Cul-Grow

Nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Calgarians take immense pride in the city's reputation for outdoor recreation. The city's world-famous stampedes and hockey games continue to draw visitors from all corners of the globe. In recent years, the city has witnessed an unprecedented surge in population growth, and with it, an expansion of urban development. While urban development may be necessary, the unfortunate consequence has been the proliferation of parking lots and other artificial structures, turning Calgary into a concrete jungle with the lowest levels of urban greenery among Canada's top five most populous cities. Statistics Canada reported a 20% loss of green space in Calgary between 2011 and 2023, serving as a poignant reminder of how human activity can irrevocably damage natural landscapes and habitats.

Despite its beauty, Calgary is not immune to environmental challenges. In 2013, the city faced one of its costliest disasters when it was hit by devastating floods and Calgary residents have become all too familiar with air quality issues caused by seasonal wildfires, which can obstruct their views and enjoyment of the city.

Urban green space is a component of urban ecology. At its most basic level, urban green space refers to any area of land within a city or town that is covered by vegetation such as trees, plants, gardens, or parks. It is an important element of urban planning and provides a range of ecological, social, and economic benefits to the community. Examples of urban green space include public parks, community gardens, green roofs, and green corridors. Moreover, it facilitates the interactions between living organisms and their physical and social environment in urban areas.

• Reduce air pollution: Green spaces act as natural air purifiers that absorb pollutants like carbon dioxide and release oxygen, increasing the quality of air.

• Enhance biodiversity: Green spaces provide habitats and food sources for a wide range of plant and animal species, and create corridors for wildlife to move through urban and suburban environments.

• Regulate Temperature: By providing shade, evapotranspiration, and cooling through photosynthesis, green spaces helps to mitigate the urban heat island effect and reduce overall energy consumption for cooling.

• Improve mental and physical health: Exposure to greenery has been linked to reduced stress, anxiety, and depression levels, improved mood, and cognitive function. Spending time in green spaces has been associated with reduced rates of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

To address the loss of green spaces and natural landscapes in Calgary, Team GeoTrio at the University of Calgary developed an application, Cul-Grow, using Esri technology to promote the Cultivation and Growth of green space and natural areas within the city. The application offers tools to highlight and examine the evolution of green space in Calgary from the year 2012 to 2020. As well, the application provides practitioners and decision makers with tools to identify suitable locations for new green spaces and evaluate existing development permits that promote the growth of green spaces.

Branch Out is an application geared at visualizing the evolution of tree canopy density in Calgary and is intended to be used to monitor and assess how green space in the city is changing. To explore the geographic distribution of trees in Calgary, the Branch Out application includes a dataset containing the condition and location of all public trees citywide. As stated on the “Branching out tree program” webpage, “Calgary’s tree canopy coverage is currently at 8.25%, this includes trees planted on both public and private property.” In addition, the program indicates that the city has a goal of expanding tree canopy coverage to 16%. To support this, a custom potential canopy growth index was developed by GeoTrio. The index aims to illustrate the potential for canopy increase in each community and is based on the three parameters: existing public trees, road network, and land-use. For individuals looking to grow trees on their property, the Branch Out tool provides a helpful chart that displays the most prevalent tree species found in Calgary.

Green Space Suitability is centered around a custom green space suitability index developed by GeoTrio. The index is designed to align with relevant community and provincial guidelines and balances three key themes concerning green space in Calgary: Accessibility, Equity, and Environment. To validate the custom index and provide an additional means of scoring, clustering was performed using the ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst Clustering function with existing parks and thirteen variables which were identified as key indicators of access, equity, and environmentally friendly green spaces. In addition, the Green Space Suitability index includes a metric for assessing the proportion of a community that has areas identified as sensitive environmental areas. This focuses on seven datasets including conservation and protected areas, key wildlife and biodiversity zones, and habitats. Finally, the Green Space Suitability tool includes City of Calgary development permits which relate to green spaces and scores them with the suitability score. The intent of this function is to allow decision makers to identify and prioritize top choices for new developments based on the combined, clustered, and the individual theme scores.

Embeded into the application are a number of links which have been used to inform the development of the Cul-Grow Application. These sources provided a basis to develop the application and ensure that it acts as a meaningful resource for those interested in promoting green space.