Brooklyn’s ‘urban forest’ grows as more trees are planted, maintained
The canopy of trees in New York City, both on privately-owned land and in parks and other public facilities, has steadily been growing in every borough, according to a recently-released report by the Nature Conservancy, “The State of the Urban Forest NYC.”
Brooklyn as a whole had a change in canopy cover from 2010 to 2017 (the years covered by the report) of 1.91 percent, compared to the citywide average of 1.68 percent, the Nature Conservancy said. “Canopy cover” refers to the amount of land area covered by trees.
When areas of the city are broken down by “stocking rate,” or the number of street trees compared to estimated capacity for them, areas nearest to Prospect Park, such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Gowanus/Park Slope/Red Hook, and Crown Heights/Prospect Heights, had higher stocking rates. In some places, the stocking rate was as high as 81.72 percent.