As part of European Tree Tag Day, the Student Council’s Sustainability Working Group, together with representatives from the Sustainability Task Group at TU Ilmenau, measured selected trees on campus and highlighted their ecosystem services.
Various tree-related parameters were recorded. These included tree height, measured using both the forester’s triangle method and drones, trunk circumference (to determine trunk diameter), crown base height, crown spread, and crown loss. The initiative was modeled after the “Sustainable Ilmenau” network, which has already been raising awareness of the value and diverse ecosystem services provided by trees through similar tree measurements in the city center and the use of so-called “Tree Tags.”
Based on the collected data, the participants, with support from BUND Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, determined the ecosystem services provided by the selected trees using the internationally recognized i-Tree tool. This tool clearly illustrates the contributions individual trees make to our lives.
They then compiled the results onto so-called “tree tags” and attached them directly to the trees that were studied. The signs make the trees’ benefits immediately visible on-site to students, staff, and visitors to the campus. Romana Raum, a member of the Sustainability Working Group in the StuRA and the university’s Sustainability Task Group, explains:
The goal of the initiative is to convey the ecological value of the trees in a way that is understandable and tangible, and to raise awareness of their importance in urban spaces.
This clearly illustrates that the services provided by trees change over the course of their lives. Depending on their size, age, crown volume, and stage of development, they can contribute to various ecosystem services to varying degrees. This gives interested participants a concrete sense of the roles trees play at different stages of their lives and the value they hold for people, the environment, and the campus.
The initiative combines hands-on environmental education with a data-driven assessment of tree services and is part of the activities surrounding European Tree Tag Day, according to Romana Rauch
In this way, we hope to help raise public awareness of the often-overlooked benefits of trees and highlight their importance for sustainable and livable campus development.
For the coming year, Rauch says, it would be conceivable to expand the initiative to include additional measurable ecosystem services.
It would be particularly interesting to measure the cooling capacity of selected trees on hot summer days. This would further illustrate the contribution the tree population makes to reducing heat and improving the microclimate on campus.
Contact
Romana Rauch
Student Council (StuRa) Sustainability Working Group