There is already a tree 4.0 in Augsburg. He is standing at the ice channel, the professor of ecoclimatology at the Technical University of Munich, Annette Menzel, had the approximately 100-year-old beech tree wired up four years ago. Since then, the tree has been transmitting its data to the Internet every day. The project is intended to provide scientists with important insights and help to illustrate climate change: The leaf temperature provides insights into evaporation and thus the water supply to the leaves. A sensor shows the sap flow, i.e. the water transport from the roots to the leaves. And a so-called dendrometer measures the girth of the tree: during the day the trunk loses some of its girth because it uses water, and at night it swells again.
By 2025, the venerable red beech, which is part of a Bavaria-wide pilot project, will have many wired competitors, especially in the city center but also in other places in Augsburg: the city has received a little more than eight million euros in funding from the federal program “Adaptation of urban spaces to the climate change”. It is the highest sum that is paid out to a project from the funding pot nationwide.
“Smart city green for a climate-resilient Augsburg” is the name of the program that Augsburg will now implement with its own funds for 9.5 million euros by 2025: The city wants to put new, heat-resistant trees and plants in the ground and establish a smart mobile irrigation system for them. The system is to use sensors to determine the water requirements of the individual trees, based on weather forecasts, amounts of precipitation and soil moisture values. In this way, the city hopes to optimize the routes of watercraft – and ultimately save water with digital watering management in the increasingly hot summers of the future, even though the plants will need more and more water because of the heat.
The new trees equipped with sensors are not a scientific project like the talking tree on the Eisbach, which is supposed to use its data to tell about climate change. The digital casting management could be forward-looking for other municipalities, since all cities and municipalities are faced with the task of adapting to climate change, says Claudia Roth (Greens), Minister of State for Culture and Media and Augsburg member of the Bundestag.