Overview

In the early 2000s, a retired professor named Myrl Beck Jr. created a website that cataloged many of the trees on campus with full descriptions and a map so that folks could go on a self-guided Tree Tour. (Technically, four tours: North Campus, Central Campus, South Campus, and Old Main.) This website was maintained for many years. Eventually, the technology stack that the website was built on became unsupported, and the site could no longer be updated. Additionally, Myrl Beck passed away in 2023. Over time, many of the trees on the tour website were removed or relocated, and new trees were planted in their place—or in new locations, in the case of construction removal. With no way to make these changes on the original website, Facilities created a PDF to update the tree tour. However, this format was inaccessible and also soon fell out of sync with changes happening on campus.

The tree tour was too neat of a concept to allow the site to simply be archived and taken offline. It became clear that a new website was needed for the Tree Tour. This is when WebTech took over the project and began to discuss possible solutions with Facilities Development & Operations (FDO).

Initially, the strategy was to keep the website similar to the existing tour. Branding would be updated, but it would still be a static site, with updated trees and descriptions. However, in discussions with FDO, it became clear that Drupal may be a better option. FDO had been exploring the possibility of maintaining a tree inventory through third party arbor software. Many of the features that they were looking for in this software were things that could be done in Drupal, like track tree condition and growth data. This presented an opportunity not only to update the tree tour, but to create a foundation for a larger database of trees on campus.

Goal

  • Migrate all of the existing photos, descriptions, and locations of trees from the original tour
  • Take the tour(s) and update tree data, including tree removal/replacement, and get up-to-date photos
  • Update descriptions for accuracy and, occasionally, tone
  • Use Drupal to create a database of trees, rather than plain HTML descriptions

Strategy

In Drupal, we created three content types: Species, Trees, and Tree Sets. 

For species, we imported an existing open source data set which allowed us to reference both common names and the more scientific binomial name of these trees. This is also where identifying descriptors of trees live, such as leaf shape, bark type, etc. This serves as a consistent reference point for individual trees.

Tree entities contain fields for many data. This is where the location, photos, condition, growth information, and internal notes for FDO are stored. It is also where Mryl's descriptions are housed, as many of the descriptions contain interesting historical information about the individual trees.

Tree sets are intended to serve as flexible way of categorizing trees. For FDO, this might mean grouping a set of maples along S. College Drive so that their growth can be tracked, or creating a set of trees that might be impacted by a construction project. This is also how we created the tours: each tour is a tree set. 

Results

The final website consists of two parts: 

trees.wwu.edu is the Campus Tree Inventory. This is where a full list of trees that have been cataloged can be found, along with any available detailed data.

trees.wwu.edu/tour is where the individual tours live, along with updated maps and photos. Most of the original descriptions written by Mryl Beck remain in tact, with some updates to reflect changes on campus.