Phnom Penh Overview
Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia and is home to more than 2 million people. The city lies at the confluence of Mekong and Tonle Sap rirvers. Wat Phnom, an iconic landmark, is considered the founding site of modern Phnom Penh. The Wat Phnom area is lush with tall trees and is significant historical site.
Phnom Penh is characterized by its natural features, including numerous lakes, rivers, and streams. Tourism plays a vital role in Phnom Penh’s economy. The city attracts visitors with its blend of historical, cultural, and natural attractions. The Royal Palace, National Musuem, and Koh Dach are popular tourist destinations. The vibrant riverfront area along Sisowath Quay offers various activities such as dinning, shopping, sporting, and entertainment options, drawing crowd of locals and tourists.
Overview of the data
The very high-resolution global canopy map is the result of various high-detail satellite images stitched together from different temporal phases (2018 to 2020) and processed using an artificial intelligence model to identify trees at a 1-meter pixel-level scale.
The data is publicly available for download. However, I have processed it by clipping the global scale data to just the boundary of Phnom Penh city. Due to the size of the data (3.6 gb), it may take some time to fully load in your browser, depending on your internet speed. I advise accessing this map on a computer browser rather than a mobile phone. Alternatively, you can try accessing it on Google Earth Engine.
I have made this data available for download. You will find one vector file, which is Phnom Penh Boundary (provided by The Humanitarian Data Exchange) and one raster file, which is this tree canopy height data.
It is the collaboration work between Meta, World Resources Institute, and Land & Carbon Lab. To learn more, head over to Meta’s blog post.
Urban Planning Implications
The potential implications for urbanism include urban tree monitoring, city carbon capture, and identifying tree pockets for conservation or establishing urban parks with existing tree patches. This data can also be used for further analysis of the relationship between green areas in the city and demography and population density. Additionally, benefits of trees and parks in urban areas extend toward improving air quality, reducing the urban heat island effect, enhancing mental and physical well-being, increasing biodiversity, providing recreational spaces, and contributing to stormwater management.
Data Limitation
The data is at a global scale, but not all regions have the same level of accuracy. To define the height data, airborne data is needed, and the majority of the world does not have sufficient coverage of lidar data. Moreover, some part of the regions in the satellite imagery contain blurry images, cloud obstructions, and cloud shadows.
Downloadable data: