1. Get your mapping team together. You can do this project on your own, but it’s more fun to work with a core group to identify the trees and plan the walking route.

2. Find the trees you will feature. Walk your park, school or church grounds, or community to find notable trees. The walk will be more interesting if it features a variety of species and focuses on trees that have a distinguishing characteristic – biggest, youngest, or only one of its kind, for example. Some communities have invested in creating a tree inventory that includes tree locations and species, along with measurements of tree width, trunk diameter, and (rarely) height. An inventory can guide your initial choices, but you’ll still want to walk and verify. If you’d like to save the GPS coordinates of your trees as you choose them (the more techie of the two ways you can get your trees into your online map), see instructions after these steps.

3. Find the tree type for each of your candidate trees. If you don’t have a tree expert in your group to ID all the trees, use a field guide like The Sibley Guide to Trees or use a nature-focused plant identification app like PictureThis. It’s best to use more than one method to ID the tree, to make sure you have it right.

4. Measure your trees (optional). You will be able to add pop-up facts about each tree in your mapped route. It can spice up your walk to include facts about size – how big around or how wide, for example. Instructions for measuring are at the end of these steps.

5. Map your tree walk in AllTrails. You can create your tree walk with the “Create a map” function in the popular AllTrails hiking and biking app. Anyone with an account (free or paid) can create a map. You’ll work from a laptop (on alltrails.com) to create the route, but the walk itself can then be done using the AllTrails app on a mobile phone. To begin, create an AllTrails account if you don’t have one. If multiple people in your group will be entering data for the walk, you can create a new AllTrails account for your group that everyone on your core team can log into. The instructions for creating a new map are clearly laid out by AllTrails. Some pointers:

• Give your walk a title and description.
• Lay out the route using either Smart Routing (which will snap your route to roads or other access trails) or Drawing Mode if you aren’t sticking to established paths.
• Add your trees as Waypoints. You’ll either drag each new waypoint to a tree’s location or fill in the tree’s latitude and longitude in the waypoint information list, if you’ve recorded those coordinates during your initial walk, an optional step. Then you’ll add the tree’s species and a description, which can include how the tree supports wildlife and insects or how it’s threatened by climate change, for example. See “Facts to Share” (in the section below) for ideas.
• If you’re not sure of the best walking route, you can map your trees first and then decide on (and map) the route after you’ve seen all the tree locations laid out.
• You can edit and save your map as many times as you’d like. It’s easy to modify a route or add and edit waypoints (your trees).

6. Share your champion tree walk with your community. Click the “Share” button from your walk’s webpage to get a sharable QR code and url for your new walk. When you share, be sure to let your community know to download the AllTrails app if they don’t have it. One last tip: Also let them know that once they have the walk pulled up, they should choose the “Start” or “Navigate” option to begin the walk. Choosing the “Download” option will prompt them to switch to a paid account if they are using the app’s free version.

7. Give us feedback! Please share how your project went, what worked and what was challenging, and any ideas to make it better.

Optional Steps

1. How to measure your trees. Three standard tree measurements are taken – trunk circumference, canopy spread, and height. Height is the most difficult. You’ll need 2 people to take measurements. See Resources for a 100-foot tape measure that works for this task.

2. Measure trunk circumference. Wrap the tape around the trunk at “breast height” of 4.5 feet above the ground. If the tree is on a slope, measure up 4.5 feet from the mid-point of the slope.  Special rules:

• When the trunk splits into 2 branches less than 4.5 feet from the ground, measure the smallest circumference below the split.
• If a tree has many trunks (a multi-stemmed tree), measure the circumference of all trunks. Then calculate the diameter of each trunk, which equals the circumference divided by pi (3.14). Add the diameter of the largest trunk to one-half the diameter of each additional trunk to get the tree’s total diameter. You can convert that to an equivalent circumference by multiplying by pi.

Learn more about taking these measurements.

3. Measure canopy spread. You’ll find the tree’s average crown spread by measuring the widest point and the narrowest point of the crown. Add them together and divide by two to find the average crown spread.

4. Measure (calculate) height. There are a few ways to estimate tree height. The method below uses a phone app that measures vertical angles, like “Level” for IPhone, and requires a bit of trigonometry at the end. This method is fairly accurate and reinforces math and tech skills for students. There are also simpler methods, though they can be less accurate.

