---
title: "Upland and Forest Ecological Assessment Protocol for New York City"
slug: "upland-and-forest-ecological-assessment-protocol-nyc"
tags: ["assessment", "canopy closure", "inventory", "new york city", "protocol", "urban forested natural area", "urban tree canopy"]
updated: 2025-08-26T20:36:03Z
published: 2025-08-26T20:36:03Z
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://fic.naturalareasnyc.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Upland and Forest Ecological Assessment Protocol for New York City

*There is an updated version of this protocol here: [NYC Forest Assessment 2.0 Protocol and Materials](https://fic.naturalareasnyc.org/docs/nyc-forest-assessment-2-protocol-and-materials)

This resource provides the field protocol for sampling the upland forest of New York City's urban forested natural areas. Included are metrics for sampling forest structural layers, including the soil, forest floor, coarse woody material, herbaceous and woody vegetation, forest canopy, and human and ecological impacts. The forest and upland ecological assessment was designed to create an unbiased, standardized and replicable methodology to evaluate the health and condition of forest and upland areas resulting in quantitative measures. Initially, this series of protocols was used to assess all upland forest, meadow, woodland and scrublands in New York City parkland Forever Wild Boundaries, but is designed to be replicable in other settings.

### In a nutshell, this resource offers:

- Standardized protocols for measuring many different aspects of an urban forested natural area.
- Detailed instructions for establishing forest plots, measuring tree diameter, estimating tree health, and recording unknown species in the field.

### How to use this resource:

- As a practical field guide for measuring different indicators of forest composition and health in your city.
- As a starting place for determining which variables are important to include in a forest inventory or assessment in your city.
- For training field staff on forest measurement practices.

**Author:**The Natural Areas Conservancy, the Natural Resources Group of the New York City Parks Department, and the U.S. Forest Service.

**P****oint of contact:**Helen Forgione, Senior Ecologist, Natural Areas Conservancy, [helen.forgione@naturalareasnyc.org](mailto:helen.forgione@naturalareasnyc.org)

[PDF document](https://cdn.document360.io/18a9acd7-787d-47fa-9b54-01592bb1d507/Images/Documentation/NAC%20Forest%20Protocol_v4.pdf)

##

## Related

- [Forest Management Framework for New York City](/forest-management-framework-for-new-york-city.md)
- [Guidelines for Urban Forest Restoration in New York City](/guidelines-for-urban-forest-restoration.md)
- [Assessing Urban Forest Patch Health: A Protocol from Baltimore](/assessing-urban-forest-health-protocol-baltimore.md)
- [Green Seattle Partnership Inventory Protocol](/green-seattle-partnership-inventory-protocol.md)
- [NYC Forest Assessment 2.0 Protocol and Materials](/nyc-forest-assessment-2-protocol-and-materials.md)