Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide. The 2015 tree census was the third decadal street tree census and largest citizen science initiative in NYC Parks’ history. Data collection ran from May 2015 to October 2016 and the results of the census show that there are 666,134 trees planted along NYC's streets. The data collected as part of the census represents a snapshot in time of trees under NYC Parks' jurisdiction. The census data formed the basis of our operational database, the Forestry Management System (ForMS) which is used daily by our foresters and other staff for inventory and asset management: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/browse?sortBy=most_accessed&utf8=%E2%9C%93&Data-Collection_Data-Collection=Forestry+Management+System+%28ForMS%29 To learn more about the data collected and managed in ForMS, please refer to this user guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PVPWFi-WExkG3rvnagQDoBbqfsGzxCKNmR6n678nUeU/edit. For information on the city's current tree population, use the ForMS datasets.

New York City’s tree inventory includes 592,130 publicly managed street trees. This represents 584,036 live trees and 8,036 standing dead trees tallied over the course of two summer inventory periods. The inventory contains 168 tree species with London planetree (Platanus acerifolia), Norway maple (Acer platanoides), callery pear (Pyrus calleryana), honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos) and pin oak (Quercus palustris) as the predominant species. 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Ref: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/2015-Street-Tree-Census-Tree-Data/uvpi-gqnh/data See also: https://www.nycgovparks.org/trees/treescount

The NYC street tree data includes data from the 1995, 2005 and 2015 Street Tree Censuses, which are conducted by volunteers organized by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Trees were inventoried by address, and identified by tree species, diameter, and condition. This public dataset is hosted in Google BigQuery and is included in BigQuery's 1TB/mo of free tier processing. This means that each user receives 1TB of free BigQuery processing every month, which can be used to run queries on this public dataset. Watch this short video to learn how to get started quickly using BigQuery to access public datasets. What is BigQuery .

In 1995, hundreds of volunteers joined the New York City (NYC) Department of Parks & Recreation staff to inventory the city's street tree population. These inventory efforts resulted in an unprecedented understanding of NYC’s urban forest, and catalyzed major advances in its urban forest management.

See: https://www.nycgovparks.org/trees/treescount/past-censuses and: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/1995-Street-Tree-Census/7gmq-dbas

Citywide street tree data from the 2005 Street Tree Census, conducted partly by volunteers organized by NYC Parks & Recreation. Trees were inventoried by address, and were collected from 2005-2006. Data collected includes tree species, diameter, condition.

This dataset shows the New York City (NYC) street tree census data for the year 2015 provided by the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR).

Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. As of June 2016, mapping is still in progress – this is a partial release. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide.

Content

Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide.

Context

This is a dataset hosted by the City of New York. The city has an open data platform found here and they update their information according the amount of data that is brought in. Explore New York City using Kaggle and all of the data sources available through the City of New York organization page!

• Update Frequency: This dataset is updated annually.

Acknowledgements

This dataset is maintained using Socrata's API and Kaggle's API. Socrata has assisted countless organizations with hosting their open data and has been an integral part of the process of bringing more data to the public.

Cover photo by Stephen Arnold on Unsplash
Unsplash Images are distributed under a unique Unsplash License.

Blockface data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Blockface data includes tree counts and data collection status by block. Accompanying street tree data is available, indicating tree-level details such as tree species, size and other characteristics.

The growth dataset grouped by species is compared to the top trees in the 2015–2016 TreesCount! Street Tree Census (termed 2015 data) as taken from NYC data [1]. The growth database is missing two trees that are in the top 15 of the 2015 data: Cherry (rank = 7) and Sophora (rank = 10).

Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. As of June 2016, mapping is still in progress – this is a partial release. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide.

Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide.

Summary

This repository contains spatial datasets with metadata on land cover, tree canopy change, and estimated tree points and crown polygons for New York City (NYC; New York, USA) as of 2021, made available by The Nature Conservancy, New York Cities Program and developed under contract by the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Lab. The datasets are provided herein with high-level background and information; additional analysis, particularly on tree canopy change and distribution across NYC considering various geogrpahic units are planned for release in a forthcoming report by The Nature Conservancy. For questions about these data, contact Michael Treglia, Lead Scientist with The Nature Conservancy, New York Cities Program, at michael.treglia@tnc.org.

