Mapping Mart

Tree Coverage

by Kyle Scallon

Studying satellite imagery from Google maps, I confirmed that Mart’s main street, Texas Avenue, where the majority of commercial and retail buildings are located, has no trees lining its sidewalks. There was, however, a significant amount of trees populating the residential areas. I mapped an area that included the commercial buildings on the main street, the residential buildings two blocks North and two blocks South of the strip, and all of the tree coverage in that area. The commercial buildings were represented as grey blocks, and the residential buildings were represented as blue blocks. To graphically represent the tree coverage I utilized a radial circular form and used two shades of green to differentiate between dense and less dense tree coverage. Inspired by Lynn Osgood’s lecture revealing how tree coverage is directly related to the popularity of a city park in Austin, I  added some information from an article by Dan Burden, titled 22 Benefits of Urban Street Trees.