#GeoNYC April 8th - NYC Parks Presentation

#GeoNYC Meetup
April 8th, 2013
Peter Tiso, NYC Parks Department

Transcript

1. Prioritizing
   Street Tree
   Planting
   Theory & Method
   Peter Tiso
   City of New York
   Department of Parks & Recreation
   Forestry, Horticulture, and Natural Resources
   April 8, 2013
   

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2. We plant about 17,000 to
   23,000 street trees per year.
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   Prioritizing Street Tree Planting
   

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3. That’s about one tree every
   two minutes during the working
   day in planting season.
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4. Previous Prioritization (Fall 2007)
   Exceptionally simple design:
   • Population Density
   • Street Tree Stocking Level
   Plus…
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5. Trees for Public Health Neighborhoods
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6. The simple design fostered
   community understanding.
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7. As planting progressed, the
   maps became outdated.
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8. Previous Prioritization
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9. Goals for the new prioritization:
   • Retain simple common-sense design
   • Use the then-new 2010 Census data
   • Include new environmental data
   • Make use of LiDAR–derived land
   cover information
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10. Methodology
    The two-tier system used was developed by
    the USDA Forest Service.
    It identifies and combines a range of variables
    to determine where planting is preferable
    (tier 1) and where planting is possible (tier 2)
    The values for each variable are identified to
    the smallest possible geography, weighted
    by importance, and standardized to a
    “Z-score.”
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11. Tier 1
    Tier 1 was based on the 2010 Census’ Neighborhood Tabulation
    Areas (NTAs) and includes the following variables:
    • Lack of existing tree canopy (from LiDAR) – weighted 5x
    • High population density – weighted 2x
    • High airborne particulate Matter (PM2)
    • High surface temperature (2002 LANDSAT)
    • Low percentage impervious surface
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13. Tier 2
    Tier 2 was based on the 2010 Census tracts and includes the
    following variables:
    • Low street tree stocking level – weighted 2x
    • More tree requests (from 311)
    • More tree removals
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15. Overall Prioritization
    Tier 1 and Tier 2 values were averaged in
    each Census tract to create the overall
    planting priority.
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17. Field Implementation
    The prioritization order produced isn’t a hard
    rule. It simply tells foresters where to look
    first.
    The results of this method have been guiding
    the last several seasons of street tree
    planting.
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18. SHAMELESS PLUG TIME
    This image is of the LiDAR point cloud that informs the land cover raster and metrics openly available on NYC Open data at:
    https://nycopendata.socrata.com/
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19. Questions?
    Peter.Tiso@parks.nyc.gov
    

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