BOULDER, Colo. — You've likely heard of Fitbits. You might even wear one to track your own movement and health. Researchers are now using the same technology to track the health of trees to better understand how our warming climate is impacting our urban canopy.
Since 2018, postdoctoral research scientist Deidre Jeager has been listening to what trees on the University of Colorado's East Campus are telling us about how they're doing.
While we all know trees can't actually talk to us, we can listen to them using accelerometers.
"I just had it strapped ... right on the trunk," Jeager said of the devices. "I like to call it a Fitbit for a tree."
Like a Fitbit, the accelerometers Jeager uses track movement in real time.
"It even can tell us things that we're not necessarily observing with cameras or visually," she said.
On trees, the devices detect vibrations on the trunk as they sway in the wind.
"As the mass of the tree changes, the frequency of vibrations changes," Jeager said.
And a tree's mass depends on how much water it brings in through the seasons.
"We can think about some of the changes in tree mass that are associated with disease, with extreme weather events," she said.
Experts agree: the warmer our climate, the more extreme our weather will get. So having high-resolution, long-term accelerometer data will help scientists better anticipate how those extremes will impact our trees, like when they bloom or produce fruit, or how they withstand drought.
"With our changing climate, on top of urban densification and urban heat, the timing of when leaves and flowers emerge is really important to monitor," Jeager said.
And the better we understand how climate is impacting trees, the better we'll know how it will impact us.
"The accelerometer can be there every day, every minute, every second," she said.
Jeager said even homeowners can use accelerometers on their own trees to better track their health and to get better information on how much to water the trees -- all important information as we look to conserve water more and more.
She's even been working on a smartphone app that will translate the high-resolution accelerometer data into information we can all understand.
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