The Relationships Between Population Density and Green Space on Plant Species Diversity Across New York Boroughs

Siema Alam, Kristen Aloysius, Evelyn Krutoy, Eric Lange

Plant species diversity can be affected by many factors, including amount of green space and
population density, which are particularly unique in the boroughs of New York City. We wanted
to look into whether these variables had a significant impact on plant diversity across the
boroughs and city council districts, with the use of iNaturalist observations and open data
sources with information on green space percentages across the city. Our hypothesis was that
higher amounts of green space and lower population density would correlate to higher amounts of plant diversity.
After looking into the comparisons between the green space and population density in each of
the boroughs, as well as the city council districts, we didn’t find any significant correlation. The
lack of correlation between these factors and the biodiversity of plant species could be attributed to the nature of much of the green space in all the boroughs, which is frequently maintained for public use only allowing a few species to survive. We also found that there was a positive correlation between the amount of observers in an area on iNaturalist and the amount of research grade species classified. This meant that areas with more observers were
more likely to have higher rates of plant biodiversity. To make this study more reliable, we
would account for these factors in each city council district and area of observation on
iNaturalist for future work.

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