Downed trees highlight challenges facing greater Riverdale’s urban forest

Snapped limbs and toppled trees lay scattered across greater Riverdale for days after a powerful storm swept through New York City Aug. 7, blocking sidewalks, spilling into roadways and, in at least one case, crushing a parked car.

According to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the agency received 131 service requests in the Bronx after the storm, including 21 for downed trees. Although the department did not consider the storm particularly severe, a spokesperson said weather events generating more than 1,000 service requests citywide have become more frequent this year.

Over the past decade, the city has averaged one event of that scale annually, the department said. This year, however, storms in February, May, June and July each generated more than 1,000 requests.

Evidence of the latest storm remained visible around greater Riverdale for days.

At the corner of West 235th Street and Johnson Avenue, a tree stood seemingly split in two, with much of its canopy thrown across the sidewalk. Along the Henry Hudson Parkway West service road, another massive tree fell into the street, taking up roughly half the roadway. Several 311 complaints were filed before crews arrived Aug. 10 to remove it.

For Stephen Blaseman, the damage was more personal.

After more than a decade living in Spuyten Duyvil, Blaseman had seen what falling trees could do. In February, a tree collapsed onto several vehicles parked along Manhattan College Parkway. Less than a month later, another fell onto two cars on Independence Avenue near West 246th Street during a storm.

The Aug. 7 storm confirmed a fear he had carried while parking beneath the neighborhood’s dense canopy. When Blaseman emerged from his home the next morning, he found a large tree sprawled across his white Ford Explorer. The impact smashed through the windshield and crushed the roof, damage he estimates left the vehicle totaled.

“I have been worried about this happening because there are so many trees around,” Blaseman said. “You see them with broken branches still hanging all the time.”

Still, Blaseman said, avoiding trees when parking in Spuyten Duyvil is not particularly realistic. With limited street parking and trees lining much of the neighborhood, there are few alternatives.

For most trees along public streets and sidewalks and in city parks, maintenance and removal fall to the department of parks and recreation. Its forestry division oversees more than 650,000 street trees citywide, while trees on private property generally remain the responsibility of property owners.

Newly planted city trees are initially watered and maintained by planting contractors, according to the department. After the first year, responsibility shifts to borough forestry offices, whose crews inspect, prune and maintain mature trees with the goal of extending their lives and preserving the shade, cooling and other benefits they provide.

No amount of maintenance can guarantee a tree will withstand a severe storm, said Jodie Colón, who heads Friends of Spuyten Duyvil, a volunteer environmental stewardship group caring for Henry Hudson Park and Spuyten Duyvil Shorefront Park. But regular inspections and pruning can remove damaged limbs and address some vulnerabilities before strong winds arrive.

Pruning damaged branches, Colón said, can help a tree properly close a wound rather than leaving behind a weakened or broken limb. Keeping trees healthy also gives them a better chance of handling environmental stresses over time.

With hundreds of thousands of street trees under the city’s care, trained volunteers can help with some of the maintenance.

Christina McLaughlin, urban forestry programs manager for Trees New York and a certified arborist, said residents trained to recognize and address minor maintenance problems can allow city forestry crews to concentrate on trees posing greater hazards.

Trees New York, a nonprofit founded in 1976 amid cuts to city forestry services, trains residents through its Citizen Pruner program. Participants learn tree identification, urban tree health and pruning techniques before receiving a five-year license that allows them to prune city street trees.

The need for that care begins with the conditions street trees face simply by growing in New York City.

“It’s no secret that trees in a forest have a very different day-to-day life than trees in an urban forest,” McLaughlin said. “They deal with significant challenges in our local neighborhoods.”

Street trees contend with pavement, compacted soil, limited space for roots, utility infrastructure and pollution. In Riverdale, McLaughlin said, the neighborhood’s steep terrain adds another complication. During heavy rain, water can rush downhill and away from tree beds rather than soaking into the soil and reaching roots.

Residents can help with some basic care even without becoming licensed pruners. Volunteers can water trees, remove litter from tree beds and participate in stewardship programs, said Clara Pregitzer, senior manager of applied science and partnerships at the Natural Areas Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit that works with the parks department in the city’s forests and wetlands.

The parks department’s Super Steward program similarly trains volunteers to independently perform approved maintenance in public green spaces.

Those efforts can supplement city forestry work, but maintenance has its limits, particularly as trees encounter increasingly extreme conditions.

Pregitzer said trees naturally age, become unhealthy and eventually fall. Periods of drought, intense rainfall and strong winds can add stress, while severe storms can bring down even trees that have been maintained.

“We’re having these storms more often,” Pregitzer said. “A lot of this clusters in the summer, when we see the heavy thunderstorms, the heavy rain and the downed trees.”

The approach differs somewhat in the city’s forests, where caring for individual trees is only one piece of maintaining a larger ecosystem. Removing invasive plants and adding native species can help create healthier forests that are better able to withstand storms, pests and disease, Pregitzer said.

“A healthy forest is less likely to be damaged in storms,” she said. “It’s more resilient to things like storms and pests and pathogens, and it provides more benefits to New Yorkers.”

When trees do come down, residents can report them through 311. The parks department then sends forestry inspectors to assess the condition and determines how quickly crews need to respond.

The department prioritizes hazards threatening public safety, including fallen trees blocking streets or resting on buildings, standing trees in danger of falling and large fallen limbs. Once those cases are addressed, crews move on to lower-priority debris and damage in parks, which can mean less urgent cleanup remains for days after a storm.

As storms place more pressure on the city’s urban forest, Pregitzer said caring for trees cannot begin only once branches snap or trunks come down. New York has also committed to expanding its tree canopy, meaning each newly planted tree eventually becomes another that will require years of care.

“If we want to meet these goals and avoid this kind of damage, we need people out there across the five boroughs to really care for our trees,” Pregitzer said. “And especially since we’ve committed to planting more, we have to think about who’s going to cover that ground.”