The Central Park Climate Lab is starting data collection this spring to investigate how extreme weather can affect the park’s plants and wildlife.
Daniel Avila / NYC Parks
Central Park
Central Park will pave the way for research into the effects of climate change on urban green spaces.
This week, Central Park Conservancy announced a partnership with the Yale School of the Environment and Natural Areas Conservancy to collect and map data that would provide an understanding of how Central Park is affected by climate change and extreme weather.
The researchers will later implement the method in parks in other US cities.
The project, called the Central Park Climate Lab, will begin data collection this spring and will employ four people – one at each nonprofit and two at Yale, according to Sarah Charlop-Powers of the Natural Areas Conservancy.
“By dreaming of this project, we wanted to make sure we used it as a springboard to look at a lot of other parks across the country,” said Karen Seto, professor of geography and urban science at the Yale School of the Environment and one of The scientists who are leading the research.
She adds that the increased use of parks since the pandemic has highlighted the need to protect green areas in urban areas from the effects of extreme and changing weather. Last year, New York City experienced several record-breaking heat waves and rainfall events. These incidents can lead to increased algae blooms and affect the health of the park’s tree crowns and wildlife – while people are more dependent on green areas. In 2021, the use of the city’s open spaces increased by 65 percent, according to Charlop-Powers.
“It’s really clear that we expect so much from our city parks these days, and I think the pandemic really showed that people go to the parks for many different reasons – for health, social reasons or spirituality,” Seto said. . “But if we think about climate change, parks are in the front line in many ways.”
In addition to providing respite, parks play an important role in absorbing urban heat and offering other natural resistant protections, Charlop-Powers added.
Seto will use satellite remote sensing to detect not only non-surviving species but also changes in flowering and greener. Meanwhile, her colleague Mark Bradford at Yale will look at soil samples for changes in humidity or other variables to get a top-to-bottom picture of how the park’s ecosystem copes with changing weather, she explained.
“It’s like an old saying that land is destiny,” Charlop-Powers said.
She hopes this collaboration can help shed light on how Mayor Eric Adams’ administration prioritizes the city’s parks and green spaces.
Adams, who previously promised to commit 1 percent of the city’s budget to parks and ensure all New Yorkers live no more than 15 minutes from a park, commented on the project in a press release, saying the project “begins a new era of research and collaboration that will provide our park professionals with improved tools to combat the climate crisis, and it will be a model for urban parks across the country. ”
Charlop-Powers said she hopes the research will lead to tangible investments in the park system.
“We are really excited about both the research aspects of this work, but also the ways in which the research can really inform public policy and public spending,” she said. “As an organization, we really sit in touch with research and politics, and then it feels like a kind of dream project because it has the ability to really inform both.”
Liz Donovan is a member of the Report for America Corps.
