Ecologist Maps Manhattan of 400 Years Ago : TreeHugger Annotated

hear Dr. Eric Sanderson speak about the Mannahatta Project-

he told us that Landscape of New York City 400 years ago would have rivaled that of Yellowstone or Yosemite today.

Manhattan, or what the Lenape Indians called Mannahatta, was more biologically diverse than either of those two areas, and with its hardwood forests, freshwater, and estuarine environments, Mannahatta’s 54 different ecological communities (that is, interacting species living in the same place, bound together by a network of influences) and lush greenery would have dazzled any nature lover.

Sanderson has been using this British map, Randel’s Farm Maps, and a GPS system to create his own contour map of what Manhattan looked like in 1609, when Henry Hudson and his crew sailed into New York Harbor and the island was inhabited only by the Lenape. He has been able to produce an expansive vision of Mannahatta’s ecologic richness through a computer program he created, named “Muir webs,” after the famous naturalist John Muir.

Sanderson is using his program to map what would have existed on each city block in Mannahatta 400 years ago. The program works through a process of matching animals to their habitats and vice-versa.

Sanderson can predict through the Muir webs program what plants or soils would have been there as well, or conversely can use knowledge of plants and soils to discover what animals would have found a habitat in any specific area.

Check out out more photos of the
Manahatta Project from the New Yorker.