Mt. Pleasant Has Lost 700 Acres of Forest. Here’s What Can Be Done Next.

By Michael Gold

Mount Pleasant lost about 700 acres of forest from 2001 to 2016, 10 percent of the town’s woodlands, the town’s Conservation Advisory Council’s (CAC) just-completed natural resource inventory (NRI) has concluded.

“Development is eating up our forests,” explained Jim Nordgren, a land trust consultant who assisted the CAC in developing the report.

The town’s Comprehensive Plan recommends the planting of 100,000 trees over the next several years to partly compensate for the forest loss.

The tree canopy study was led by Professor Andrew Reinmann of the City University of New York Advanced Science Research Center, using satellite imagery to look at the town’s forest cover in that 15-year period.

The map shows that the majority of the town’s substantial tree cover that remains lies on the western side of Mount Pleasant, including Rockefeller State Park, Briarcliff Manor, Sleepy Hollow and Pocantico Hills. Areas that provide much less tree cover are in Hawthorne, Thornwood, Valhalla and Pleasantville where major thoroughfares plow through the area, including the Saw Mill River Parkway and Route 117.

Nordgren pointed out that “it’s very encouraging that that goal (100,000 new trees) is in there (the Comprehensive Plan), but “recommending that 100,000 trees be replanted would not even compensate for what’s been lost,” he said.

“If we planted 100,000 trees, that would be 500 acres,” Nordgren said, while the town has lost 700 acres of woodlands. To calculate that figure, Nordgren explained that the average tree cover is 100 to 200 trees per acre worldwide.

“If we’re continuing to lose 700 acres of trees every 15 years, 100,000 trees wouldn’t even be breaking even with the tree loss,” he pointed out. “Even planting 100,000 trees is not enough.”

“Most of the forest patches loss is likely due to the enormous growth and development of formerly large undeveloped areas,” Mount Pleasant CAC Chair Steven Kavee explained in an e-mail. “Even cluster subdivisions with homes concentrated on a portion of a large parcel still clear-cut large patches and then leave some smaller patches that don’t provide the benefits from the formerly forested areas.”

“Tree canopy has all those benefits we are all familiar with – clean air, CO2 (carbon dioxide) uptake, shade and temperature moderation, habitat, biodiversity, stormwater management,” Kavee pointed out. “Whatever forests remain are often smaller patches creating habitat fragmentation and only benefit edge species that are adapted to this environment – well-established squirrels, skunks, racoons, deer, etc. But habitat for reptiles, amphibians and some threatened or species of concern, like birds, is lost. It’s a sort of death by a thousand cuts.”

Mount Pleasant conducted an online resident survey asking residents their opinions about the town’s natural resources. The NRI findings stated that 95 percent of respondents agreed that protecting forests and wetlands was beneficial and that 80 percent of respondents want the town to expand protected open space areas.”

“Everybody wants a better environment in their town,” Nordgren commented, “yet Mount Pleasant is looking at two significant subdivision projects – the Legion of Christ property and the Meadows at Briarcliff.”

Toll Brothers has proposed building 162 townhouses on the Legion of Christ property in Thornwood, about 165 wooded acres. It has requested a rezone of 96 acres with a total disturbance area of about 42 acres and 17 acres of new impervious area, according to documents provided by the developer to the town in May.

ZappiCo Real Estate Development plans to build 31 homes on its property above Pocantico Lake and bordering three area parks – Rockefeller State Park, Pocantico Lake County Park and the Village of Briarcliff Pocantico Park. About six acres of trees would be cut down to allow for the Meadows of Briarcliff construction, according to Mount Pleasant CAC documents.

Nordgren, who has a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale and an MBA from The Wharton School, has provided planning and land management services for land trusts in Westchester and Putnam counties.

The Mount Pleasant CAC report includes data from a 2014 New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) report, which found that heavy rainfall events, of more than one to two inches per day have “already increased by 74 percent. NYSERDA estimates that precipitation will be “seven percent greater by 2050.”

Also, NYSERDA concluded that the probability of a 100-year flood occurring has increased 290 percent. Its report also stated that temperatures in New York have increased by two degrees Fahrenheit since 1970 and that temperatures will rise an additional four to five degrees in the Hudson Valley by 2050.

Nordgren recommends homeowners and town governments plant many more trees to help stem the predicted flooding.

He suggested that residents replace their lawns with climate resilient native trees, such as dogwoods and crabapple trees, and plants, such as blueberry shrubs, replace grass with meadows and install rain gardens.

“We need homeowners and towns to be better stewards of their properties,” he said. “Trees prevent flooding, purify the air, absorb floodwater.”

Pleasantville-based writer Michael Gold has had articles published in the New York Daily News, the Albany Times Union, the Hartford Courant, The Palm Beach Post and other newspapers, and The Hardy Society Journal, a British literary journal.

 

How the Tree Loss Acreage Was Calculated

City University’s Advanced Science Research Center Professor Andrew Reinmann and his team examined data derived from satellite imagery gathered by the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), produced by the United States Geological Survey. The satellite survey was first conducted in 2001 and then repeated every five years, through 2016.

Professor Reinmann explained the impact and the context of the loss of forest land in Mount Pleasant. He said there are ways to allow growth and development that minimize impact on natural resources.

“A lot of development pressure is pushing further northward in Westchester County,” he said. “Losing 700 acres to housing development is substantial. Westchester County has decisions to make on how to manage sprawl. We’re losing natural resources.”