Datasets included here are as follows (file names in italics):

• Land cover as of 2021 (landcover_nyc_2021_6in.tif):
  • Raster dataset with six-inch (15.24 centimeter) pixel resolution, delineating land covers as: 1) tree canopy (with crowns greater than eight feet [2.44 meters] tall; 2) grass/shrub (including vegetation less than or equal to eight feet [2.44 feet] tall; 3) bare ground; 4) open water; 5) building; 6) road; 7) other impervious; and 8) railroad. This is intended to serve as an update to high-resolution land cover data for 2010 and 2017 made available by the City of New York.
• Tree canopy change during 2017-2021 (treecanopychange_nyc_2017_2021_6in.tif):
  • Raster dataset with six-inch (15.24 centimeter) pixel resolution, with pixels that were estimated tree canopy in 2017 (based on 2017 land cover data) or 2021 delineated as: 1) canopy that did not change (“no change”); 2) canopy that was gained (“gain”); 3) canopy that was lost (“loss”). This is intended to be an updated tree canopy change dataset, analogous to a canopy change dataset for 2010-2017 made available by the City of New York.
• Estimated tree points, crown polygons, and objects as of 2021 (Trees_Centroids_Crown_Objects_2021.gdb.zip):
  • The approximated locations (centroids) and approximated tree crowns as circles (shapes), and tree objects themselves based on canopy data (objects) for individual trees with crowns taller than eight feet (2.44 meters); in cases where there are trees with overlapping crowns, only the top trees are captured. These data are based on automated processing of the tree canopy class from the land cover data; additional methodological details are included in the metadata for this dataset. Given the height cutoff, that this dataset only captures the trees seen from above, and the large number of understory trees in some areas (e.g., forested natural areas), and limits in the automated processing this is not intended to be a robust census of trees in NYC, but may serve as useful for some purposes. Unlike the land cover and tree canopy change datasets, no directly comparable datasets for NYC from past years that we are aware of.

These datasets were based on object-based image analysis of a combination of 2021 Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR; data available from the State of New York) for tree canopy and tree location/crown data in particular) along with high-resolution aerial imagery (from 2021 via the USDA National Agriculture Inventory Program and from 2022 via the New York State GIS Clearinghouse), followed by manual corrections. The general methods used to develop the land cover and tree canopy datasets are described in MacFaden et al. (2012). A per-pixel accuracy assessment of the land cover data with 1,999 points estimated an overall accuracy of 95.52% across all land cover classes, and 99.06% for tree canopy specifically (a critical focal area for this project). Iterative review of the data and subject matter expertise were contributed by from The Nature Conservancy and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

While analyses of tree canopy and tree canopy change across NYC are pending, those interested can review a report that includes analyses of the most recent data (2010-2017) and a broad consideration of the NYC urban forest, The State of the Urban Forest in New York City (Treglia et al 2021).

References

MacFaden, S. W., J. P. M. O’Neil-Dunne, A. R. Royar, J. W. T. Lu, and A. G. Rundle. 2012. High-resolution tree canopy mapping for New York City using LIDAR and object-based image analysis. Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 6(1):063567.

Treglia, M.L., Acosta-Morel, M., Crabtree, D., Galbo, K., Lin-Moges, T., Van Slooten, A., & Maxwell, E.N. (2021). The State of the Urban Forest in New York City. The Nature Conservancy. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5532876

Terms of Use

© The Nature Conservancy. This material is provided as-is, without warranty under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

• The Nature Conservancy (TNC) oversaw development of these data and reserves all rights in the data provided.
• TNC makes no guarantee of accuracy or completeness.
• Data are for informational purposes and are not suitable for legal, engineering, or surveying purposes. Data do not represent an on-the-ground survey and represent only the approximate relative location of feature boundaries.
• TNC is not obligated to update/maintain the data to reflect changing conditions.
• Commercial use is not allowed.
• Redistribution (sublicensing) is allowed, provided all accompanying metadata as well as these Terms of Use are provided, unaltered, alongside the data.
• TNC should be credited as the data source in derivative works, following the recommended citation provided herein.
• Users are advised to pay attention to the contents of this metadata document.

