Tag Archives: Trees

Welcome to the (Bloggy) Neighborhood

Posted on by
Reply

Via Across the Park, one of my blogging neighbors, I just learned of a new blog on the block, Hawthorne Street:

Hello and welcome. Before creating any misconceptions, let me say up front that we’re going to be posting irregularly: anywhere from a couple of times a week to once every two months. Quality over quantity!
– Reading this blog

Even better, they’re tree huggers:

Since our block—and areas south and east of us—could use more trees, I passed info out to my neighbors on how to request a free tree in front of their houses. I made about 70 copies of the documents below and folded them into a flyer, which I placed in mailboxes of homes without trees on Fenimore, Hawthorne, Winthrop, and Parkside blocks from Flatbush to Nostrand Avenues.
– Getting more trees on your block

Sweet!

Note that, in addition to submitting the paper form, you can request a street tree online. You can request a free street tree, or you can plant your own. Tree planting season runs another month, until about December 15. After that, Spring will be the next opportunity for planting. For more information, see Request a Street Tree on the Parks Web site.

Factoids: NYC’s Street Trees and Stormwater Reduction

Posted on by
2

I’ve been diving deep into the 72-page report on NYC’s street trees I wrote about a couple of days ago. The report was released in the Spring of this year to the public and addressed to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and Fiona Watt, Chief of Parks Forestry and Horticulture. The research documented in this report has informed many of the initiatives I’ve written about previously, including PlanNYC 2030, Parks’ Million Trees Initiative, DCP’s Yards Text Amendment, and so on.

The city spends $21,774,576 each year on its 584,036 living street trees (2005/2006 census), an average of $37.28 for each tree. The annual cost savings and other benefits to the city are $121,963,347, $208.83 per tree, for a Cost-Benefit ratio of $5.60 returned on every $1.00 invested. The second biggest contributor to this impressive %560 annual rate of return is stormwater runoff reductions.

  • Gallons of rainfall/stormwater intercepted each year by NYC’s street trees: 890,643,392
  • Annual cost savings to the city: $35,628,220 total, $61.00 per tree

Many older cities [including NYC] have combined sewer outflow [CSO] systems, and during large rain events excess runoff can mix with raw sewage. Rainfall interception by trees can reduce the magnitude of this problem during large storms. Trees are mini-reservoirs, controlling runoff at the source. [emphasis added] Healthy urban trees can reduce the amount of runoff and pollutant loading in receiving waters in three primary ways:

  • Leaves and branch surfaces intercept and store rainfall, thereby reducing runoff volumes and delaying the onset of peak flows.
  • Root growth and decomposition increase the capacity and rate of soil infiltration by rainfall and reduce overland flow.
  • Tree canopies reduce soil erosion and surface transport by diminishing the impact of raindrops on barren surfaces.

Much of this economic benefit of trees is determined by the total surface area of their leaves. Broad-leaved deciduous London Planetrees, of which there are many large specimens in NYC, account for %28.9 of the stormwater reduction provided by street trees.

Note that this report only address street trees, which comprise only about one-tenth of the 5.2 million trees in the city. However, street trees are adjacent to – and shelter – paved and other impervious surfaces which are the primary cause of surface runoff. Because of this, they provide much greater CSO reduction than trees on open ground such as parks and natural areas.

Related Posts

Preserving Livable Streets

Brooklyn’s Trees, a new Flickr photo group

Posted on by
2

Welcome, Festival of the Trees visitors! Go see the photos in Brooklyn’s Trees. If you like what you see, come back here and read about it, and check out my other posts on Urban Foresty and Trees in general.

Brooklyn’s Trees is a Flickr photo pool I started to “share and celebrate Brooklyn’s trees through photography.” The response has been great, and the submissions are beautiful and diverse.



I’ve adapted a definition of “trees” from Festival of the Trees:

“Trees” are defined as any woody plant species that regularly exceed three meters in height; exceptions might include banana “trees” which are not woody plants. We are interested in trees in the concrete rather than in the abstract, so the “cloud trees” at the intersection of Ocean and Flatbush Avenues, for example, are out.

Any photographs of or about trees in Brooklyn are welcomed, including those on our streets, in our parks, gardens, and other public spaces, and on private property. Young trees, dead trees, shadows or reflections of trees are all in the spirit of this group. Photos should be “safe” as defined by Flickr.

