Background/Question/Methods
The PlaNYC re(a)forestation initiative is a part of the million trees project advocated by the Bloomberg administration’s PlaNYC 2030.  Under this initiative, two thousand acres of land have been identified for aforestation.  As well, three pilot sites will be constructed by spring 2009 as public parks and serve dually as urban research projects with an aim to elaborate a step-by-step manual for reforesting the acreage. Through upfront standardization of restoration techniques, the PlaNYC re(a)forestation initiative will examine carbon sequestration and species richness and contribute to ecological management and decision-making practices for establishing healthy functional urban forests. Research for the pilot sites will focus on how planted forests perform in terms of vegetative and soil sequestration of atmospheric CO2 overtime. Species richness studies and the rate of spread of herbaceous and shrub seedlings from source plots to the surrounding parkland will be tested.  Research at Kissena Park and Willow Lake in Queens includes a 2x2 split-plot design with tree diversity (2 or 6 species) as the first factor and understory plantings (presence or absence of herbaceous and shrubs) as a second factor. Untilled soil versus tilled soil with added compost is a third factor. The Hutchinson Parkway study utilizes southern species to establish a climate change experiment along a public corridor.
Results/Conclusions
The increasing pace of urbanization has heightened attention to the values and benefits of urban forests.  Forests improve the quality of life in urban environments including through air particulate reduction, carbon and nitrogen sequestration or albido mitigation and subsequent building energy reduction. They also provide ecological benefits through oxygen and carbon exchange, and wildlife habitat. To date, however, few research studies exist that rigorously examine urban ecosystem services or the ecological implications of land use change.  The implementation of the standardized plots will enable comparable research across the five boroughs to evaluate mechanisms and feedbacks between land-cover, land-use, terrestrial productivity and the transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to new biomass and its return. The manual will establish opportunities for long-term research platform where multiple institutions and practitioners can plug in and focus on particular ecological, social or economic research agendas. The integrated research platform will contribute to urban ecosystem science, education and policy and will provide important data including carbon cycling information for policy analysts, and the general public.