Qualifying the Municipality of Almada involves the promotion of social, economic, cultural and environmental factors, in which the valorisation of both ecological connectivity and public space play a decisive role. Thus, since 2015 the Municipality of Almada has been adopting a strategy for the environment and sustainability that reveals a strong connection to the local tree heritage, translated into the construction and requalification of several green areas and in the promotion of the street trees.

Street trees are a valuable asset for the goods and services they offer to society and ecosystems, with regard to the functions of controlling the effects of solar radiation, protection against erosion, structuring of road traffic, as well as cultural, social, didactic and integration functions with the landscape. These natural elements play, cumulatively, a determining role in supporting a continuous network of pedestrian paths (green corridors) and/or spaces of landscape framing, as well as improving the perception and urban reading of spaces, resulting in better appropriation of them.

 At the end of 2019, a partnership was established between the Municipality of Almada (CMA) and the Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA) of the University of Lisbon, with the objective of characterizing the tree heritage, with main focus on the street trees, supporting the elaboration of  the Regulation for Tree management in the Municipality. With this partnership it is intended to add updated information on the street tree from several green structures, through the collection and recording of data regarding tree richness and diversity, their dendrometric characteristics, phytosanitary state and biomechanical stability, along with the evaluation of environmental services (or ecosystem) provided by them. This work is organised in the following tasks:

Task 1. Characterization of a sample of about 1800 street trees in typified parishes from Municipality of Almada (obtaining dendrometric, structural and positioning parameters, as well as phytosanitary assessment and risk of rupture);

Task 2. Validation and integration of the data collected in a Geographic Information System, with the creation of a Database that can be used in the subsequent phases of this project and in other applications of interest to the CMA;

Task 3. Creation of a model of valuation of the trees of the municipality based on the evaluation of environmental services (or ecosystem services) provided by the Street trees quantified with the i-Tree application;

Tasks 4. and 5. Proposal for Regulation of the Urban trees and Municipal Green Spaces, including decision-support criteria as a  fundamental instrument for the management of the afforestation of streets;

Task 6. Contribution to the dissemination and public communication of the methods and results achieved intended to raise awareness for  urban forest and urban green spaces in the municipality.