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Showing posts from July, 2015

A Brief History of the Minetta Waters in Washington Square Park, 1797-1828

A brook or stream (or was it a creek) once flowed diagonally aboveground in what is now Washington Square Park. Historically, the waterbody was known as the Minetta Waters. Minetta flowed into the parkland west of the arch and exited the park at the southwestern corner -- at West 4th Street, east of MacDougal. Minetta formed the western boundary of the eventual burial ground. The waterbody supported a swamp up until the end of the 1700s. The land east of Minetta was acquired by the city in 1797 to establish a paupers' grave or Potter's Field aka a burial ground for poor and unknown people. Upland meadow habitat was located in the northwestern and northeastern portions of the park, "on the relatively high ground above the 'valley' of the Minetta Waters." The area between Fifth Avenue and Waverly Place to University Place was once covered by a sand hill. In 1808, the upland areas were levelled and the soil was used to fill in the swamp in order to crea

Book Review: Nature Anatomy, by Julia Rothman

When it rains, it pours, goes the adage. During the last few months, several nature guides have been added to my bookshelves.  One is  Nature Anatomy , by Julia Rothman, the subject of this post. Two are large format books won at a school auction: Maps, by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski; Animalium curated by Katie Scott and Jenny Broom. Recently I met in person Tristan Donovan, author of Feral Cities, and talked about the book and the animals therein. Read my review of Feral Cities and interview with Tristan . On July 5th, the New York Times published, Wild in the Streets, an hour-by-hour guide to the wildlife one could see in New York City written by Dave Taft and illustrated by Matt McCann. I had seen Nature Anatomy in several places including on Brainpickings  and How We Montessori and was wowed by the illustration-heavy storytelling about nature. The book successfully engages the reader and communicates the fine-grain elements and large-scale processes of the

New York Citizen Science Projects on SciStarter

We are big fans of citizen science. A few years ago, we volunteered with  Your Wild Life  to collect  Ants on Broadway . WSP Eco Projects was fortunate to work with SciStarter  on a prototype wildlife observation tool called WSP Nature Finds . The launch of the prototype coincided with the last day of the World Science Festival 2015. To see data collected on May 31, go to  www.wspecoprojects.org  > Options > Explore > deselect Park Trees if necessary > Additional layers > sci starter > click on each tree (green dot) to see the wildlife observations. We hope to "mark" the six observation points (trees) in the park so visitors can log their wildlife sightings and we can identify patterns over time. In  addition to being a generator of and collaborator on citizen science projects, SciStarter is also a project database, and projects are located throughout the USA and worldwide. You can search for projects by activity, topic, or location. I was curious about