First Of Its Kind Tree Map Integrates Live Forestry Data From Harlem To Hollis

Yesterday, NYC Parks launched a first-of-its-kind living tree map—the NYC Tree Map—showcasing nearly one million individually managed City trees that include newly mapped.

In-park trees that have unique IDs, species information, and maintenance status. Building on Parks’ previously launched Street Tree Map, this empowers New Yorkers to digitally interact with all 800,000+ landscaped park and street trees in real-time.

It allows them to find the specific location of each park and street tree in the city; see tree species and how each tree contributes to a healthier, more resilient city; record their stewardship activity; report tree conditions directly to Parks staff; and for the first time ever, see the results of any completed inspections and recent tree work.   

“Our New York City trees provide countless benefits to the city and residents – they provide the air we breathe, help to keep temperatures down, and manage flood waters,” said Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi. “The NYC Tree Map highlights the value of these natural resources and allows New Yorkers to report trees in need of care. I want to recognize the hard work of the Parks Department for designing this map and I’m excited to see real results emerge from its use.”   

“Our new NYC Tree Map is groundbreaking, for the first time mapping park and street trees on one easy-to-use resource. Through it, we are offering New Yorkers the most comprehensive picture of all individually managed trees under our jurisdiction ever,” said NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue. “With a slate of new features, we hope this new map will empower New Yorkers to visit their local parks, find their trees, and learn about the wonderful benefits our trees offer our communities.”   

The NYC Tree Map is the most comprehensive and up-to-date living tree map in the world. Integrated directly with Parks’ forestry database, the map gives citizens the same real-time access to the urban forest that Parks Foresters have on the ground.   

To map City trees across the five boroughs, Parks embarked on its 2016-2018 Park Tree Inventory Project, the first-ever effort to enumerate trees growing on New York City parkland. Surveying 7,582 acres of landscaped parks (non-forest parkland), including all small parks and playgrounds, historic houses, community gardens, neighborhood, community, and flagship parks, Parks staff and volunteers measured the precise location, size, condition, and species of non-forest trees growing in landscaped parks.   

NYC Tree Map Info at a Glance:   

• Top 3 Landscaped Park Tree Species: London planetree (18,161 trees / 11.6% of total trees), Pin Oak (15,002 trees / 9.6% of total trees), Honey Locust variety (6,929 trees / 4.4% of total trees)   
• NYC Parks with the Most Landscaped Park Trees: Flushing Meadows Corona Park (8,698 trees), Prospect Park (3,995 trees)   

• Borough by Borough Landscaped Park Trees: Queens (40,617), Manhattan (39,273) Bronx (33,338), Brooklyn (32,580), Staten Island (10,817)   
• Number of Landscaped Tree Varieties: 570 different types of trees on streets and in parks   

Parks is inviting New Yorkers to explore their favorite parks and seek out new ones to see what trees are growing where, report problems, and record tree stewardship. Through the NYC Tree Map, users will be able to see:   

• Inspections: see a tree’s most recent inspection, with the date, and inspection ID.   
• Work Orders: see all scheduled tree work and any recently completed work, the date of completed work, and work order ID. 

NYC Parks actively cares for more than 800,000 mapped trees—650,000 street trees and more than 150,000 trees in parks—across the city. Parks recently celebrated a milestone tree planting season with more than 13,000 trees planted citywide in fiscal year 2022, more than planted in the past five fiscal years.

Parks is also furthering its commitment to increasing equitable planting and targeting plantings in areas that need trees most with a $112 million allocation from the Adams administration. For more information, please see NYC Parks’ recent release on tree planting efforts.