The Indian Express              20.06.2013

PMC on green citizen search for tree-mapping project

As per the directions of the High Court, the city's civic body has now sought public participation for its ambitious tree-mapping project, a first-of-its-kind in the country, that would not only include a tree census, but would also geo-tag each tree to provide information on its location, size and species along with a photograph of the tree.

"We have designed an easy-to-use application that would be made available to PMC for free," said Jitendra Shah, who has been appointed by the court to oversee the setup and implementation of the pilot tree census through public participation.

The only thing required to make the project successful is to be able to get the Geographic Information System (GIS ) basemap and data about the property ownership, he said. "The project will not move forward without the availability of technical inputs."

This census will be GIS-based and each tree will be geo-tagged with all relevant information, Shah said. This census, if successful through community participation, will pave way for a similar census across India, he added.

PMC Garden Superintendent Ashok Ghorpade said the demand has been submitted to the city engineering department, but is yet to get any response. "We are pursuing it further as the GIS base map of city is necessary for electronic tree mapping," he said, adding the PMC has made an appeal to citizens for their participation in the project.

To start with, PMC, in association with Bluewiss, has taken up a pilot project for Viman Nagar. "In 2010, Bluewiss had mapped the bio-diversity of Viman Nagar and presented this data to the citizens of Viman Nagar during its annual Sundara Vasundhara festival. Thus, the exercise would be very useful for the pilot project," said Niranjan Upasani of Bluewiss.

He said PMC has been directed by the High Court to conduct a pilot tree census through community participation.