The SUN Lab’s team in collaboration with experts from Wood expertise center “Zdorovy Les” set up new devices in Gorky Park, one of the biggest and most attended parks in Moscow city center.
Before installation, experts from Zdorovy Les conducted a local research in the park. They found out 16 poplars of the same age and size but quite different in trunk condition – most of them were strongly decayed. Visually the state of the trees was rather different from their potential sustainability and trunk health. So these trees came up as the spots for 16 Tree Talkers set up.
Tree Talkers mechanism of work is to scan the vital processes of the tree – the intensity of sap flow and photosynthesis. Also, the device in real time determines the slope and elasticity of the tree, so that during a strong wind or hurricane, old branches and trunk do not damage buildings, cars, or fall on people. In general, such monitoring allows people to determine how dangerous or useful the exact tree is and to develop some treatment recommendations.
At the moment, more than 200 devices monitor the trees’ state in 7 locations around Moscow such as RUDN University campus, Botanical Garden of Moscow State University, forest park zone of the Russian State Agrarian University K.A. Timiryazev and elsewhere. Gorky Park became the 8th one.
Monitoring of Moscow trees is part of a large study of urban green areas, in the future SUN Lab’s team plans to create a network for monitoring green areas around the world.