Isn't NYC Parks Planting More 3-inch Caliper Saplings in Restitution?
NYC Parks Commissioner told the public that more 3-inch caliper saplings will be planted to compensate for the loss of 58 mature shade trees.
A young tree fell after heavy rain on Myrtle Ave in October, 2019. Many new plantings will not survive intensifying extreme weather.
Mature trees are more resilient than replacement saplings
An arborist pointed out that newly planted saplings died in 2017 on Ashland Place next to the Brooklyn Hospital.
Take a look at the row of trees in the photo below. The animation shows the street view of these trees from 2014 to 2020. It is a bad design practice to replace resilient, mature trees with saplings for a concrete plaza.
Despite the enhanced growth of urban trees, high mortality losses result in a net loss of street tree carbon storage over time
emissions associated with establishment often precluding net greenhouse gas benefits in the early stages of a street tree’s life cycle
The carbon costs associated with nursery production, planting, irrigation, pruning, removal, and disposal are high. Street trees must survive for several decades (26–33 years; [27]) to attain carbon neutrality.
A Parks Without Borders presenter (PWB) said, "“There are some trees planted in the 70s that will need to be removed. They are Norway Maples. They are at the end of their lives. ..., not going to last very long anyway, ..., They are an invasive species and we will be taking the opportunity to remove them". -- statements by NYC Parks at public hearings.
Disinformation on the handout of NYC Parks Without Borders summer outreach program at Fort Greene Park in 2017.
Parks Without Borders Disinformation Exposed by NYC Parks' own Forestry Report
Norway Maple: Regulated, not Prohibited
Only some of the trees are Norway Maples, which are regulated, not prohibited according to Dept of Environmental Conservation.
The majority of the trees Parks planned for removal for the plaza are NOT invasive species. Only 27 trees are Norway Maples-- less than half of the 58 trees to be removed for the proposed plaza. The other 31 trees at the northwest corner are London Plane, Honeylocust, Cherry, and Zelkova trees. The number is based on NYC Parks' own Forestry report released by Freedom of Information Law.
Norway Maples are regulated, not prohibited according to New York State DEC (Dept of Environmental Conservation).
Norway Maples give good shade for people waiting for the bus at the street corner. They are not a threat in a controlled urban environment
The Benefits of Mature Shade Trees
A large, healthy tree removes almost 70 times more air pollution each year than a small, newly planted tree.
London planetrees remove more than 77 tons of air pollution each year, over one-quarter of all pollutant removal by NYC’s trees.
Each year 272 tons—the equivalent of 40 adult elephants—of air pollution are intercepted or absorbed by trees in NYC
Average electricity and natural gas cost savings in NYC are $47 per street tree
Each year 313 tons of air pollution are avoided because of energy savings resulting from reduced emissions
The average street tree in NYC intercepts 1,432 gallons of stormwater each year; all our street trees capture 890 million gallons per year
Calculating Tree Benefits - NYC Parks Official Website (PDF)
What has been taken away in canopy, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, food production and more in mere hours will take decades to replicate.
... The argument for removing trees with "We'll replant for each one cut down" sounds good to the average person but it is grossly misleading. What has been taken away in canopy, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, food production and more in mere hours will take decades to replicate. That is the information that is not shared in that argument.
"... The standard 1:1 to replacement is disingenuous accounting. Peak ecosystem services come from bigger trees. Trees take decades to reach big tree status. A 2" tree has nothing on a 20" or 30" diameter tree that has aged in place. " (Source)
A new study shows that enough canopy cover can dramatically reduce urban temperatures
However, she also notes that the leafiest areas tend to be disproportionately in wealthier neighborhoods. She would like to see planting distributed more equitably as well as rationally.
Planting trees in lower-income neighborhoods would not only help lower temperatures, it would also contribute to the physical and mental health of the people living there.
For the nearly 1 in 5 adults who experience mental illness, heat can be dangerous, according to Ken Duckworth, medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
"Heat is hard on human beings. Extreme temperatures are hard on human beings," Duckworth said. "The particular vulnerability is if you're taking psychiatric medicines, that can actually make the condition higher risk for you."
Urban and community areas in the United States are losing their trees, according to a new study conducted by the U.S. Forest Service. And this loss is happening at a fast clip—the study finds that, overall, these areas lost around 175,000 acres of tree cover annually between 2009 and 2014.
This loss, Forest Service researchers say, equates to the disappearance of some 36 million trees every year.
Downtown Brooklyn neighborhoods have worse air pollution rates, which is an environmental factor of asthma, compared to the city average. Child asthma rates are also higher.
The amount of tree cover had a significant impact on the levels of nitrogen dioxide in an area and the respiratory health of the residents in that area.
Specifically, the study concluded, because of the city's existing tree canopy:
Children age 4-12 avoided missing 7,380 school days due to asthma attacks.
People of all ages avoided 54 asthma-related emergency room visits.
There were 46 fewer hospital stays for people older than 65 because of respiratory illness.
All together all those health benefits equaled $6.6 million in savings.