5. Estimating tree height using a vertical angle measurement. Download a phone app that measures vertical angles, like “Level” for iPhone. You’ll also need to tape a 12-inch ruler or other long straight object lengthwise along the back of your phone (don’t cover your camera!) so you can sight along it. Now you’re ready to measure.

• First, measure your height at the bridge of your nose at eye level and record the number – this will come into your calculations later.
• Now measure off any set distance from your tree, like 50 or more feet. A longer distance will give you a better height estimate. Record the number and stand in that spot.
• With your “Level” app active, put the base of your phone on your nose at eye level, and sight along the ruler so that it points to the very top of the tree. What is the angle? If your app has a “Hold” button, click it to lock in your measurement. If not, ask your partner to read the angle. Record it.
• Now, knowing the distance from the tree, the vertical angle to the top of the tree, and the height of your phone measurement, you can use some simple trigonometry to find the tree height.
• Check if the tool you use to do the calculation needs the angle in radians or degrees. You can convert degrees to radians by multiplying the angle in degrees by pi (3.14) and then dividing by 180 (or use the RADIANS function in Excel).
• Now calculate the tree height: Tree Height = TANGENT(vertical angle)*distance from tree + phone height at eye level.
• Does your tree height value make sense? If not, check your math.

6. Record the GPS coordinates of your trees

There are almost certainly more elegant ways to do this, but one simple way to record a tree’s coordinates (latitude and longitude) relies on your cell phone and the Google Maps app.

• With the Google Maps app active, hold your phone at the tree’s location, zoom in quite a bit, and then click and hold on your current location pin. You should zoom in enough that you can accurately click on your pin location.
• You’ll see information pop up for the pin you’ve selected. Scroll down to the numbers shown for latitude and longitude.
• Select and copy those numbers, and then paste them into your favorite notes app, adding some text to help you know which tree the coordinates belong to.

You can use these facts about native trees in the online descriptions for individual trees you include in your walk. They focus mostly on trees’ benefits for wildlife and our health, rather than on the economic value and uses of wood when trees are cut down. Please send other interesting facts your group develops for your trees – we’ll add them here for other green groups to use.

The Eastern Redbud is a favorite shelter tree for hummingbirds and is covered in pink blossoms every spring, providing an important early spring food for bees.

Sugar maples are famous for fall colors and maple syrup made from the sap. They sustain honeybees, caterpillars, and birds. To distinguish them from other maples, look for the Sugar maple’s “U” shape between leaf lobes, and the smooth leaf sides with few teeth. Their range is shifting northward as average temperatures rise with climate change.

Black walnuts are a favorite food for squirrels. The nuts are hard to crack and aren’t usually sold in stores (those are the thin-shelled English walnut).

American sycamores grow to be giants with white, mottled bark. The seeds are in “buttonball” fruits eaten by chickadees and finches.

Tuliptrees have colorful tulip-like flowers in the spring. They can grow to be well over 100 feet high, with a characteristic clear, straight trunk. Hummingbirds enjoy the flower nectar, while other birds and small mammals eat the winged seeds.

Willow oaks are one of many native oak trees that are the backbone of urban forests. Oaks support over 500 butterflies and moths and are a food source for hundreds of bird and animal species.

Sassafras roots and bark have been used in medicine, cosmetics, and even root beer. Songbirds and small mammals enjoy the berries, though they are not considered safe for humans. Look for leaf variations – leaves can have either 1, 2, or 3 lobes, on the same tree.

White oaks provide habitat and food for more insects, birds, and other wildlife than any other type of tree in North America.

Native trees support far more wildlife and insect life than non-native trees. Consider the differences for butterflies and moths (and their caterpillars) – native oaks support 557 species, native wild cherries support 456, and native willows support 455. In contrast, fewer than 10 species are supported by non-native Crape myrtle, bush honeysuckle, Chinese privet, and burning bush. And there are no verified records of caterpillars feeding on the non-native Ginkgo, Dawn Redwood, or Lebanon cedar.¹

For facts about trees’ general benefits to health and the environment, see “Facts to Share” in our “Plant seedling trees” project.

Click to expand for references.

Project description:

In a community with over 200 street trees, 10 were featured in a champion tree walk that got residents talking about their shared responsibility to maintain the valuable canopy.

Feedback:

“This is a fantastic resource and a perfect addition to the Village Spring Fair! Love the champion redbud.”

The Nature of Oaks by best-selling author and nature expert Douglas Tallamy presents a new approach to conservation that starts in the yard.

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben is a best-selling account of what trees feel and how they communicate.