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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 New York City, the country’s largest and most diverse metropolitan area.  
• Partners with land managers to create innovative “research in action” programs that support urban ecosystems.
• Conducts comparative research and shares findings with counterparts in other metropolitan regions in the United States and globally.
• Links to a growing network of U.S. Forest Service scientists 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 Now Open

The Northern Research Station signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation in 2006 to enhance intra-agency cooperation on urban environmental research and applications. A key component of this partnership was 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 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. Researchers - learn more about applying to use the Ft. Totten facility for urban research projects.

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.

View our progress reports (pdfs):

• 2011 Progress Report (0.8 mb)
• 2010 Progress Report (0.6 mb)
• 2009 Progress Report (1.3 mb)
• 2008 Progress Report (1.8 mb)

Featured Research

STEW-MAP (Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project) fills the gap in understanding about how individual citizens, non-profit organizations, businesses, and governments work together as environmental stewards.

 

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