Update on Treespotting for the International Year of Forests

Original Post, February 4, 2011: Many of you probably know that 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit and February 3 was the Chinese New Year.  But did you know that on February 2, 2011 the UN General Assembly launched the International Year of Forests 2011 (Forests 2011)?  The UN webcast of the launch can be viewed here.

The coordinating agency in the U.S. is the Forest Service.  As of this writing, no events have been posted to the Forest Service's Forests 2011 website, but an international calendar of events can be found here.

Local ecologist will celebrate Forests 2011 by treespotting New York City's urban forest.  More specifically, throughout the year, we will photograph the 90 street tree species that comprise the urban forest in the borough of Manhattan. The 10 most common species in Manhattan, according to the 2005 street tree census are:

1. Honeylocust 23.3%
2. Callery pear 15.7%
3. Ginkgo 9.9%
4. London planetree 8.2%
5. Littleleaf linden 6.3%
6. Pin oak 5.4%
7. Japanese zelcova 4.1%
8. Japanese pagoda tree 3.3%
9. American elm 2.6%
10. Northern red oak 2.3%

We will share photographs and stories of these species and as many of the 80 other species we can find and identify. 

Here is our first treespotting: a Callery pear on West 3rd Street that we adopted as part of the city's "million tree" initiative.

Note: photograph was deleted.

Join us in celebrating Forests 2011 by treespotting in your town or city and sharing your photographs on our Facebook page.

Update, March 2, 2011: Our Treespotting Project is now on our Facebook page local ecology & ecologist.  We will share our photographs of Manhattan's 90 street tree species there.  Don't forget to treespot in your city!