Tag: Eric W. Sanderson

Response to Sanderson’s and Brown’s “Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson”

Before reading this paper written by Sanderson and Brown, I knew that the Manhattan I grew up knowing was not always a busy, populous city. The skyscrapers and other human made structures did not exist. There were more trees, more hills and more bodies of water. However, that was the extent of my knowledge. I never thought of asking myself how much more natural areas were there? How much of the island was covered in trees and forests? How diverse were the ecological communities? What did Manhattan look like?

After reading this paper, it felt eye-opening to learn in-depth about the natural environment of Manhattan before substantial human settlement. It is difficult for me to imagine a Manhattan that used to be 99.9% natural areas when I have seen Manhattan and New York City overall as a place covered in large skyscrapers and buildings (552).This fact made me curious to see some visual images of the Mannahatta Project. On the project website, they had a Google Earth application where I was able to see an overview of Mannahatta. I typed in my address and the application had a lot information regarding what the surrounding environment was like. I learned that most of my neighborhood used to be an oak-tulip forest home to a diverse amount of wildlife such as Eastern Chipmunks, Red-Tailed Hawks, and Brown Snakes. Today, it is just a neighborhood consisting of
brick buildings, a few trees on the sidewalk, some pigeons, and some squirrels. If I could have saw my neighborhood with this much environmental diversity, it would be amazing.

One point that Sanderson makes in the paper is that there is a trade-off between the progress of human society and the well-being of the environment. As Manhattan and New York City expanded in its commercial development, more of the environment needed to destroyed or modified in order to suit the needs of the City and its growing population. In particular, 1825 was a significant year as the completion of the Erie Canal made the City a very important port according to Sanderson (547). However, even before 1825, we can see from the table on page 552 that human-dedicated areas increased from 0.1% in 1609 to 16% in 1782 while natural areas decreased from 99.9% to 84%. In less than 400 years by 2004, only 3% of natural areas remained and have become eclipsed by human-dedicated areas which occupy 97% of Manhattan’s land (553). The natural environment of Manhattan which had been developing for thousands of years was destroyed in less than 400 years for the sake of society’s progress. If the trend continues, more of the natural areas would be destroyed to provide society with the resources it needs. Eventually, those resources will likely be exhausted. Society will also lose many of the benefits nature can provide such as stress relief and medical advancements.

Overall, I thought Sanderson’s paper did a great job at exploring in-depth the environmental landscape of Manhattan before human development. It impresses me that with one historical document, Sanderson and Brown were able to extract so much information and create an entire project off of the map.

Mannahatta Response

I found this reading to be drastically different from the Miller reading. Unlike that one, I felt that this was not really written to raise people’s awareness of the nature around them or to try to persuade them to get involved in conservation efforts. Dana likened it to a eulogy in her response, and, building a bit off that, I find it to be sort of like a love letter to the Manhattan of old, the Manhattan before 97% of the land was being used by us. It is written by someone who seems pretty passionate about this topic and it is is written for people who share that passion.

This is not to say I didn’t find it interesting, even though it’s not something I would usually read through. The technical terms and scientific words proved confusing, but after consulting the trusty internet, a few things became clear: Manhattan used to be full of so much life – hardwood and softwood trees mixed together; over 66 different water networks; even grasslands that stretched between forests. These things were erased though by disturbances both of the natural and human variety.

It’s cool to see that there are some people out there who want us to know Manhattan for more than just what it is today by using the British  Headquarters Map, more math than I can comprehend , GPS and other technological advances to accomplish what I see as a Herculean task.

It spurred me to do some research of what my own neighborhood looked like in the past. Fresh Pond Road, the main street, is actually named for a freshwater pond that was later filled in and there used to be many of these ponds in the area. The water in these lower ponds came from Newtown Creek, an estuary I bike over on my way to Brooklyn. So the article inspired me to look to the past to see where everything I know came from. And if anyone ever passes through the Grand Avenue – Newtown  train station on the M, R, F, or E, now you know what it’s named after.