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We love maps and this one is particularly magnificent: NYC Parks just launched a new interactive tool that catalogues nearly 1,000,000 NYC trees and allows users to interact with each one.
Simply called NYC Tree Map, the website highlights the specific location of each park and street tree in the city, explains what species the entries belong to and how they contribute to a cleaner city, records stewardship activity, tree conditions and, according to a press release, "for the first time ever" focuses on "results of any completed inspections and recent tree work."
"Our new NYC Tree Map is groundbreaking, for the first time mapping park and street trees on one easy-to-use resource. Through it, we are offering New Yorkers the most comprehensive picture of all individually managed trees under our jurisdiction ever," said NYC Parks commissioner Sue Donoghue in an official statement. "With a slate of new features, we hope this new map will empower New Yorkers to visit their local parks, find their trees, and learn about the wonderful benefits our trees offer our communities."
If you're wondering how the department was able to undertake such a major effort, we'd like to call your attention to the 2016-2018 Park Tree Inventory Project, which was the first-ever effort to "enumerate trees growing on New York City parkland." In total, officials surveyed 7,582 acres of landscaped parks, analyzing exact tree locations, conditions, sizes and more.
In addition to informing users about inspections and work orders, among other things, the map has also shed light on some pretty interesting data. Flushing Meadows Corona Park, for example, topped the list of local parks with most landscaped trees while the London planetree is the most common species found around here.
Also to note: Queens is the borough with most mapped trees (288,246 to be precise) and Manhattan is the one with the least amount (94,841 in total).
You can play around with the map right here.