Welcome to the Macaulay Honors College BioBlitz site. This site is used for registration and information pertaining to our annual BioBlitz, and as an information portal for past BioBlitzes. Traditionally, Macaulay partners with a park in NYC to conduct a 24-hour species survey. Macaulay students participate in the BioBlitz in the Fall of their sophomore year, and then use the data to complete class projects. The collected data is also openly available to the public. To date, we have conducted ten BioBlitzes: Central Park (2013), New York Botanical Garden (2014), Freshkills Park (2015), Brooklyn Bridge Park (2016), Alley Pond Park (2017), Inwood Hill Park (2018) and Green-Wood Cemetery and the Gowanus Canal (2019). In 2020 and 2021, we held remote BioBlitzes, inviting students to observe the life around them in their own neighborhoods. In 2022, we returned for a fully in-person BioBlitz at Randall’s Island.
Our twelfth BioBlitz will be at Van Cortlandt Park on September 14-15, 2024!
Check out our work at Inwood Hill Park in 2018!
We have two main goals for our BioBlitz: educating students about the science of ecology in the city and cataloguing as many species as possible within the event time period. Students will get a transformational educational experience with real scientific data collection in a complex ecosystem, and also contribute to the environmental monitoring efforts of New York City. Here is some coverage, including videos, of our Central Park BioBlitz in 2013.
