Institute of Agronomy will carry out scientific management of the Coimbra trees

The Municipality of Coimbra will celebrate a cooperation agreement with the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA) to provide technical and scientific assistance services for the quantification of biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by urban trees.

The process goes to the Executive meeting on Monday, the 18th, and involves an expense of 46,250 thousand euros, with an execution period of 360 days. It is important to remember that Coimbra is one of the few Portuguese cities to have an Urban Tree Registry, presented last year, an essential tool in management in this area.

Coimbra City Council will therefore use the expertise of ISA services (in addition to its experience in this matter, this academic institution carried out similar work in Lisbon and Cascais, for example) to quantify the ecosystem services that street trees provide of the city, for all existing individuals, based on data already collected by the CMC (focusing on various components, namely related to the atmosphere, hydrological effects and the removal of pollutants).

As part of this protocol, ISA will also collect information on canopy data (crown health, missing crown, canopy exposure to light, canopy base height) for a sample of street trees in the grove under management of the Municipality (for a better estimate of environmental services, assessment of tree composition and diversity) and also provide training, from the user’s perspective, on the i-Tree tool, an open access application created by the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture), which provides means for analyzing and evaluating forests (both in urban and rural environments) and their ecological and economic benefits.

The work will take place over a year and will be carried out by a multidisciplinary team from the Center for Applied Ecology Baeta Neves, from the Instituto Superior de Agronomia, from the University of Lisbon, which includes specialists in the areas of landscape architecture and urban ecology, urban tree ecosystem, botany and geographic information systems. The coordination team will be made up of professors Ana Luísa Soares and Susana Dias, as well as researcher Leónia Nunes.

The Municipality of Coimbra will therefore invest a total of 46,250 thousand euros in this project, of which 27,750 euros will be allocated this year and the remaining 18,500 will be committed for next year. Payments will be phased, with the first, 30%, which corresponds to the value of 13,875 euros, being made with the delivery of a diagnostic report on the existing situation and methodologies, the second also of the same value, upon delivery of a fieldwork report, the third also for the same amount with delivery of the first task report and the fourth and last, for 4,625 euros with delivery of the final report.

This work will allow taking stock of CO2, namely that released into the atmosphere by pollution and that captured by arboreal heritage, with a view to defining indicators that allow alignment with global environmental concerns. The tool, in addition to being used by municipal services, can be made available in a viewer format for the outside, which also allows private designers to improve the quality of their landscape projects.

It is worth remembering that, last year, on World Tree Day, the Coimbra City Council formally presented the Urban Tree Registry. This document includes more than 26 thousand species existing in the municipal public space of the urban area. The platform allows access to the “citizen card” of the trees, that is, it is possible to consult the information on the trees, namely their age, their location and other more specific technical information related to the plant health of tree specimens. This tool is essential for planning and management, which few municipalities have, although it is mandatory by law, it has made it possible to collect specific data on urban arboreal heritage that also provides for the development of subsequent work, namely the quantification and qualification of ecosystem services provided by trees in urban environment.