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The Northern Research Station’s New York City Urban Field Station

• Promotes natural resource stewardship and ecological literacy to advance human well being in the country’s largest and most diverse metropolitan area, New York City. 
• Partners with municipal managers to create innovative “research in action” programs to support urban ecosystem management.
• Conducts comparative research and disseminates knowledge throughout other metropolitan regions in the United States and globally.
• Links to a growing network of U.S. Forest Service scientists and facilities and university cooperators focused on urban research. 

Research Areas

• Stewardship Mapping
• Urban Tree Canopy
• Public Health, Well-being, and Urban Livability
• Environmental Literacy

Meeting the Needs of a Dynamic Urban Forest

By 2030, New York City is expected to grow by nearly 1 million people — equivalent to adding a city the size of Detroit, Michigan, to the existing population. Within New York City there are literally thousands of community stewardship groups responding to the need to create and care for diverse open space resources. Cities are constantly changing and presenting new challenges for urban land management. Moreover, the lessons learned in New York City have strong relevance for other major cities across the region, country, and the globe.

New Location Opening 2010

The Northern Research Station signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation in September 2006 to recognize the department as a lead partner in this effort and to enhance intra-agency cooperation on urban and environmental research and applications. A key component of this partnership is to create a joint field lab and residential space for visiting scientists at historic Fort Totten in Queens, NY. This site will allow scientists to reside and work in New York City on on a temporary basis for data collection and other partnership work, greatly expanding the scientific and technical staff available to work throughout the five boroughs and the greater New York metropolitan region.

Progress Reports

The NYC Urban Field Station is both a physical place to conduct research and a network of relationships among a growing number of scientists, practitioners, university cooperators and facilities focused on urban ecology. As a result of its unique partnerships with the City of New York, and more than 30 other nonprofit, government, and academic partners, the Urban Field Station received the 2008 Partnership Award for the Northern Research Station.

This 2009 Progress Report (pdf - 1.3 mb) presents research, application, and education highlights in a one page format.

Read the progress report for FY2008. (pdf - 1.8 mb)

 

Some documents linked to on this page are in PDF format. You can obtain a free PDF reader from Adobe.)