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In order to optimise irrigation management and preserve the tree population, the city of Essen has developed TreeCop, a smart watering management system for urban trees in 2020, together with the University of Trier.
Essen's more than 200,000 trees are in a bad way in hot summers. Nowadays, every fourth tree suffers from drought stress and has to be watered intensively to prevent it from dying. In the past ten years, the city has lost around 34,000 trees in the city. At the same time, however, these are becoming increasingly important in times of climate change.
With the help of Copernicus satellite data on drought stress, coupled with soil moisture sensors, the actual watering requirements can be determined. In a first pilot phase, 45 selected urban trees, as well as trees that are particularly worthy of protection as tree monuments, were equipped with sensors (now already 80 are equipped). The smart technology is "hidden" underground and high above our heads: The soil moisture sensors are placed in the root area of the trees. The area-wide LoRaWAN data network of Stadtwerke Essen is primarily used to transmit the information. The sensor data are transmitted wirelessly to databases where they are evaluated by the city foresters and provide information about the condition of the soil. By enriching the satellite data with these sensor measurements, city-wide monitoring is implemented.
The researchers at the University of Trier use images from the European satellite programme "Copernicus". Every three days, a satellite traverses the city area and acquires imagery in pixels of ten times ten metres grid size. By analysisng the acquired data, information about the chlorophyll content of the leaves and thus about the health of the trees, can be…
