Local Ecologist

In honor of Arbor Day, I am sharing part of my collection of over 20 tree guides covering New York, New England, the South, the Pacific Coast, and California as well as Madrid and the Castilla and Leon region of Spain. Many of the books in my tree guide collection are shown in local ecologist books (via Amazon). Books not listed with Amazon include Arboles Unicos de Castilla y Leon , by Cesar Herranz Beltran (shown above); Native Trees of the San Francisco Bay Region , by Woodbridge Metcalf; Trees of North America, by C. Frank Brockman; A Guide to the Trees , by Alice Lounsberry; Familiar Trees and Their Leaves , by F. Schuyler Mathews; and  Guide to New Haven's Trees , by Urban Resources Initiative. How are you celebrating Arbor Day?

Last week I wrote about the sustainable sites field trip in Santa Monica outlining the the stops on the tour and providing details about the Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility or SMURRF. The water recycling facility is an end-of-pipe solution in contrast to the Bicknell Street green street project which manages runoff at the source.  The block-long green street is a pilot project to test the use of vegetated bioswales, permeable paving, and infiltration basins can reduce impervious surfaces and capture and filter runoff. Green streets are one of several low impact development (LID) strategies cities use to meet National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) and Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) requirements. The bioswale (shown above) is planted with climate-appropriate vegetation. Also, existing, 80-year old palm trees were preserved.  One of the first things I noticed about the block was the lush vegetation.  Look at  the block pre-greening  (note: it is a sma

  Forty-five years ago, artist George Maciunas transplanted two trees from a Canal Street parking lot to 80 Wooster Street. The Parks Department deemed the trees dangerous but they were not removed until residents requested a removal after being told that the trees, especially the northern one (above) would compromise the installation of a standpipe system. Read the entire stump story at The SoHo Memory Project blog.

Last week I traveled to Los Angeles to participate in the Sustainable Santa Monica field trip at the American Association of Geographers 2013 Meeting.  I was the tour organizer on behalf of the non-profit Sustainable Pacific Rim Cities and the alumni interest group Yale Blue Green .  The morning segment of the field trip was led by Brenden McEneaney, Green Building Advisor at City of Santa Monica and Neal Shapiro, Watershed Management Coordinator at City of Santa Monica.  We ate lunch at the Wednesday Downtown Farmers Market followed by a tour of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) building. The showcased the spectrum of blue-greening a city, from building- and site-based strategies to end of the pipe strategies.  (The term "blue-green" is a play on Yale Blue Green but is also a nod to the Blue-Green Building website that presents case studies of "low-impact development aimed at sustaining water and watersheds....") We were shown the Bicknell Stree

The landscape at 41 Bond Street, an "entirely locally-sourced bluestone" residential building that fronts directly on the street, is composed of several elements: window boxes and loggia, a planted marquee, balconies, a green roof, parapet planters, and a rear garden. This patchy yet compositionally unified landscape was designed by Future Green Studio based in Brooklyn, NY. Of the planting scheme, the form writes that it "emphasizes texture and form, mixing a contemporary with a fancifully rugged style." Aren't the hellebore flowers beautiful?! This photograph was taken on April 13, 2013. For additional photographs of the project, check out Future Green Studio's 41 Bond Street portfolio .

Capitol Canopy image courtesy of ATLASlab The State of the Trees report authored in 2000 by the Sacramento Tree Foundation described that city's trees as its "crowning glory." Anyone who has strolled beneath the cooling, soothing canopy of towering elms and sycamores knows the city is graced by a special relationship with trees. In Sacramento, at the heart of California’s great Central Valley, our tree-lined boulevards, parks and residential foliage evoke far more than an appreciation for natural beauty. They represent 150 years of commitment to trees based on a profound understanding of the economic, social and civic benefits that trees bequeath. The Tree Foundation's State of the Trees report also noted that the city's urban forest was critically under funded even "at a time when mounting scientific evidence shows that planting thousands of new trees each year will effectively reduce the Sacramento region’s energy needs, improve air quality, and

Image: The Global Pigeon , by Colin Jerolmack via University of Chicago Press ( source ) Last week I attended the book talk for Colin Jerolmack's The Global Piegon .  Jerolmack's book is not a natural history of the pigeon, per se.  Rather it uses the pigeon as a way of sampling the human population for an ethnographic study, according to Harvey Molotch who toasted Jerolmack at the book talk.  Pigeon color morphs, Project PigeonWatch post, Cornell Lab of Ornithology/Urban Bird Studies The Global Pigeon is based on Jerolmack's dissertation research.  He started out broadly looking at how people use space in cities.  The beginning of his research coincided with New York City's anti-pigeon policies and practices.  He took notice.  He attended public meetings and residents complained about messy pigeons -- certain types of people fed them and the pigeons excreted their waste messing up public space. Image: Pigeon feeding and instruction, Washington Square P

St. Nicholas Park, Manhattan St. James Park, Bronx Remillard Park, Berkeley Indian Rock, Berkeley Mont-Royal, Montreal P.S. Read about the nearby nature of rock outcroppings . P.P.S. Carolyn Yerkes writes about the survival of rock outcroppings despite the 1811 grid plan in The Greatest Grid , edited by Hilary Ballon.