Columbia University
OP-T2-2: Local Offsets Program

Columbia participates in MillionTreesNYC a citywide, public-private program with an ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the City's five boroughs by 2017. The program is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC climate emissions reduction program. As of 2012, over 500,000 million trees have been planted by the program. As part of Columbia’s partnership with the program, the University plants trees, tracks tree health, and provides maintenance not only for the trees Columbia plants but other MillionTreesNYC program trees throughout the Morningside Heights/West Harlem area for the city. The CUMC campus also participates in the MillionTreesNYC program and is working with the City to enhance the number of trees planted on-site. The new Campbell Sports Center, which began construction at Baker Athletics Complex this spring, is performing a restoration at the other end of the lot stretches the banks of the Harlem River, where Columbia is working to restore the onetime marshland adjacent to Inwood Hill Park. The 40,000-square-foot Boathouse Marsh park will recreate a habitat for native wetland plants and birds. The Nevis campus has a habitat of 65 acres from Alexander Hamilton son’s estate that contains meadows, forest, and unaltered natural landscape. In addition, Columbia participates in the The Black Rock Forest Consortium-an alliance of colleges and universities, public and independent K-12 schools, and leading scientific and cultural institutions-that operates the nearly 4000-acre Black Rock Forest. All of these projects help remove carbon from the atmosphere and act as carbon sinks for Columbia’s local campus and surrounding community. Assessing Ecosystem Effects of NYC Urban Forest Restoration of MillionTreesNYC: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=cate Milliontrees NYC: http://www.milliontreesnyc.org/downloads/pdf/nyc_mfra.pdf Black Rock Forest: http://www.blackrockforest.org/docs/about-the-forest/index.html