Valuing Green Infrastructure Through Tree Assessment TooLs (VITAL)

近年来，与经济学家合作的环境和社会科学家开始理解自然为社会提供的价值。这些“生态系统服务”（ES）包括提供食物和燃料，调节水质和水量，减少污染，储存碳以及产生具有文化和美学意义的景观和特征。使用一系列广泛认可的方法，可以对这些服务进行经济价值评估，ES的存量被称为“自然资本”。这些想法使自然能够纳入组织和社会计划和决策的方式中。例如，侵蚀自然资本的经济发展可能被认为是不可取的，特别是如果自然资本的损失超过了发展的好处。另一个术语，"绿色基础设施"（GI）用于描述构成人文景观一部分的自然或半自然特征，如树篱、公园和行道树。地理信息系统可以提供生态系统服务，从而增加自然资本。例如，城市树木可以调节水流，吸收二氧化碳，可以减少空气污染，并具有文化意义。尽管这些想法在理论上发展得很好，但将其应用于实践被证明更具挑战性，因为计算ES估值所需的数据并不广泛，使用的方法也很复杂。这是政府和企业在规划和决策中理解和使用这些重要思想的障碍，对于可能对其环境的真实的价值感兴趣的公民个人、小型组织或社区团体来说更是如此。VITAL项目由来自开放大学的环境科学家组成，他们拥有运行大型公民科学项目的经验，森林研究的ES和树木专家，以及Treeconomics，这是一家社会企业，致力于让组织参与评估他们的树木。我们的目标是开发一个系统，允许从公民个人到地方当局，企业和大型组织的任何人都能重视他们周围的树木。我们将大大改善现有的公民科学工具：“Treezilla”，它允许用户映射并给出树木的ES估值，以便它与最广泛使用的ES树木估值专业系统连接：i-Tree Eco。这些改进将使所有用户都能获得评估树木价值的强大工具。我们将对这些系统进行工程设计，使一个系统的数据能够输入另一个系统，随着Treezilla收集的数据越来越多，这些数据将用于进一步完善系统。我们的工具的价值将在于大量的人和组织使用它们，因此我们与对树木在其环境中的价值感兴趣的主要组织合作，以交付该项目。我们将与公园信托米尔顿凯恩斯谁是负责GI在英国最树木繁茂的城市之一，密切合作，以了解组织如何使用Treezilla，利用我们学到的，以改善培训和推广Treezilla的其他用户。然后，我们将与一个主要的政府组织密切合作：威尔士自然资源部向该组织和其他类似组织提供具体的项目，展示Treezilla的使用。通过与树木理事会的第三个伙伴关系，该理事会有数十名成员，由地方当局、社区团体和小型和大型慈善机构组成，并支持一个由8000名志愿者组成的全国网络。我们将把我们的工具和我们学到的东西传达给大量的潜在用户。这些人以及Treezilla的所有用户都可以免费和开放地访问用于评估树木的工具，并可以访问来自英国各地的大量和不断增长的树木和树木评估数据集。

In recent years environmental and social scientists working with economists have begun to understand the value that nature provides to society. These 'ecosystem services' (ES) include things like the provisioning of food and fuel, regulating water quality and quantity, reducing pollution, storing carbon and producing landscapes and features of cultural and aesthetic significance. Using a range of widely agreed methods it has been possible to put economic values on these services and the stock of ES is referred to as 'natural capital'. These ideas have allowed nature to be included in the way that organisations and societies plan and make decisions. Economic development, for example, that erodes natural capital might be considered undesirable, especially if the loss of natural capital outweighs the benefit of the development. Another term, 'green infrastructure' (GI) is used to describe the natural or semi-natural features such as hedgerows, parkland and street trees that make up part of human landscapes. GI can provide ecosystem services and therefore adds to natural capital. Urban trees, for example, regulate water flow, take in carbon dioxide, can reduce air pollution and have cultural significance.Although these ideas are well developed in theory, applying them in practice has proved more challenging because the data required to calculate ES valuations are not widely available and the methods used are complex. This is a barrier to governments and businesses understanding and using these important ideas in their planning and decision making, and more so for individual citizens, small organisations or community groups who might be interested in the real value of their environment. The VITAL project is made up of environmental scientists from the Open University with experience of running large citizen science projects, specialists in ES and trees from Forest Research, and Treeconomics a social enterprise which has been instrumental in engaging organisations in valuing their trees. We aim to develop a system that allows anyone from individual citizens to local authorities, businesses and large organisations to value the trees around them. We will significantly improve an existing OU citizen science tool: 'Treezilla' which allows users to map and gives ES valuations of trees, so that it links with the most widely used professional system for ES tree valuation: i-Tree Eco. These improvements will give all users access to powerful tools for valuing trees. We will engineer these systems such that data from one feeds into the other, and as more data are collected in Treezilla, it is used to refine the system further.The value of our tools will be in their use by large numbers of people and organisations, so we have partnered with key organisations with interests in the value of trees in their environment to deliver the project. We will work closely with the Parks Trust Milton Keynes who are responsible for GI in one of Britain's most wooded cities, to understand how organisations can use Treezilla, using what we learn to improve training and promotion of Treezilla to other users. We will then work closely with a major governmental organisation: Natural Resources Wales to deliver specific projects demonstrating the use of Treezilla to that organisation and others like it. Through a third partnership, with The Tree Council, which has tens of members made up of local authorities, community groups and small and large charities, and supports a national network of 8000 volunteer Tree Wardens, we will communicate our tools and what we have learned to a very large number of potential users. These, and all users of Treezilla, will have free and open access to tools for valuing trees and the same access to a massive and growing dataset of trees and tree valuations from across the UK.