A Newfangled Way to Count the Trees in the Park – New York Times Annotated
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Mr. George used a clinometer to measure the height of a tree. He also used a G.P.S. device to locate trees.
Mr. George was collecting information for a comprehensive inventory of Central Park’s trees, the first of its kind to use global positioning technology to pinpoint the exact location of each one.
The Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit group that manages the park under contract with the city, hired the Davey Resource Group, based in Ohio, to conduct the survey with a team of certified arborists, including Mr. George. The final count: 24,132 mature trees (informally defined as higher than chest level with a trunk diameter of more than six inches). The arborists noted an additional 2,000 saplings, one to six inches in diameter.
The survey was completed in March, producing, for each of the park’s trees, a computer file storing its long-term history. With this record, park workers can assess the maintenance needs of each tree, track continuing threats like Dutch elm disease and find new planting opportunities.
The most breathtaking tree in the park, in Mr. Calvanese’s opinion, is an American elm in the East Meadow, which has grown to 59 inches in trunk diameter from 44 inches in 1982.
He called the stand of elms along Literary Walk, at the southern end of the park’s central promenade, the greatest in the country, and noted a wealth of “specimen trees,” which assume perfect form and stand out from the surrounding landscape.
The survey concluded that the park’s efforts to reduce invasive trees, which produce lots of seed and take over shrub borders, had been successful: the number of Norway maples was 860, down from 1,302 in 1982. The Norway maples and Sycamore maples, European imports, are being replaced with native species like the red oak, black oak and sugar maple.
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