Basic Research: The State of the Forest in New York City

Posted on by
3

Updated 2007.11.13: Added direct links to all resolutions of the full report.

Thanks to a recent post on Save Ridgewood Reservoir, I learned of the existence of a comprehensive report on NYC’s street trees. This technical report was created by the Center for Urban Forest Research and addressed to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe in April of this year. The report provides 72 pages of detailed, quantitative analysis of the state of NYC’s urban forest.

Relative age distribution of all NYC street trees by borough
Relative age distribution of all NYC street trees by borough

A find like this is a source of pleasure indescribable to someone who’s not already a tree-hugging geek such as myself. More important, it provides much-needed reference information for review and discussion of policy and planning, such as the Million Trees initiative, and DCP’s recent Yards Text Amendment proposal.

The city conducted a street tree census, Trees Count, in 2005-2006. The more accessible 12-page report [PDF] from that effort summarizes the numbers, types, sizes and conditions of street trees throughout NYC and by each borough. Here are some highlights for Brooklyn:

  • Number of trees: 142,747
  • Number of trees in 1995-1996 census: 112,400
  • %Change over 10 years: 27%
  • Most common street tree: London Plane, Platanus × hispanica (23.6%)
  • The top five most common trees account for 58% of the street trees.
  • Of Brooklyn Community Boards, CB14 tied with CB7 as having the highest percentage of tree canopy coverage.
  • Of Brooklyn Community Boards, CB14 had the third smallest increase of street trees, only 10%, followed by CB16 at 7% and CB17 at 5%
  • 38% of Brooklyn’s street trees have “infrastructure conflicts,” such as tree lights, choking wires and grates, and close paving.
  • The annual economic benefit of Brooklyn’s trees, considering property values, stormwater runoff, energy savings, air quality, and carbon sequestration, is $31,030,839.

Related posts

Center for Urban Forest Research
Preserving Livable Streets, November 7
Victorian Flatbush at risk from inappropriate zoning, October 23
Carolina Silverbell: One of a Million, October 9
State of Flatbush/Midwood, October 5
1M Trees in 10 Years, April 10
How Much is a Street Tree Worth, April 9
Landscape and Politics in Brooklyn’s City Council District 40, February 14
NASA Maps NYC’s Heat Island, August 1, 2006

Links

The full report – New York City, New York Municipal Forest Resource Analysis – is available as a PDF/Acrobat document from Parks and CUFR in different resolutions: smaller, lower resolution for online viewing, or larger, higher resolution to download for offline viewing or printing.

  • Read it now from CUFR (1.4MB) or Parks (2.4MB)
  • Save it for later from CUFR (13MB)

Trees Count (Parks)
Trees & Greenstreets (Parks)
Million Trees NYC
Yards Text Amendment (DCP)
Center for Urban Forest Research (CUFR)

Preserving Livable Streets: DCP’s Yards Text Amendment

Posted on by
Reply

2008-04-30: Approved!
2007-11-15: Added link to DCP Zoning Glossary.

Illustration of Front Yard Planting from DCP’s proposed Yards Text Amendment online presentation
At tonight’s CB14 Public Hearing, this is sure to be one of the items on the agenda. On September 17, NYC’s Department of City Planning (DCP) released a proposal to amend zoning regulations to address, for the first time, the extent of paved and planted areas on private property:

The new regulations would prevent excessive paving of front yards by requiring that a minimum percentage of all front yards be landscaped. They would also prohibit steeply pitched driveways in front yards and encouraging rear yard garages to maximize plantings. Excessively tall fences and steps in front yards would also be prohibited. The zoning would clarify definitions of side and rear yards to provide predictability and ensure that all homes have adequate open spaces. Together with the Department’s initiative requiring the greening of commercial parking lots this package of regulations will enhance the attractiveness of neighborhood streets, mitigate storm water run-off and reduce surrounding temperatures while furthering Mayor Bloomberg’s goals for a greener, greater New York.
– Press Release

The Department of City Planning in proposing amendments to the Zoning Resolution relating to yard regulations for residential developments. Although the current regulations prescribe minimum requirements relating to location and size of yards, they generally do not deal with the amount of paving and planting in the yards [emphasis added]. In addition, the current regulations are in some cases unclear and do not deal with fences and steps.
– Yards Text Amendment, DCP

