Aligning City Forest Management by Engaging Community Partners in New York City

New York City contains 10,000 acres of forested natural areas, 8.5 million residents, and dozens of organizations dedicated to improving the condition of natural areas. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) manages the majority 7,300-acres of natural area forests through hands-on work and contracts overseen by the Division of Forestry, Horticulture and Natural Resources. Additional capacity to manage and steward NYC Parks’ forest resources is created through nurturing community organizations by the non-profit Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC). Here I discuss how NAC’s Conservancy Engagement Program is aligning forest management under NYC’s forest management plan to care for the forest

Nitrogen regulation by natural systems in “unnatural” landscapes: denitrification in ultra-urban coastal ecosystems

Dense cities represent biogeochemical hot spots along the shoreline, concentrating fixed nitrogen that is subsequently discharged into adjacent coastal receiving waters. Thus, the ecosystem services provided by natural systems in highly urban environments can play a particularly important role in the global nitrogen cycle. In this paper, we review the recent literature on nitrogen regulation by temperate coastal ecosystems, with a focus on how the distinct physical and biogeochemical features of the urban landscape can affect the provision of this ecosystem service. We use Jamaica Bay, an ultra-urbanized coastal lagoon in the United States of America, as a demonstrative case study. Based on simple areal and tidal-based calculations, the natural systems of Jamaica Bay remove ~ 24% of the reactive nitrogen discharged by wastewater treatment plants. However, this estimate does not represent the dynamic nature of urban nitrogen cycling represented in the recent literature and highlights key research needs and opportunities. Our review reveals that ecosystem-facilitated denitrification may be significant in even the most densely urbanized coastal landscapes, but critical uncertainties currently limit incorporation of this ecosystem service in environmental management