Central Park will soon become a living laboratory—specifically a research site to study how climate change affects urban parks.
Central Park means a lot of things to New Yorkers: playground, meeting place, natural oasis, arts venue and movie set, to name just a few.
“There are lots of individual studies on parks and climate change, including about how much CO2 trees absorb from the atmosphere and how much urban heat island effect is mitigated by tree canopy,” said Karen Seto, a professor of geography and urbanization science at Yale, who will direct the lab program.
The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park under a contract with the city, will help coordinate the research effort, officials said. It also has the imprimatur of New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams, who said in a press release that the initiative reflects “a new era in research and cooperation that will give our park professionals improved tools to combat the climate crisis.”
The city also is experiencing frequent heat waves, including three last year, when temperatures soared to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for three consecutive days. Five of the hottest Julys on record, according to weather stations in Central Park, occurred between 2010 and 2020. She said the project will draw upon decades of data that has been collected by the Central Park Conservancy on wildlife and other metrics of the park’s natural features, but that to date has not been analyzed.
Experts said the research program also will investigate how climate change converges with other human-caused environmental stresses — such as soil compaction and strain on water resources — to degrade both the park’s natural resources and its recreational value.
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