Strategies for Managing NYC's Streams
Strategies for Managing NYC’s Streams City of New York Parks & Recreation Forestry, Horticulture, and Natural Resources Bill de Blasio, Mayor Mitchell J. Silver, Commissioner Rattlesnake Creek, Seton Falls Park, Bronx EXECUTIVE SUMMARY BACKGROUND regulations beginning in the 1970s resulted in significant improvements in water quality, and NYC’s Historically, nearly 250 miles of streams flowed through remaining streams, together with the City’s forests, New York City (NYC)’s wetlands and forests to the provide critical ecosystem services to both communities estuary that had been stewarded by the Lenape, surrounding them and the fish and wildlife they support. Rockaway, and Canarsie tribes for centuries. These Streams transport sediment and nutrients throughout streams supported diverse cold-water fisheries and the landscape, providing habitat and food for birds, fish, provided habitat, food, and clean water for fish, wildlife, eel, salamanders, dragonflies, and other wildlife. and people. Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island Streams also regulate air temperatures, absorb and contained most of NYC’s freshwater streams. Fewer convey floodwaters, and provide spaces for respite, were evident in Queens and Brooklyn, likely due to education, and recreation for the communities that porous sandy soils generated from the retreat of the surround them. last glaciers and the far inland reach of tidal streams through coastal marshes of Jamaica Bay and the Long OBJECTIVES Island Sound. This project inventories and characterizes the stream Beginning in the 1600s, European colonists began resources across NYC for the first time and assesses damming streams in NYC for mills, irrigation, and the condition of those streams on NYC Parks’ property.
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