About the Green Giants project
Gigantes Verdes® (Green giants) is a citizen science project by VERDE a non-profit association that works with local communities mostly in the north of Portugal.
The Green Giants Project's mission is to engage local communities in the conservation of Portugal's native forests, fostering a deeper connection between people and natural heritage. To achieve this, it focuses on training Green Giants "Ambassadors" to map, characterize, and monitor Green Giants (trees with trunk with diameter above 150cm) in their regions.
Organising Ambassadors to collect the data
Through citizen science, the Ambassadors connect the technical knowledge acquired during training with the active participation of the community, encouraging the direct involvement of citizens in the mapping and monitoring of trees. This approach makes it possible to create a collaborative database, where each Ambassador can contribute to the identification of Green Giants, the characterization of their microhabitats, and the analysis of local pressures that threaten these trees. By incorporating citizen science into the project, the Ambassadors not only help generate knowledge but also encourage others to get involved in biodiversity conservation, expanding the project’s impact both locally and nationally.
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An effective technical solution
At the end of 2024 VERDE approached NaturalGIS LDA a company that provides GIS services around QGIS, asking for support about how to technically implement tools and workflows for the Gigantes Verdes® project, especially regarding the field data collection aspect. The suggested approach was to use an integrated GIS platform as MerginMaps/QGIS rather than developing a custom mobile app (an approach that has some advantages but also many downsides). VERDE accepted the proposed solution and so NaturalGIS implemented it from a technical point of view.
For field data collection it was chosen to use MerginMaps given its nice user interface, easy to use also for users that are not GIS savvy. The collected data on mobile devices is then synchronized to a self-hosted instance of MerginMaps Community Edition. Data is then processed in QGIS Desktop and published on a WebGIS platform with yet another piece of infrastructure based on QGIS (Server this time).
The Ambassadors go out and record data about trees that meet the qualification to be ‘Green Giants’, which is determined by the size and species of the tree. In most cases, any tree that is too big for the surveyor to reach their arms around is considered a Green Giant.
The survey form is organised in a way to make it approachable for most users. There are a small number of fields, most of which are not mandatory to fill in. There is also an optional tab for users to fill in more details about the tree if they are comfortable to do so and most questions are in a ‘yes/no’ format to make it easy for the surveyors.
At the time of this writing there are almost 300 people registered on the self-hosted instance of MerginMaps CE and since the project has started everything worked in a smooth way, contributing to the mapping of more than 15 000 Green Giants in Portugal.
