AUGUSTA —Getting children off computers indoors and back to nature outdoors is now much easier with an application that combines the two.
Developed by the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Maryland and Columbia University, Leafsnap is free and available for iPhone and iPad but not yet available for Android users.
According to its website, Leafsnap is a mobile app that helps identify tree species from photographs of their leaves. It contains beautiful high-resolution images of their flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds and bark.
Leafsnap, which uses visual recognition software, currently includes the trees of the Northeast and will soon grow to cover the trees of the entire continental United States, its website states.
When people use the digital field guide to identify a tree being viewed, the app automatically shares their images, species identifications and the tree’s location with a community of scientists. These scientists will then use the information to map and monitor population growth and the decline of trees nationwide.
To use Leafsnap, photograph a tree’s leaf against a white background. The app makes the identification by matching the image against a leaf-image library.
When a match is found, the app provides the common and scientific names, information about the tree’s flowers, seeds, bark and fruit, and high-resolution photos.
In writer Joe Rankin’s article, “,” in Wednesday’s Forests for Maine’s Future newsletter, Patricia Maloney said that children will get excited about Leafsnap.
Maloney is the Maine coordinator for Project Learning Tree, which is the national environmental education program sponsored by the American Forest Foundation.
Children using Leafsnap, she said, can “use all their senses.”
“They have information, but they’re also able to touch the tree, look at it, smell the tree, see the real colors of it and its place in the environment,” Maloney said.
“It’s important to show kids that are consumed with technology that you can use it to connect to your environment, your place, your geography.”
Links to the app are available from the Leafsnap website at leafsnap.com.
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