Open GeoAI for Urban Tree Canopy Mapping in U.S. Cities
June 10, 2026 11:00 am (Central Time)
Abstract
Urban trees play a critical role in mitigating heat, enhancing climate resilience, and advancing environmental equity in cities. While a wide range of remote sensing imagery and deep learning approaches have been used to map urban tree cover, several barriers limit their full operationalization, including the cost of imagery, lack of integrated workflows, and limited practical training in model development and deployment. This study presents an open, reproducible, and transferable framework that leverages publicly available USDA NAIP imagery within the I-GUIDE platform. The training modules are designed for students, instructors, professionals, and municipal practitioners, and cover the full workflow, including training data preparation, model development using open-source image segmentation methods, comparison with pre-trained models, and model retraining for knowledge transfer. This approach provides hands-on learning in remote sensing and GeoAI while enabling consistent and scalable urban tree canopy mapping across cities, supporting planners and decision-makers in managing and expanding urban forests.
Speakers
Yi Qi
University of Southern California
Dr. Yi Qi is an Associate Professor (Teaching) of Spatial Sciences with the Spatial Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. His research integrates remote sensing, geographic information systems and spatial data science in ecological monitoring, environmental studies and natural resource management. He focuses on satellite and airborne remote sensing, computational models, field work, and AI to address how climate and human practices affect crop productivity and ecosystem functioning. With I-GUIDE, he is a member of the 2025-26 cohort of the UCGIS Community Champions.