IT specialist Petko Petkov is the author of a project for identifying and passporting trees in Bedechka Park and within the bounds of the town of Stara Zagora. He has now reached the web application stage, but a mobile application is expected to be released within weeks. With the help of PlanZ and a few photographs the trees can be identified and pinpointed on an interactive map:

“Different trees can be registered on the platform using the geolocation of the mobile device used. For the purpose three to five photographs need to be taken. The system identifies the tree species and registers it to the spot where you are standing. Every municipality is obligated to passport the permanent vegetation in the town but in Stara Zagora there is no full passportization. There are other such platforms, but none of them use machine learning, and ours does, which is a great help to users. What I wanted was to be able to offer the easiest and most simplified mechanism so a maximum number of people would be able to use it. The objective is to draw a clear picture of the permanent vegetation in Stara Zagora. We also want to be able to track how this vegetation changes over time. This is a process which is going to take years,” says Petko Petkov who is also a member of the civic movement “Preserve Bedechka”.

Even though his project is still in its initial stages – the platform has been up and running for one month – around 2,000 trees have already been registered. The first tree cut down by the municipality has been registered, which was marked on the interactive map as healthy in May.

The idea for the system was born as a result of the years of efforts to preserve Bedechka Park. Bedechka, a favourite spot in the town, was planted in 1958, and on its territory, covering 106 hectares, there grows the “old sycamore tree” – a 500-year old tree declared a natural monument.

“For the moment there is no mechanism in our application enabling users to include specific information such as height, years or girth of the trunk of a given tree, something done by municipality officials on the spot. For a long time there were false claims that there was no vegetation in Bedechka. A few years ago a referendum was held for preserving the park because there were plans to build a whole new residential district in its place. But it is, in fact one of the few natural parks in the region with a great deal and very dense vegetation.”

Applications such as this exist in different countries around the world, the most popular in Europe probably being TreeTalk for identifying trees in London. Interest in applications for the study of urban nature has gone up globally in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a number of countries parks are the places where people are able to observe the physical distancing requirements while enjoying a natural environment. The PlanZ application was developed in cooperation with the Czech startup Plant.id.

“If it works in Stara Zagora it would be very easy for us to extend the project so it can be used nationwide, and that is just what we are planning,” Petko Petkov says.

For this to work, efforts are now being made to rule out any speculation by users. At this point it is volunteers who register trees in the system. Petko Petkov is hoping that as it develops, tree registering will turn into a cause for many people and that they will return, again and again, to the tree they have mapped and take more pictures to register its development. This would improve the quality of the data input.

Photos: Facebook / Petko Petkov and Preserve Bedechka