2008 Awards

HONOR AWARD - Planning, Analysis, Research & Communications

PlaNYC Reforestation Initiative, New York, NY

EDAW, Inc.
www.edaw.com

The reforestation plan for New York City is a long term effort to reforest 2,000 acres of parkland across the five boroughs. The plan is one of the 127 initiatives Mayor Bloomberg announced as part of the PlaNYC 2030. The scale of the initiative is unprecedented anywhere in the world. The reforestation initiative will have myriad benefits, including stormwater management, air quality improvements, wildlife habitat, heat island mitigation, recreation, and carbon sequestration. Working closely with the Department of Parks Natural Resources Group and other experts at the USFS, the NRCS, Columbia University, Rutgers University, and the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, the EDAW team brought together an interdisciplinary group of landscape architects, ecologists and GIS experts to develop a “cookbook” of key strategies and lessons learned for urban reforestation. Methodologies focus on invasives control, site preparation, planting and civic design. The planting will occur in standardized plots and under a high level of replication to create an unprecedented long term research project and outdoor lab both for academic research and adaptive management. The project scope reflects the complexity of urban reforestation and is very broad in its range, scale and timeframe. Deliverables include a GIS based selection of 2,000 acres suitable for reforestation, on the ground data collection for approximately 1,600 acres, a book assessing all acreage visited, a cookbook of guidelines for planting forest over the 9 years of the project, and bid documents for 3 pilot sites that are to go into construction in the spring of 2009.

Credits

Department of Parks Natural Resources Group and other experts at the USFS; the NRCS; Columbia University, Rutgers University; and, The Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies