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I'm Eric Sanderson and i'm a senior conservation ecology stand our global conservation programs what seemed important to me as landscape ecologist was the freeways the suburban sprawl and the deforestation and these were trends
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that are not not limited to small areas I want to understand these patterns I wanted to understand the sort of conceptual framework for thinking about nature in the world and then I wanted to try and apply it
00:00:36
I've been working for almost ten years now and a project called them on a hot tub project to try and figure out what Manhattan Island was like the afternoon that Henry Hudson arrived sep tember 12 16 09 man that was mostly forest but for
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us in many different kinds you would have seen a long wooded Island with a pine forests and oak hickory forests wetlands he would have seen streams coming down off of the Manhattan or and
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draining across beaches one I'm manihot to you would've seen lots and lots of wildlife there were black bears there were wolves there were white tail deer there were probably beavers on every screen river otters I'm see what have
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seen this very fertile very ecologically complete place if Manhattan existed as today as it did four hundred years ago we would think of it as a national park it would be the Yosemite or the Yellowstone of the east coast monta has
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started with some old maps and particularly this one great map the British headquarters map that showed all of the original landscape in Manhattan as it was during the American Revolution in the 18th century so when I saw the British headquarters map I thought wow
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an amazing document and what a one untold resource for what the original island looks like thought if I could use these modern tools from landscape ecology and apply them to this old map from New York that I could learn things
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about the landscape which we didn't know before so through a lot of work and a lot of time we were eventually able to georeference the map that means we can locate any features on the British headquarters Madison we can place them in the geography of the city today
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slowly we built up the soils the hills and the streams and then eventually what the made of Americans were doing with a lot they were doing at Manhattan and once we had that map then we started connecting that with lists of all the
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species lived on that hat so we compiled all the species that we try and get a handle on and we then tried to relate those species list to Manhattan Island through a new kind of science that we
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call Muir webs and that kind of data it turns out that you can visualize and understand as a network not only like a social network like a champ through the front stir through myspace finally we took all these datasets and we use the kind of techniques that they use in
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Hollywood to recreate what the landscape we would take in the topography we would lay on top of that soil cover and the vegetation types and eventually the trees and build up the landscape from
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the bottom up and because all this information was geo-referenced it means that we can take a camera and pointed out of any window on Manhattan Island and reconstruct exactly what that view was like 400 years ago we can actually
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visualize landscape that's lost and try and appreciated in the context of the landscape business today whether you live in New York City today or you're a Taurus to New York or maybe you just see New York on the movies New York is is a
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place that's owned by all of us in that sense the nature that underlies New York is also known by all of us I hope the average person connects to nature I
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think one of the things we've really lost in 21st century is a connection to to what nature is and in our place in nature we live in 2009 there's million have people living on Manhattan there's
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another million coming as workers every day can we make this place over the next four hundred years as I collage achill as mana hot tub once was urbanization is a really important trend and it's something that we really need to come to
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grips with cities a really efficient places already they have a very dense housing free humanity we need to learn how to live in cities in a way that's ecologically efficient we also need to live in cities in a way that helps us take less resources from the world
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well people often ask me what's the point of mannahatta just a historical curiosity mana hat says it's having a lot of practical benefits to New York City today it helps people that manage parks or wetland understand what the
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kind of baseline ecology of these places are in a very specific way and how human beings are interfering with those conditions in some ways but I actually think it's it's a lot more than that I see us learning a lot more about about
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how once gives you put together and how human beings are influencing them even more important that how human beings can make different choices in a way that work not only for us but for the wildlife and wild places that that WCS
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is trying to concern we're doing a Manhattan and once we had that started connecting that with lists of all the species lived on that hat so we compiled all the species that we try and get a handle on and we then tried to
00:05:06
relate those species list to Manhattan Island through a new kind of science that we call muir webs and that kind of data it turns out that you can visualize and understand as a network not only like a social network like a champ
00:05:18
through the French stir through myspace finally we took all these datasets and we use the kind of techniques that they use in Hollywood to recreate what the landscape look like we would take in the topography we would lay on top of that
00:05:30
soil cover and the vegetation types and eventually the trees and build up the landscape from the bottom up and because all this information was geo-referenced it means that we can take a camera and pointed out of any window on Manhattan
00:05:44
Island and reconstruct exactly what that view was like four hundred years ago we can actually visualize landscape that's lost and try and appreciated in the context of the landscape business today whether you live in New York City today
00:05:57
or you're a tourist in New York or maybe you just see New York in the movies New York is is a place that owned by all of us in that sense the nature that underlies New York is also known by all
00:06:06
of us I hope the average person connects to nature I think one of the things we've really lost in 21st century is a connection to to what nature is and in our place in nature we live in 2009
00:06:22
there's a million in heaven that Henry Hudson arrived sep tember 12 16 09 man that was mostly forest but for some many different kinds you would have seen a long wooded Island with a pine forests
00:06:34
and oak hickory forests wetlands we would have seen streams coming down off of the men ashore and draining the cross features one on mannahatta you would have seen lots and lots of wildlife there were black bears there were wolves there were white tail
00:06:48
deer there were probably beavers on every screen river otters see what have seen this very fertile very ecological II complete place if Manhattan existed as today as it did four hundred years ago we would think of it as a national
00:07:01
park it would be the Yosemite or Yellowstone of the East Coast mannahatta started with some old man I'm Eric Sanderson and i'm a senior conservation ecology Stan our global conservation
00:07:12
program what seemed important to me as landscape ecologist was the freeways the suburban sprawl and the deforestation and these were trends that are not not limited to small areas I want to
00:07:25
understand these patterns I wanted to understand the sort of conceptual framework for thinking about nature in the world and then I wanted to try and apply it I've been working for almost ten years now and a project called them on a hot
00:07:47
to project to try and figure out what Manhattan Island was like the f caps particularly this one great map the British headquarters map that showed all of the original landscape in Manhattan as it was during the American Revolution
00:08:00
in the 18th century so when I saw the British headquarters map I thought wow an amazing document and what I want to untold resource for what the original island looked like thought if I could use these modern tools from landscape
00:08:11
ecology and apply them to this old map from New York that I could learn things about the landscape which we didn't know before so through a lot of work and a lot of time we were eventually able to georeference the map that means we can locate any features on the British
00:08:24
headquarters math and we can place them in the geography of the city today slowly we built up the soils the hills and the streams and then eventually what the Native Americans were doing with a lot they were
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