John Lee ’27, Electrical and Computer Engineering

John Lee ’27

Major

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project Title

Urban Tree Mapping in Chennai, India

Minor(s): Statistics and Machine Learning

The overarching goal of our research is to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Since trees have the ability to sequester and store carbon in their biomass, measuring their carbon sequestration rate and carbon stocks will help bring us one step closer to reaching net-zero emissions. I worked on a project that aims to be the first metro-wide study that is geotagged and open source, providing accurate tree measurement data. As part of a team, I surveyed trees in Chennai, India, to obtain new data. First, I randomly sampled 150 10x10m plots around Chennai. Then, I went to these plots to measure the coordinates of vertices, coordinates of trees, circumference at 1.5 meter height, species, bole height and full height. We completed around 40 plots. We hope to host the map of the completed plots on the web for other researchers, governments and non-profit organizations to utilize. The project gave me the opportunity to obtain fieldwork and data analysis skills, as well as experience in both machine learning basics and front-end programming. I was truly intrigued by the work and had a wonderful time working with my mentors.