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Grading of Parameters for Urban Tree Inventories by City Officials, Arborists, and Academics Using the Delphi Method

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Abstract

Tree inventories are expensive to conduct and update, so every inventory carried out must be maximized. However, increasing the number of constituent parameters increases the cost of performing and updating the inventory, illustrating the need for careful parameter selection. This article reports the results of a systematic expert rating of tree inventories aiming to quantify the relative importance of each parameter. Using the Delphi method, panels comprising city officials, arborists, and academics rated a total of 148 parameters. The total mean score, the top ranking parameters, which can serve as a guide for decision-making at practical level and for standardization of tree inventories, were: Scientific name of the tree species and genera, Vitality, Coordinates, Hazard class, and Identification number. The study also examined whether the different responsibilities and usage of urban tree databases among organizations and people engaged in urban tree inventories affected their prioritization. The results revealed noticeable dissimilarities in the ranking of parameters between the panels, underlining the need for collaboration between the research community and those commissioning, administrating, and conducting inventories. Only by applying such a transdisciplinary approach to parameter selection can urban tree inventories be strengthened and made more relevant.

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Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank research assistants Cecilia Ek and Johanna Lööw for the sometimes frustrating job of gathering information on experts conducting the snowball method. We also want to thank all of the participants in the Delphi study: Anders Ohlsson Sjöberg, Anna Flatholm, Anu Riikonen, Arne Mattson, Björn Embrén, Dan Haubo, Elisabeth Lindkvist, Garry Lindquist, Harald Kratschmer, Henrik Morin, Henrik Sjöman, Klaus Schneider, Klaus Stritzke, Michael Jackson, Oliver Bühler, Per Anker Pedersen, Stefan Lagerqvist, Örjan Stål, and those of the panelists who chose to remain anonymous. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the Nordic-Baltic Centre of Advanced Research on Forestry Serving Urbanised Societies (CARe-FOR-US II) for its encouragement and for fruitful discussions on the findings of the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Landscape Management, Design and Construction, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

    Johan Östberg, Tim Delshammar, Björn Wiström & Anders Busse Nielsen

Authors
  1. Johan Östberg
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  2. Tim Delshammar
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  3. Björn Wiström
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  4. Anders Busse Nielsen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johan Östberg.

Appendix

Appendix

A total of 37 new parameters were suggested. Several other suggestions were made by the panelists, but after discussions among the authors these parameters were merged into different Free text parameters because they were not considered capable of standing as individual parameters in the Delphi study. Examples of these parameters were: Use of the wood after cutting the tree down, and Damage to the tree on delivery from the nursery. The decision to add several free text fields resulted in the original free text field being split into 15 new free text groups, which were specific for the different types of parameters. To reduce the number of parameters from 161, thus making the survey somewhat more manageable, 13 parameters were included within existing parameters or were excluded from the list of parameters. The new parameters are marked with an asterisk (*), the parameters that were included in existing parameters are marked with letters in alphabetical order, and deleted parameters are denoted “Deleted” (Table 3).

Table 3 Ratings for all parameters in the Delphi study, sorted by mean overall value for all panels (city officials, arborists, and academics) and the mean rating given by the individual panels
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Östberg, J., Delshammar, T., Wiström, B. et al. Grading of Parameters for Urban Tree Inventories by City Officials, Arborists, and Academics Using the Delphi Method. Environmental Management 51, 694–708 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-012-9973-8

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