This will potentially provide huge collective benefits to individual homeowners, neighborhoods, and the city:

  • Improved streetscape livability, promoting community and economic sustainability
  • Reduced storm drainage and combined sewer outflow
  • Improved community health, eg: from reduced asthma rates
  • Reduced energy costs, especially for summer cooling and air conditioning

This proposal is a first step toward providing some protections. However, it can only work if the underlying zoning is appropriate. Most of the freestanding homes in what’s known as Victorian Flatbush are zoned R3-2, which permits semi-detached row houses, or R6, which is for 6-story townhouses with a continuous street wall. An R2X designation has been used in other down-zoning initiatives, would appropriately reflect the built environment, and provide even more protections if DCP’s proposed changes are approved.

Looking south down Westminster Road in Beverley Square West
Looking south down Westminster Road

Million Trees NYC outlines the economic, tangible, and intangible benefits of NYC’s urban forest:

  • Urban trees help offset climate change by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide in their tissue, reducing energy used by buildings, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel based power plants. Our City’s trees store about 1.35 million tons of carbon valued at $24.9 million. In addition, our trees remove over 42,000 tons of carbon each year.
  • Urban trees capture rainfall on their leaves and branches and take up water, acting as natural stormwater capture and retention devices. Street trees intercept 890.6 million gallons of stormwater annually, or 1,525 gallons per tree on average. The total value of this benefit to New York City is over $35 million each year.
  • Trees remove dust and other pollutants from the air. In fact, one tree can remove 26 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of 11,000 miles of car emissions. Our trees remove about 2,200 tons of air pollution per year, valued at $10 million annually.
  • According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urban forests reduce urban temperatures significantly by shading buildings and concrete and returning humidity to the air through evaporative cooling.
  • By using trees to modify temperatures, the amount of fossil fuels used for cooling and heating by homeowners and businesses is reduced. Our City’s street trees provide $27 million a year in energy savings.
  • New York City’s urban forest provides habitat – including food and shelter for many species of birds, insects, and other wildlife, as well as environmental education resources for New Yorkers of all ages.
  • Over the years the City has invested millions in its urban forest. Trees provide $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on tree planting and care.
  • A significant link exists between the value of a property and its proximity to parks, greenbelts, and other green spaces. Smart Money magazine indicated that consumers value a landscaped home up to 11.3 percent higher than its base price. Street trees provide $52 million each year in increased property values.
  • The greening of business districts increases community pride and positive perception of an area, drawing customers to the businesses.
  • There is growing evidence that trees help reduce air pollutants that can trigger asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Green spaces also encourage physical activity – a healthy habit for any New Yorker.

Looking south down Stratford Road in Beverley Square West
Stratford Road, East side, looking south from Slocum Place
Stratford Road, East side, looking South toward Slocum Place

To reach the goal of one million new trees planted in NYC over the next decade, 40% – 400,000 trees – will have to be planted on private property:

The City of New York will plant 60% of trees in parks and other public spaces. The other 40% will come from private organizations, homeowners, and community organizations.

  • Street Trees: 220,000
  • Parks: 280,000
  • Capital Projects and new Zoning Requirements: 100,000
  • Private Partners: 400,000

– About Million Trees NYC

We also need to preserve the existing urban forest, much of which is in private hands, and, with no legal protections, at risk. The proposed zoning amendments would provide much-needed protection in the form of restrictions and incentives.

East side of Rugby Rd, looking north from Church Av, in Caton Park
East side of Rugby Rd, looking north from Church Av, in Caton Park

I had sent this article to myself to write about it when it first appeared. Just getting around to it now. It got caught in a “draft”. (I’m sick today, I have an excuse.)

Lawns, manicured bushes and a riot of flowers have helped distinguish the borough’s streetscape, enhancing the livability of its communities and giving almost a county-in-the-city aura to many blocks.

However, in recent years, that trend has shifted. Front yards in many areas have been paved over, and blooms have been replaced by parking pads, as ever-increasing population density combined with an up-tick in the number of cars per family has made a guaranteed parking spot something of a holy grail, with portions of residential neighborhoods morphing into something akin to a concrete jungle.

