Pune Volunteers Map Riverbank Trees Amid Urban Redevelopment Plans

Recording the riverbanks before redevelopment

As Pune plans redevelopment along the Mula-Mutha rivers, volunteers with the grassroots group Pune River Revival are documenting trees in the city’s riparian zones. Their work offers a record of the riverbanks’ existing tree cover as the urban project takes shape. The effort puts a basic but consequential question on the record: what is growing along these banks now, before construction changes the places where those trees stand?

Tree mapping can turn a broad impression of “green space” into a more useful account of individual trees and their locations. A map may help residents and project watchers discuss what exists in a particular stretch, rather than relying only on photographs or general descriptions. It’s a modest form of citizen science, but it can give people a shared reference point as plans become more concrete.

A small survey in a large city

On a Saturday morning, seven volunteers gathered at Madhavrao Scindia Garden beside the Mula River, carrying measuring tapes and smartphones. Across the water, a forested area offered shade and birdsong—an increasingly uncommon setting in a city with an estimated population of 7.9 million. The contrast gives the exercise its immediate setting: a patch of riverbank vegetation within a dense urban environment.

The volunteers’ tools suggest a practical, field-based method. Measuring tapes can help record tree dimensions, while smartphones can capture observations and location information. The work still depends on consistent choices about what to measure, how to identify a tree, and how to record its position. Without a shared method, records gathered by different people may be difficult to compare or verify.

That groundwork matters because a tree count alone can leave important questions unanswered. A useful inventory might distinguish individual trees by location and characteristics, allowing later observers to check whether a record corresponds to a particular tree. The source doesn’t specify the group’s full protocol or the fields volunteers collect, so the significance of the current survey rests chiefly on its stated aim: documenting existing tree cover.

Seven people working on one morning can’t, by themselves, describe every riverbank in Pune. But a repeatable process can extend the value of each visit. If you're working in this space, the challenge is familiar: collect observations carefully enough that they remain useful after the volunteers leave the site.

Why the project changes the stakes

The Pune Riverfront Development Project proposes promenades, recreational spaces and infrastructure along the riverbanks. Its estimated cost is about 4,727 crore rupees, or roughly $500 million. The group formed in response to the plan, placing its tree documentation alongside a public project that could reshape how people use and experience the river corridor.

Large riverfront schemes often bring together several competing aims: public access, recreation, infrastructure and the condition of the river environment. A promenade or other public space can change how residents reach the water, while construction can alter the land along its edges. Those general tensions don’t establish what will happen to any particular tree in Pune. They do explain why documenting current conditions can be useful before decisions and building work move further along.

This is more significant than it looks. An inventory won’t determine the project’s design or settle disagreements over redevelopment, but it can make one part of the discussion more concrete. Existing trees are easy to refer to as an abstract environmental asset; a location-based record gives advocates, residents and planners something more specific to examine.

(And this is the part most people overlook.) Records matter only if others can understand and revisit them. A list that lacks clear locations or consistent measurements may have limited value outside the group that collected it. Conversely, well-organized observations can help people compare what was recorded with what they later see on the ground. The article’s account doesn’t explain how the group plans to publish or maintain its data, leaving that question open.

From informal mapping to a method

“We started organizing the tree mapping exercise systematically in 2024,” says volunteer Raghunandan Patil. Volunteers had mapped trees manually before then, he says, but lacked technical knowledge of how to document them properly. Patil adds that the group now…

The distinction Patil describes is common in volunteer research. Informal observation can identify a concern and bring people together; a more systematic approach aims to make observations consistent enough to use over time. That shift doesn’t automatically make a survey complete or error-free. It does give a group a better chance of producing records that can be checked, updated and understood by people beyond the original volunteers.

There’s also a practical limit to what a short field exercise can establish. Tree condition, species identification and exact location can require different kinds of expertise, and smartphone records depend on how carefully volunteers use them. The available account doesn’t say which methods the group adopted after its earlier manual mapping, or how it handles uncertain identifications. Those details would help readers assess the survey’s precision, but their absence doesn’t erase the value of building a record.

A baseline can become more useful when it’s revisited. Later surveys could show whether the same trees remain, whether new growth appears, or whether the mapped area has changed. That comparison would depend on preserving the original observations and applying compatible methods. For now, the group’s work establishes an effort to document what is present as the redevelopment plan takes shape.

What the record can—and can’t—do

Citizen mapping is not a substitute for project planning, ecological assessment or official monitoring. Its role is narrower: volunteers can gather observations from places they know and make those observations available for discussion. That can add detail to public debate, especially when the debate concerns physical changes on a riverbank. It can’t, on the information provided, show how many trees will be affected or predict the project’s environmental effects.

And yet. A careful record can make it harder for the existing landscape to disappear from conversation simply because redevelopment proposals describe the future in more detail than the present. The volunteers are documenting that present, one tree at a time. Whether their work shapes decisions will depend on how complete and accessible the record becomes, and on whether people involved in the project engage with it.

For Pune residents, the immediate value is a clearer account of the riverbanks the project proposes to transform. For the volunteers, systematic mapping offers a way to move from concern to evidence. The source ends before describing the group’s current work in full, so the scale and eventual reach of its survey remain unclear. What’s clear is the purpose: to preserve a record of the trees along the Mula and Mutha rivers while the city considers a major change to their banks.

This article was originally published on Mongabay