Metric tracking Successful Tree Plantings

[maltfield]

This is a feature request to track the number of successfully planted trees, in addition to the number of trees planted.

Problem

Unfortunately, it's not very helpful to plant 1,000 trees if 999 of them die.

I've worked on afforestation projects planting trees in formerly-deforested, aired climate. Initially planting the tree does require a lot of work, but an equal amount of work is required over the next few years to ensure that the trees actually survive.

Solution

A critical metric for continuous-reforstation is to track the success rate of trees planted.

To start, we should track how many of the trees that were planted died after 1 year. If the afforestation org responsible does not supply this data, it's a red flag and they should not be used.

[Ly0n]

We were very aware of this problem when we developed this project. Unfortunately, this was not possible to implement for technical reasons, as there is no standardised data interface in the area of reforestation. If all tree planters agreed on a standard like this, it would be much easier to record the position of the seedling in the images using GPS metadata and then monitor the growth using satellite images: https://github.com/Plant-for-the-Planet-org/treemapper

All of a sudden, carbon offsets based on reforestation would be scientifically verifiable. Unfortunately, there are many black sheep in this area who would not be interested in such developments. A new EU law might force them:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/17/eu-bans-misleading-environmental-claims-that-rely-on-offsetting

Another low hanging fruit how open source could have a significant impact. Interested to build such an "open source reforestation monitoring software standard"?

[maltfield]

Sorry, I don't understand this hold-up. Any serious reforestation project will already be tracking their own success rates. If not, then they're a scam.

I don't think the GPS data should be a necessary prerequisite, nor should we block this feature by requiring some "standardized data interface". In-person audits by a third party can suffice. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of the good here.

If there's a provider that isn't currently providing the number of planted trees that died in their annual reports, then that provider should be blacklisted.

[Ly0n]

At a global level, the only way to validate the planting of trees more or less cost-effectively and scientifically is via satellites. You need GPS coordinates for that, otherwise you don't stand a chance. Third party audits should be based on an open scientific method, and the only organisation I know of that does this is https://carbonplan.org/.

Nevertheless, the API gives us the opportunity to plant trees from this organizations: https://docs.digitalhumani.com/#appendixlist-of-projects

Do you know if any of these organisations provide data on tree planting success rates via an API or other standardised data source?

[maltfield]

I don't think the requirement to have an API makes sense for tree planting. Also, I doubt GPS verification makes sense due to GPS inaccuracies.

I think it makes more sense to physically tag the tree, and have a person at the org physically walk around and check the tags to see if the tree is dead or alive at some intervals of time. Then put this data into a report, distributed as a PDF or CSV or ODS or XML or JSON or whatever.

I'm ignorant about this, but I expect that 100% of the companies that choose to spend development time on an API are scams that don't take their work planting trees that will survive seriously.

Are you saying that this project plans to continue to utilize scam greenwashing companies that do not report the number of trees that died after being planted?