[The Department of City Planning (DCP)] has proposed an amendment to the city’s zoning resolution that would require that a certain minimum percentage of all front yards be landscaped, based on the length of the property’s street frontage.
– Parking it here has many people angry, Flatbush Life, October 18, 2007

[goo.gl]

Related Posts

Victorian Flatbush at risk from inappropriate zoning, 2007-10-23
Carolina Silverbell: One of a Million, 2007-10-09
State of Flatbush/Midwood, 2007-10-05
How Much is a Street Tree Worth, 2007-04-09
Landscape and Politics in Brooklyn’s City Council District 40, 2007-02-14
NASA Maps NYC’s Heat Island, 2006-08-01

Links

DCP: Yards Text Amendment Home Page, Press Release, Full text (PDF, 26 pages), Online Slide Show (25 pages, PDF version available)
DCP: Green Initiatives (including the Yards Text Amendment)
DCP Zoning Glossary
Million Trees NYC

November 7: CB14 Public Hearing on Land Use and Open Space

Posted on by
Reply

COMMUNITY BOARD 14 will hold a public hearing on Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. at the district office, 810 E. 16th St (at Avenue H). Zoning issues, tree planting, yards and open space requirements in the area will be discussed. For more information, call (718) 859-6357.

Contact info

Brooklyn Community Board 14
810 East 16th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11230-3010
Phone: 718.859.6357
Fax: 718.421.6077
Email: bklcb14@optonline.net

Carolina Silverbell: One of a Million

Posted on by
Reply

Just the thought of Mike Bloomberg and Bette Midler together makes me giddy.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New York Restoration Project (NYRP) Founder Bette Midler today launched the Million Trees NYC initiative to plant and care for one million trees throughout the five boroughs in the next decade. The Mayor and Ms. Midler planted a street tree in the Morrisania section of the Bronx – a neighborhood with too few trees and high rates of asthma – and declared the Carolina Silverbell to be the first of one million trees.
– Press release, Tuesday, October 9, 2007

And if not for the much-needed rain tonight, we could see that the Empire State Building is lit green to note today’s kickoff.

Not once do they mention the botanical name of the tree, Halesia carolina. It’s a lovely, graceful tree. I don’t know how it fares as a street tree in NYC. It’s native to the southeastern United States. It’s in the Styracaceae, the Storax or Snowball family.

The nomenclature for this genus seems confused. Wikipedia lists H. carolina as a synonym for H. tetraptera, but the USDA Plants database identifies the latter as a different species, the mountain silverbell, with two subspecies. I’ll defer to USDA Plants as the authority.

None of the four species of Halesia are native to New York state. According to the Atlas of the New York Flora Association, both H. carolina and H. tetraptera are known as escapes in the wild.

The Parks Department will receive nearly $400 million over the next ten years to plant 600,000 public trees by reforesting 2,000 acres of existing parkland and lining New York City streets with trees. The City’s partners, including non-profit and community organizations, businesses, developers and everyday New Yorkers will plant the remaining 400,000 trees.

There are many ways to get involved in Million Trees NYC:

  • plant a tree in your yard;
  • join a volunteer group planting trees in parks and on public land;
  • request that the City plant street trees on your block;
  • learn how to water, mulch, and prune trees;
  • educate other New Yorkers on the importance of our urban forest; and
  • become an advocate for planting trees.

Each request for a street tree will trigger an evaluation of the suggested site by a Parks department inspector. Considerations such as electrical wires, underground utilities, light posts and building entrances will be part of the inspection. If it is possible to plant a tree in the site requested, a tree planting contractor will be assigned to plant the tree in the next possible planting season, in either the spring or fall.

Links

Halesia carolina (USDA Plants Database)
Million Trees NYC Web site (also in the sidebar under Links > NYC)
New York Restoration Project (Bette Midler’s joint, also in the sidebar)

Related Posts

April 22: 1M Trees in 10 Years

Fall Approaches

Posted on by
2

Fall Colors around Lake Superior, September 23, 2007. Credit: NASA Terra–MODIS (Satellite-Sensor)

The autumnal equinox of 2007 occurred at 09:51 UTC on Sunday, September 23, or 05:51 Eastern Time. “Autumnal” instead of “Fall” because:

  1. It’s okay to use for both hemispheres.
  2. Also, you could use this term on any other planets on which you should find yourself.

In northeastern North America, we measure fall by the changes in foliage. And it’s on its way south from Canada.

