Measured Trees
Turning tree growth data into interactive 3D, regional comparisons, and tools for exploring the space a tree will need.
Data visualization · Interactive 3D · WordPress development
Role: Independent project — product direction, research, design, and development.
The idea / The process
What does twenty years of growth look like?
A tree’s mature dimensions are difficult to picture. They say little about the space it will occupy at different ages, or how growth varies from place to place. Measured Trees began with a question: could those numbers become an experience you can explore?
From growth curves to a view beside your house.
The project turns the USDA Forest Service Urban Tree Database into regional growth charts, species comparisons, and an interactive 3D viewer. Change the age, explore the available regions, and see the tree’s dimensions beside a house. Sun and shade controls add another way to understand the scene.
An explorer and a yard-fit tool offer different paths through the same information: compare species, filter by dimensions, or start with the space available. These tools share the underlying data rather than offering disconnected answers.
The interesting work is deciding what the data can say.
Tree dimensions follow the project’s regional growth curves. The 3D form is an illustration of typical shape, not a scan or a prediction of one individual tree. The experience makes that distinction visible and stops the curves at the ages supported by the data.
Research also changed the product. A root protection rule was removed from planting-distance calculations because it describes protecting a tree during construction, not predicting damage. Soil studies did not justify changing the growth curves, so those adjustments were left out. Choosing what not to claim is part of building the experience.
One system, several ways to explore.
WordPress provides the publishing foundation, Python prepares and checks the datasets, and Three.js brings the dimensions into an interactive scene. Charts, comparisons, and the viewer translate the same underlying information into different views.
Still taking shape.
The public site is available while development continues. A personalized planting report combines the visitor’s inputs with regional data, a web report, and a PDF. Its purchase and redemption flow has been exercised in test mode; the paid release still has review and production checks to complete.
Measured Trees is an independent DotCraft project: a place to explore how research, development, and interaction can make complex information easier to understand.