NYC Parks Powerpoint Template

Home , Alley Pond Park, Forest Park (Queens), Kissena Park

The Influence of New York City Urban Soils on Native Tree Seedling Growth and Survival Clara Pregitzer Natural Resources Group New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Planting Trees in New York City Soil

• Urban soils have a reputation of being widely variable.

• Management history knowledge varies on a site by site basis and land use maps are often not representative of local site conditions.

• Urban soils often are subject to greater disturbance, an invasive seedbank and earthworms.

Top: Holes ready to be planted with container trees. Bottom: Degraded urban landscape.

Land use history in New York City is complex and parkland available for forest restoration is often degraded or compromised

Land use history legacies are complex in urban parkland and hard to keep track of. Forest Restoration in New York City

• New York City has 29,000 acres of parkland.

• 10,000 acres of Natural Areas including 5,300 acres of Forest.

• Natural Resources Group has been managing and restoring parkland in New York City for 30 years.

• Under a new sustainability initiative MillionTreesNYC has resulted in 339,814 native trees planted in natural areas across NYC in the past 5 years.

Top: Forest restoration sign at Conference House Park, Staten Island. Bottom: Volunteers planting trees in Queens. Variation in survival of planted tree seedlings exists across New York City Parks

Top: Forest restoration sign at Conference House Park, Staten Island. Bottom: Volunteers planting trees in Queens.

Simmons, B. (n.d.). MillionTreesNYC: Reforestation survival study. Unpublished raw data, NYC Urban Field Station, New York, NY. Project Goal: To better understand urban soils and the traits important to native tree growth

• New York City’s soils have been subject to a wide range of physical disturbances including burial or coverage of natural soil by fill material of varying quality.

• To maximize success reforestation efforts in New York City understanding the complexities of urban soils is key.

• How do urban soils with different land use histories influence native tree growth and survival? Top: pre-dug holes for planting container trees. Bottom: Forest Restoration Site, Van Cortlandt Park.

6 Project Design

• Using 12 urban field soils collected from different NYC Parks we planted 4 native tree species in replication into each of the 12 urban field soils creating a common garden greenhouse experiment.

• A greenhouse soil mix was added as a control.

• Tree mortality, caliper, height, leaf discoloration and chlorophyll fluorescence were measured.

• We tested the soil characteristics in the lab to compare trends in tree mortality

and health to the traits of urban soils. Top: Trees growing in urban soils in the greenhouse. Bottom: Measuring caliper growth.

7 Field soils were collected from 4 categories of New York City urban soil

CUSTOM FILL URBAN FILL

COAL ASH NATIVE TILL

8 Custom Fill

• Considered clean fill

• Contractually specified particle size and chemistry

• Soil that is placed over a degraded urban soil

• Originates from excavation projects and recycled at forest restoration sites

• Often very sandy and usually lower nutrient content 9

Urban Fill

• Native soil mixed with waste such as construction or demolition debris or household trash from regulated or unregulated dumping.

• Highly variable

• Characteristic of urban lots, where the dominant vegetation is typically invasive

• Often have a high pH (7-9)

• NYC Parks own over 1,000 10 acres of filled land Coal Ash

• During the 19th and early 20th Century New York City coal ash from heating homes was dumped into regulated and unregulated locations which later became NYC parks

• Very fine in particulate matter and thought to be high in micronutrients

11 Native Glacial Till

• In the northeast of the US, forest soils are typically well- drained sandy loams or loams

• Relatively low available nitrogen

• pH levels ranging neutral to slightly acidic (4.5-7.0)

• Pockets of mature native forest exist in New York City parks and are dominated by native trees, shrubs and understory

Title of Presentation Goes Here 13 Collecting Field Soil

Field soil was collected from the top 18-20 inches within each site and homogenized in a 30 gallon trash can and brought back to the greenhouse Project Design

• Four native tree species Silver maple (Acer Saccharinum), Black birch (Betula lenta), Red oak (Quercus rubra) and Canadian serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis) were planted into each soil.

• 9 replicates of each species were transplanted into one gallon buckets containing a field soils.

• Total of 13 soils were used (n=468)

Top: Seeds were collected and grown in plugs before being transplanted into urban soils. Bottom: Project design in the greenhouse. Data Collection

• At the establishment of the project and then at the end of the growing season (July-October) height, caliper and mortality and chlorophyll fluorescence was measured.

• A sub-sample of each field soil was sent to the Brooklyn College soil lab to be tested for pH, macro and micro nutrients, texture, CEC, TOC and heavy metals.

Top: Measuring height of each tree. Bottom:Collecting data in the greenhouse. Chlorophyll fluorescence as a metric for plant stress

Chlorophyll fluorescence was measured on each tree. By measuring the intensity and nature of this fluorescence we are collecting a metric for plant stress. Soil Results

Soil Location Soil Type pH Salt TOC CEC % Sand Mg Al P K Ca Mn (ppm) (%) Meadow Lake Coal Ash 7.1 254 6.1 7.97 61 158.01 15.76 4.44 75.65 1052.33 5.82

Van Cortlandt East Coal Ash 7.3 21.7 18.4 21.46 73 125.39 10.06 13.31 48.88 3817.27 8.17

Van Cortlandt West Coal Ash 5.3 29.1 10.6 5.24 73 92.43 42.49 5.12 20.74 642.53 1.55

Idlewild Urban Fill 6.1 1.11 15.3 10.52 86 603.16 3.81 6.9 99.76 808.06 0.88

Marine Park Urban Fill 6.9 214 6.6 5.54 67 75.14 13.2 5.4 37.49 723.14 1.77

Soundview Urban Fill 7.8 65 7.3 4.22 68 113.57 28.66 5.98 32.97 396.88 0.75

Marine Park Custom Fill 7.8 38.6 1.8 4.09 71 65.7 103.25 3.97 22.46 456.77 4.11

Gateway Retail Custom Fill 7.1 27.1 7.8 6.89 71 254.73 26.95 2.67 13.94 706.95 1.31

Kissena Park Custom Fill 8 12.7 0.8 3.3 95 60.78 7.54 3.9 5.36 315.37 1.45

Alley Pond Native Till 6.3 25.5 6.7 8.6 71 287.01 5.87 9.46 93.12 954.05 0.79

Cunningham Native Till 6.8 22.8 10.2 21.32 68 98.73 10.56 8.66 53.3 3832.62 4.89

Forest Park Native Till 5.5 37.6 9.8 11.6 73 281.49 45.84 1.16 111.03 1532.32 157.29

Greenhouse Soil Control 6.9 192 13.2 5.66 87 59.01 6.43 4.81 28.07 779.67 1.33

18 Soil Results