Altruism: Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City

Mannahatta had more ecological communities per acre than Yellowstone, more native plant species per acre than Yosemite, and more birds than the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mannahatta housed wolves, black bars, mountain lions, beavers, mink and river otters; whales, porpoises, seals and the occasional sea turtle visited the harbor.
Extraordinary cultural diversity has replaced extraordinary biodiversity on the island. Abundance is now measured in economic currencies, not ecological ones
Cities are ecological places to live. The average New Yorker emits 7.1 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year; the average American, 24.5 tons. A third of the public transit trips made in America each year are made in New York.

Chapter 2, A Map Found

New York was a center of both radical patriotic fever and wealthy Loyalist sentiment.
The north River, could carry warships 120 miles, nearly to Albany, and from there it was only a few overland portages and long rows up Lake George and Lake Champlain to British Canada. With control of the Hudson, King George's army could separate the fractious New England colonies from the rich agricultural lands of the mid-Atlantic. Control the Hudson, British military leaders in London reasoned as they regrouped in late 1775, and you control the rebellion. And to control the Hudson, you must first control New York.

Chapter 3, The Fundamentals of Mannahatta

Most of Manhattan Island is underlain with schist, a rock derived from sediments in the seabed, then metamorphosed by heat and pressure.
Rich in Dirt: "A healthy soil is made by the life dying into it and by the life living within it, and to its double ability to drain and retain water we are complexly indebted, for it not only gives us good crops but erosion control as well as both flood control and a constant water supply." "The New York City Soil Reconnaissance Survey has identified 87 different kinds of soil within the modern city, at a mapping scale of 1:625,000"
New York has received about 4 inches of precipitation per month, slightly more in summer and winter, and slightly less in spring and fall. Such equanimity of moisture is a godsend to plants and the animals that depend on them, and to the fish that need regularly flowing streams to live in. Like an investment that yields a consistent return month after month, New York's climate has long paid dividends to the local environment.

Chapter 5, Ecological Neighborhoods

The long biological history of immigration and emigration resulted in modern New York's flora existing at a crossroads between the northern flora of boreal Canada and the southern flora of Virginia and the Carolinas. It's as if New York's plant life draws from those two great traditions -- the South's and the North's -- and as a result, there are many more plants here than there are in many cities of similar latitude and position.
Freshwater rivers, like the Hudson and the numerous streams that are her sources and tributaries, discharge nutrients to fertilize the water, and cut the saltwater with fresh flow. As the seasons turn, the amount of freshwater swells and diminishes, and as the days and nights pass, the tide rises and falls. The competing traffic of freshwater and saltwater and the washing of water over land creates a small sea in the glacially excavated harbor, with layers of warm ocean water lying on top of the cold, fresh stuff. Sea-grass beds take root where the water is shallow enough for light to reach the bottom, beaches and dunes form along the windward shore, and salt marshes thrive in protected corners. The estuary is the motor, the connector, the driver, the great winding way, the central place that gathers all the old neighborhoods together and makes the rest possible.

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