Tags: ecology

Andy Lubershane’s weekly series Earthly Comics works to unpack environmental topics that can be difficult to understand: walkability; pervious concrete; cellulosic ethanol.  Not the stuff of Marmaduke, but it does break some complicated ideas down into digestible chunks, and it’s pretty lighthearted.

The Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Science recently released a report finding that polluted and damaged ecosystems have the potential to recover within a lifetime (average of 46 years), or even as little as a decade. Researchers studied 240 sites affected by both natural and human-induced disturbances and concluded that, with adequate restoration and cleanup work, even a heavily polluted ecosystem can revitalize itself.

For the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival at Manahatta Island, the Wildlife Conservation Society and ecologist Eric W. Sanderson have prepared the Manahatta Project, a massive GIS-based portrait of the topography and ecology of Manhattan as it was in 1609.

This week Mayor Bloomberg signed legislation to establish a comprehensive wetlands strategy by for New York City by 2012. The Mayor emphasized at a public hearing on Tuesday that protecting wetlands (of which there are many at the Freshkills Park site) is a high priority of PlaNYC 2030. 

Another volunteer opportunity on Staten Island, removing invasive weeds, watering and mulching at Ocean Breeze Park this weekend:

Natural Resources Group: Stewardship Day
Ocean Breeze Park
Saturday, May 30, 9 am-2 pm

Sign up is through the Million Trees website, along with more Million Trees volunteer events on Staten Island and throughout the city.

There are still seats available for this Sunday’s 10 am bird-focused bus and walking tour of the Freshkills Park site.  Our bird tours are held bimonthly and are jointly led by park planners from our office and naturalists from the Staten Island Museum. 

New York City throws over 3,000 tons of organic matter into landfills every day.  Time to start composting!  Craft-zine’s blog offers a guide to setting yourself up for indoor, home vermicomposting; the Lower East Side Ecology Center offers supplies and more information on composting in general. 

Especially in hard economic times like this, it’s difficult for smaller non-profits and volunteer groups to compete for grant funding.  Online microphilantropy organization ioby helps groups with small-scale environmental projects in New York City connect with potential donors and volunteers.  (ioby stands for “in our backyards” in a riff on the common NIMBY “not in my backyard” sentiment.) 

Cattails, those wetland mainstays, are a becoming a popular tool for use in phytoremediation, the use of plants to remove and control environmental pollutants.  Arsenic, pharmaceuticals, even chemicals from explosives–cattails have been used in absorbing all of them.  This sounds promising to us. 

Corporate masticating mowers: now officially a phenomenon!  Last week we mentioned Bayer Healthcare inviting sheep to chow down on their overgrown Richmond, CA lawn.  This week, Google has hired 200 goats to graze on dry brush at its Mountain View headquarters. 

Last Thursday’s installment of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series was terrific.  Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), discussed the importance of floral biodiversity in urban settings, the GNPC’s history and operations–it’s one of the only municipal native plant providers in the country, if not the only one–and several citywide initiatives it’s taken on recently, including the Great Pollinator Project. 

From new-fashioned eco-technologies to old-fashioned ones: Bayer Healthcare recently brought 1,450 sheep to its Richmond, California campus to graze on 17 acres of grass.  The sheep, managed by Living Systems Land Management, will live on site for two weeks and will eat close to 115,000 pounds of overgrown grass and weeds, including invasive species. 

No need to keep Earth Day constrained to just one day: festivities continue through the weekend, with Earth Day New York holding a festival at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on Friday and Saturday.  Exhibits and representatives from environmental groups and green businesses, organic food and live music are all part of the program.

In a move to increase biodiversity within our urban jungles, the UK Green Building Council (the UK’s equivalent of the US Green Building Council) have put forth some biophilic design recommendations to policymakers, developers and urban planners that could enable wildlife to better integrate with the built environment. 

The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this Thursday with a talk by Ed Toth, Director of the Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center.  The GNPC’s mission is to supply New York City’s natural areas with native plants and seeds from local plant populations. 

NYC Wildflower Week kicks off its 2nd annual celebration of all things green and wild the first week of May.  Free activities throughout the city will include botanical walks, garden tours, ecology lectures, children’s events, planting opportunities, cooking classes and food tastings.

Did we mention that we are trying to develop a research and development agenda for Freshkills Park?  Park development over the next several years will only be able to open up about 100 acres of the 2,200-acre site to the public.