Climate Adaptive Planting Palettes for New York City Metro Region

The Forest Identification and Restoration Selection Tool (FIRST) was developed by the Natural Areas Conservancy in New York City as part of a bigger project to create climate-adaptive planting palettes for urban forest restoration projects. The tool leads the user through a dichotomous key to identify species that are appropriate for ecological restoration and resilient to future climate conditions.

In a nutshell, this resource offers:

• Planting palettes, community types, and species lists for ecological restoration projects in the New York City metro area.
• Climate-resilient options for planting projects, using suitable tree habitat projects from the US Forest Service Climate Change Tree Atlas.

How to use this resource:

• As a handy way to identify forest types while in the field, according to the New York Natural Heritage Program.
• As a reference to help identify species that are appropriate to the current habitat and projected to be resilient in future climate scenarios.

Author: Natural Areas Conservancy

Date published: 2019

Point of contact: Helen Forgione, Senior Ecologist, Natural Areas Conservancy, helen.forgione@naturalareasnyc.org 

Resource is available online here.

A screen capture of the Natural Area Conservancy's Forest Identification and Restoration Selection Tool (FIRST). Click on the image, or the link above, to use the tool.