Photo: MintSingapore: Scientists have used over 1,00,000 images extracted from Google Street View to map and quantify how street trees regulate urban ecosystems in megacities like Delhi and Shanghai. While it is generally accepted that trees and plants benefit urban environments, until now researchers have had very little data to work with in order to quantify the extent that street trees regulate urban ecosystems. Researchers in the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre, a research outpost of ETH Zurich, developed a method to map and quantify how street trees regulate ecosystem services. Researchers said that increasing the cover of the street tree canopy could reduce ground surface and air temperatures on Singapore’s streets. Since Google Street View covers many of the world’s cities, the method could be readily applied to quantify the proportion of canopy coverage and solar radiation in other tropical cities.

Source: Mint March 01, 2017 10:24 UTC