Recommended Citation

If using any of these datasets, please cite the work according to the following recommended citation:

The Nature Conservancy. 2024. New York City Land Cover (2021), Tree Canopy Change (2017-2021), and Estimated Tree Location and Crown Data (2021). Developed under contract by the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Laboratory. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.14053441.

Technical Notes about the Spatial Data

All spatial data are provided in the New York State Plan Long Island Zone (US survey foot) coordinate reference system, EPSG 2263. The land cover and tree canopy change datasets are made available as raster data in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF format (.tif), with associated metadata files as .xml files. The vector data of estimated tree locations and crown objects and shapes are made available in a zipped Esri File Geodatabase, with metadata stored within the File Geodatabase.

The purpose of this data package is to offer demographic data for U.S. cities. The data sources are multiple, the most important one being the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. In this case, the data was organized by the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC). Others are the New York City Department of City Planning and Department of Parks and Recreation, data being available through the NYC Open Data.

Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide.

The numbers next to each name indicate the source of the data.

U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts statistics for Palm Tree town, Orange County, New York. QuickFacts data are derived from: Population Estimates, American Community Survey, Census of Population and Housing, Current Population Survey, Small Area Health Insurance Estimates, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, State and County Housing Unit Estimates, County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics, Economic Census, Survey of Business Owners, Building Permits.

The data is between growth rates from the NYC growth database and continuous data (Table 1) that may impact growth rates.

Is it possible to reconstruct aboveground carbon/biomass from tree rings? If so, how far back in time can researchers go when using tree-ring data in the reconstruction of past biomass? Answers to these questions will have a significant impact on our understanding of dynamics in the terrestrial carbon sink. Long tree-ring records of biomass can reveal intra-annual to annual to multidecadal variations that cannot be resolved by forest census data that is not conducted at annual time steps. Additionally, while these dynamics might be resolved using remote sensing, most remotely-sensed products are only two decades or less in length. By having long records of carbon biomass, we can then identify not only the dominant drivers of biomass, but how the importance of these drivers might change during different eras as environmental factors change (e.g., climate, air pollution, disturbance). To test these and other questions, we collected tree-ring records from two 30m radius plots set Rooster Hill in New York State. We chose this location because it has oak dominated mixed forests that can be compared to the long-term forests being studied for carbon dynamics at the Harvard Forest. We can convert these data to biomass using allometric equations and compare tree-ring inferred aboveground biomass to the census data going back in time to understand forest recovery and carbon dynamics in a heavily disturbance forest.

The STEW-MAP NYC 2017 Story Map is a web-based mapping tool designed to allow users to view the STEW-MAP project overview, groups, connections, project map, and indices and neighborhoods landscape data for the New York City area. In this Story Map, The Landscape tab shows stewardship data alongside other social and environmental characteristics, summarized at the neighborhood level. The map uses 2010 NYC Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs) to represent NYC neighborhoods. Use this map to explore patterns and relationships in your neighborhood and citywide. This document discusses the methodology used to derive the stewardship index and comparable social and environmental data layers. Stewardship Index: For examining stewardship in each NTA, we developed a 3-variable stewardship index to capture more information from the STEW-MAP survey than number of groups working in an NTA. We selected staffing (StaffSum where part time staff are weighed as half of full-time staff), number of groups working in a neighborhood (Join_Count) and number of collaborative network connections (NumOfAlters) as these are important variables for measuring stewardship group capacity in a neighborhood. For each of those three variables, we calculated each NTA’s z-score, or how far a neighborhood deviates from the median value. On the map, neighborhoods marked by darker colors are those with higher z-scores with respect to the stewardship variable selected. Finally, we averaged together these three measures of stewardship capacity – staffing, number of groups, and number of collaborative network ties– for each NTA to create the 3 Variable Stewardship Index layer. Social and Environmental Datasets: The Landscape tab is intended to be a tool to allow users to view stewardship indices derived from STEW-MAP survey data alongside other critical social and environmental datasets. For New York City, we included the following biophysical variables: land surface temperature, effective flood hazard, urban tree canopy cover, the number of parks in an NTA, community garden presence, street tree census data, as well as the following social variables: the CDC’s social vulnerability index, median income and median year moved in.