Yvonne Lynch was presenting a part of the City of Melbourne’s urban forestry strategy document, which aims to make a great city greener. While giving it a solid sustainable foundation for the future communities of Melbourne. Yvonne was also joined by Urban Forester Tania MacLeod and Consulting Arborist Matt Sauvarin.
The 66-page document gives a fantastic outline of the principles and strategies including case studies along with some of the issues and challenges that arise in the urban forest.
Heat islands are just one of the challenges to contend with, and other principal strategies include,
- Reducing the urban heat island effect
- Creating healthy ecosystems
- Positioning Melbourne as a leader open urban forestry
The Mayor said recently, “we often think of the tree’s as the lungs of our city, but they ought also in some ways are our heart and soul.”
Heat the big killer
With heat as the biggest natural killer in Australia on a hot day, the city can be up to seven degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside.
At this time the most recent reports are that Australian heat waves are becoming hotter and longer, they are occurring more often and starting earlier in the season. The effects of this are compounded in the city and have led to a compelling and urgent need to cool the city and to protect vulnerable populations.
Part of the Urban Forest Strategy program’s goals includes cooling the city by 4°C using green infrastructure to mitigate the predicted future increases in hot weather and the Urban Heat Island effect. Reducing the landscape’s vulnerability to drought by increasing the city’s stormwater harvesting capacity.
Other goals also include providing a visualization of the life expectancy of the city’s trees. This allows for tree populations in decline to be identified and for long-term responses to be developed.
Lifecycle of trees around the city by Urban Forest Visual
The interactive website allows people to learn about our urban forest and join the conversation about how the city manages its trees. Councillor Arron Wood recently stated, “An unintended but positive consequence was that instead of reporting problems with trees, people began writing letters about how much they love individual trees in the city.”
Interesting facts include damage to older trees can occur for example if a truck reversing into a tree causes branches to break.
The emails now show Melburnians know and understand the importance of the trees in reducing heat in the city. For example, one email came in from workers who watered a tree outside the State Library so that the tree survived the drought.
The email service began in May 2013, and the Urban Forest team receives several emails a week about the individual health of trees within the city, and there is no cost for the email initiative.
Councillor Arron Wood also said “While there are other cities that map their tree populations, as far as we are aware we are the only city to provide a visualization of the life expectancy of our trees. This allows for tree population decline to be identified and for long-term responses to be developed.”
The Urban Forest Visualisation
Was a response to a series of community engagement where several people had asked for the council to share their forest maps. The team felt that an online interactive map which visualised the data in a creative and interesting manner was an ideal way in which to share the data with the public.
The project invited people to see city trees not just as infrastructure, but as living parts of Melbourne’s public environment.