Six million children across the U.S. suffer from asthma. Climate change is making their symptoms worse, triggering more asthma attacks and increasing the likelihood that children with asthma will miss out on playing and learning.
Adding tree cover will, however, require a shift to long-term thinking—especially to plan ways to make room for nature while also accommodating new growth. “We’re urbanizing like crazy,” says Sullivan, the landscape architect.
The shade of a single tree can provide welcome relief from the hot summer sun. But when that single tree is part of a small forest, it creates a profound cooling effect.
According to the study, the right amount of tree cover can lower summer daytime temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Adding tree cover will, however, require a shift to long-term thinking—especially to plan ways to make room for nature while also accommodating new growth. “We’re urbanizing like crazy,” says Sullivan, the landscape architect.
tree cover in US cities is shrinking. A study published last year by the US Forest Service found that we lost 36 million trees annually from urban and rural communities over a five-year period.
If we continue on this path, "cities will become warmer, more polluted and generally more unhealthy for inhabitants," said David Nowak, a senior US Forest Service scientist and co-author of the study.
Chainsaw crews have taken down more than 200 mature hardwoods at the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side
Throughout the city, tree canopy helps to cool down areas during heat waves.
Of course, not all parts of the city are created equally.
"Neighborhoods with a majority of people in poverty have 25 percent less tree canopy on average than those with a minority of people in poverty"
...Dr. Gagliano’s scientific research, which has broken boundaries in the field of plant behavior and signaling. Currently at the University of Sydney in Australia, she has published a number of studies that support the view that plants are, to some extent, intelligent. Her experiments suggest that they can learn behaviors and remember them.
As environmental collapse looms, we’ve never known so much about life on earth — how extraordinary and intricate it all is, and how loose the boundary where “it” ends and “we” begin.
Studies have shown that exposure to nature can lower rates of everything from anxiety and depression to more surprising things like preterm labor, asthma and nearsightedness.
...natural stimuli, the swaying trees, rushing water and singing birds, might reset our fight or flight response, which is too often switched into overdrive by the stresses of urban modern life. That rest, in turn, gives the body's psychological, digestive and immune systems the break they need to function normally.
When the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted planned Prospect Park, in the eighteen-sixties, he wrote that he prized trees “which possessed either dignity or picturesqueness.”
“You walk by a tree every day and it looks the same as it did yesterday, as it does tomorrow and the next day, and you hardly realize it’s alive,” Griffin told me. “I have this pipe dream that people will appreciate trees as living, growing, changing, responding organisms instead of seeing them as static on the day-to-day time scale.”
Lining city streets with trees reduces physiological symptoms of stress in humans. The thicker the tree cover, the lower the stress levels, study finds.
Even for people who are deeply disabled neurologically, nature can be more powerful than any medication.
Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us. Biophilia, the love of nature and living things, is an essential part of the human condition. Hortophilia, the desire to interact with, manage and tend nature, is also deeply instilled in us. The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools or for those in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure.
(NYC Parks plans to pave over an estimated 13,314 sq. ft. of greenery and replace a circular garden with a fountain, even though a nearby kids sprinkler with a broken nozzle needs to be repaired.)
"When we're in the beginning of an ecological and climate collapse," said the lawmaker who introduced the measure, "I hope we can re-think our relationship with Nature."
As the world warms, the issue of shade has drawn more attention from urban planners. The writer Sam Bloch, in an article in Places Journal this year that focused on Los Angeles, called shade “an index of inequality, a requirement for public health, and a mandate for urban planners and designers.”
The lack of trees in some poorer communities is also connected to a history of abusive policing. For years, the city kept tree growth to a minimum in some neighborhoods because police officers were worried that trees could be places to stash drugs and gun.
Ms. Malarich said trees are also a public health issue, citing studies showing that more trees in a community correlates with lower asthma rates, reduced hospital visits during heat waves and improved mental health. “All our communities should have access to those benefits,” she said.
An old-growth forest is neither an assemblage of stoic organisms tolerating one another’s presence nor a merciless battle royale: It’s a vast, ancient and intricate society.
Together, these symbiotic partners knit Earth’s soils into nearly contiguous living networks of unfathomable scale and complexity.
“I think these trees are very perceptive,” she said. “Very perceptive of who’s growing around them. I’m really interested in whether they perceive us.” I asked her to clarify what she meant. Simard explained that trees sense nearby plants and animals and alter their behavior accordingly: The gnashing mandibles of an insect might prompt the production of chemical defenses, for example. Some studies have even suggested that plant roots grow toward the sound of running water and that certain flowering plants sweeten their nectar when they detect a bee’s wing beats. “Trees perceive lots of things,” Simard said. “So why not us, too?”
Trees Are Missing in Low-Income Neighborhoods
More tree cover would lower disproportionately high levels of heat and pollution.
What Technology Could Reduce Heat Deaths? Trees.
At a time when climate change is making heat waves more frequent and more severe, trees are stationary superheroes: They can lower urban temperatures 10 lifesaving degrees, scientists say.
Air pollution linked to more severe mental illness – study
Exclusive: research finds small rise in exposure to air pollution leads to higher risk of needing treatment