The calendar may have set September 23 as the first day of autumn in 2007, but the forests that line the eastern shore of Lake Superior had already started to mark the turning of the season. By September 23, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this photo-like image, the forests of northern Michigan and southern Ontario flamed orange as the first trees of the season—maples—began to display their brilliant red and orange fall colors. Veins of green run through the sea of orange where the deciduous forest gives way to deep green pine trees.

The most vivid color is concentrated in Canada’s Ontario Province. Located farther south, Michigan’s trees show only a hint of color. …

The large image provides an unusually cloud-free view of all of the Great Lakes. Similar spots of color stretch across southern Canada and parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The northern plains of the United States have started to turn yellow as grasses ripen, but the eastern forests in Pennsylvania and New York remain deep green.

– Fall Colors around Lake Superior, NASA Earth Observatory

New York State operates its own fall foliage watch. You can track the progress of the changes on the map provided on their Web site. They were predicting “vibrant, near-peak autumn color” this past weekend for the Adirondacks, the peachy area in northern New York state on the map below.

Here in NYC, we’re still in the green, but I’ve been watching the subtle changes. Individual trees in my neighborhood, including the cherry tree in my backyard, are already picking up shades of yellow and orange.

Vernal equinox and autumnal equinox. These names are direct derivatives of Latin (ver = spring, autumnus = autumn), and as such more apt to be found in writings. Although in principle they are subject to the same problem as the spring/autumn names, their use over the centuries has fixed them to the viewpoint of the northern hemisphere. As such the vernal equinox is the equinox where the Sun passes from south to north [across the equator], and is a zeropoint in some celestial coordinate systems. The name of the other equinox is used less often.
– Wikipedia:Equinox:Names

Links

Wikipedia: Equinox
I Love NY (State) Fall Foliage Report

Related Posts

The Return of Persephone

Event, July 14: BBG Big Trees Celebration Day

Posted on by
1

Pterocarya fraxinifolia, Caucasian Wingnut, Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Pterocarya fraxinifolia, Caucasian Wingnut

Through August 26, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is hosting a special exhibit, Big City, Big Trees: Gentle Giants of the urban Landscape. This Saturday, Big Tree Celebration Day, from noon to 4pm, BBG is hosting several special events, including demonstrations, lectures, workshops, story-telling, and guided tours.

Trees do a tremendous amount for the urban environment. Their leaves absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, a culprit in global climate change, and use it in the process of photosynthesis. Trees clean pollutants from the air, all the while releasing oxygen back into it. The bigger the tree, the greater the benefits: A large mature tree can absorb nearly 70 times more pollution and give off much more oxygen a year than a newly planted sapling.
– Benefits of Big Urban Trees

Big trees help to cool cities in the summer, providing shade and reducing the air temperature around them. They soak up a lot of rainwater, which reduces storm runoff and soil erosion. Big trees break the force of strong winds, decrease glare from the sun, and reduce air conditioning and heating bills in buildings to which they are adjacent. Moreover, big trees serve as noise buffers, muffling the sounds of car horns and buses, and they provide habitats for wildlife, even in the midst of the busiest city.

The tree in the photo above is BBG’s Caucasian Wingnut, one of seven big trees highlighted in this summer’s exhibit. This tree is over 60 feet (6 stories) tall. Its trunk is 104 inches (nearly 9 feet) around. It’s over 85 years old.

Additional Big Tree activities are held each Saturday through August 18.


Parrots!

Posted on by
8

Monk Parakeet Munching on Young Apples

We had two parrots visit while I was gardening this afternoon. They were, of course, in our neighbor’s apple tree.

Myiopsitta monachus, Monk Parakeets, also known as Quaker Parrots, have established numerous colonies in Brooklyn. They are Brooklyn’s most charismatic potentially invasive species. They have expanded to other parts of the city and New York State. They are also now established in at least a dozen other states.

Monk Parakeet Munching on Young Apples

I only got good shots of this one of the pair. The other stayed in the foliage and was difficult to see. Here’s a view of both of them.

Two Parrots in Apple Tree

Unlike last year, when I saw the first parrot in June, I’ve been seeing parrots in the neighborhood this year for at least two months. I just haven’t seen them in my backyard this year until today.

The complete set of photos is available in a Flickr set.

Related posts:

Links (in alphabetical order by title):