Bayside Is Queens' Greenest Area, Despite Low Tree Gains

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — Queens' most tree-lined area only got a bit greener in recent years.

New York City’s trees and leaves grew about 2 percent between 2010 and 2017, according to a first-of-its-kind report by the Nature Conservancy, which mapped the amount of the city that’s covered by overhead tree canopy.

Bayside, however, barely added any tree coverage. The bulk of the neighborhood — from 201st Street to the Cross Island Parkway, between 26th Avenue and the Long Island Expressway —saw a net gain of 20 acres or 1.12 percent. Bay Terrace, north of Bayside, saw similar gains: the neighborhood added 21 acres or 2 percent more tree coverage.

While Bayside gained more acres than other neighborhoods in Queens, the percent of net canopy gain is still below average, compared to the borough at large.

This slow growth might be because the primarily white, wealthy neighborhood already has a lot of trees, and the city has attempted to focus on equity in its more recent tree planting efforts.

'Trees are an environmental justice issue'

Trees play a key role in urban equity, helping to lower temperatures, convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and absorb rainwater, which is especially impactful in low-income neighborhoods hit hardest by climate change, researchers told The City, which first reported on the study.

“Nature-based solutions are not a luxury, but rather a necessity for all communities,” Annel Hernandez, associate director at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, told The City.

In a recent op-ed titled "New York City trees are an environmental justice issue," she advocated for planting more trees and building parks in the city's neighborhoods that are affected by redlining.

Notably, the city’s neighborhoods with higher heat vulnerability and poverty rates have less canopy overall, but during the study’s eight years, those areas saw the strongest tree growth, records show.

In Queens, for instance, half of the ten neighborhoods that saw the borough’s greatest net canopy gains — adding between 46 and 21 new acres of trees and leaves — are in southeast Queens.

Queens' most tree-filled neighborhood

Bayside, by contrast, is not for want of trees.

According to the study, 75 percent of the available space for planting trees in Bayside and Bay Terrace — known as the neighborhood’s “stocking rate” — was taken up by living plants as of 2015.

And, the neighborhood is the most tree-filled in Queens with 9,468 living trees as of 2015, the study found.

Other neighborhoods, like Averne and Edgemere on the Rockaway Peninsula, have trees planted in less than half of the available spaces designated for living plants.

Superstorm Sandy and Queens' tree count

Superstorm Sandy also played a role in the Rockaways’ lower-than-average tree cover: Some of the neighborhoods in the city that saw the greatest tree cover losses between 2010 and 2017 are areas hit hardest by Sandy, including waterfront parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the study shows.

A stretch of the Rockaway Peninsula encompassing Breezy Point, Belle Harbor, and Rockaway Park lost 36 acres of trees during the study’s eight years — a greater loss than any other area of New York City.

Half of the city’s ten neighborhoods that saw the greatest tree canopy losses between 2010 and 2017 are in Queens, which helps explain why The World’s Borough saw the least tree and leaf growth in the city at large: just a 0.92 percent boost in tree cover.

Here's the tree-data breakdown for Bayside, based on city Neighborhood Tabulation Area:

Bayside:

• Canopy net gain (2010-2017): 20.78 acres, 1.1 percent
• Number of trees (2015): 9,468
• Stocking rate (2015): 75%
• Most common tree: London planetree

Bay Terrace and Fort Totten

• Canopy net gain (2010-2017): 24.45 acres, 2 percent
• Number of trees (2015): 2,788
• Stocking rate (2015): 75%
• Most common tree: Pin oak

Read the full "Future Forest NYC" study at the Nature Conservancy website.

Patch Editor Nick Garber contributed to this report.