Tree Management using IrisBG | May Coffee Chat 2025

"I wanted the systems that I was creating to be inheritable."

- Jack Schaefer, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist® from The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden

Our May IrisBG Coffee Chat, features Jack Schaefer, an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist® from The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. As the head arborist, Jack plays a vital role in preserving and nurturing the garden's large and historic trees.

During this presentation, Jack shared his insights into how the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden utilizes IrisBG to catalog and oversee its remarkable collection of trees. Jack demonstrates how he imports past inventories from third party contractors and how he conducts new Level 1 and Level 2 assessments using the Tree Inspections module in IrisBG. All of this data creates a searchable history of all the work that has been done on the trees at the zoo over the years.

Jack generously provided the process documentation that he created for his team to make sure that his work is inheritable. See the resources attached below.

Thanks to all of you who joined us! The Coffee Chat attendees were more experienced users with 61% intermediate users, 11% advanced users, 22% novice, and 6% just trying out the trial.

We took another poll of the attendees to see who was conducting tree inspections and learn more about how the tree inspections were recorded.

The map below shows the gardens and arboreta represented by those who registered for the Coffee Chat - home offices not taken into consideration.   

 A few slides from Jack's Presentation

Inspections and Map Report screens in IrisBG. Jack works on a Microsoft Surface Pro connected to WiFi while surveying the trees outside to make changes to the database.

In addition to the 2 million people that visit the zoo each year, this Red Panda is one of the inhabitants of the zoo that Jack keeps safe with his routine inspection of the Elm in its habitat.

Historic tree inspection data provided by a third party contractor, that can be imported into IrisBG.

🌱Learn more about the Tree Inspections Module in IrisBG.