new york-based astronomers, including columbia university’s astronomy public outreach (capo) program, are making astronomy more accessible through their telescopes and their community initiatives. 

observation in new york city has unique challenges, one of the largest being the artificial light, or light pollution, that comes from constant activity in the city. lecturer, outreach coordinator, and astronomy faculty member amanda quirk said that observing the universe in new york city is difficult and during capo’s outreach events they look for the brightest objects in the sky like saturn, jupiter and polaris. 

drowning out the stars isn’t the only downside of light pollution. the phenomena has been found to affect human health and wildlife behavior.

“anywhere you have a telescope, you’re always going to [need to] build telescopes away from other light sources, away from cities, observing during the night, not during the day,” quirk said. “these problems exist for astronomers around the world. in new york city they’re just amplified.”

building a community of star-gazers

on a clear winter night on columbia university’s campus, interested parties of all ages file into the sciences building to listen to a lecture on astronomy and then observe the night sky using columbia’s telescopes. the voices of young children and older people intertwine as they wait for astronomy ph.d. student and astronomy outreach coordinator jennifer mead to begin her lecture.

in front of mead are various tools. one is a refraction paper that is handed out by mead to each of the attendees of her lecture. when held up to the light, the paper demonstrates how light bends through different lenses like plastic, glass or even space. 

sounds of joy erupt from the audience as they see small rainbows dance across the refraction paper.

“it speaks to a lot of people’s inner child. space is one of those things that across space and time, across the earth, across the whole history of humanity, people have connected over,” mead said. “it’s one of the most accessible sciences in terms of being able to look up and wonder about the biggest questions like, ‘where did we come from?’” 

columbia astronomy public outreach is part of the outreach, teaching, and research activities of the department of astronomy at columbia university. the crowd in columbia’s lecture hall makes it clear that capo’s audience is a range of passionate individuals and excited community members ready to listen and participate in the free information session about space. 

led by columbia’s astronomy students and faculty, the program attempts to capture the same wonder that drew columbia’s astronomy students towards their field. mead also said she wants capo’s outreach program to educate the public on bringing science to people who would not otherwise interact with it. 

“it’s also for the purpose of educating the public on what science is. what does it mean to be a scientist? what does it look like to do science? which i think is actually extremely critical, and something that the public is not super well connected with,” said mead.

but local public awareness is an ongoing issue according to quirk. those interested in capo’s events are often folks who are  already interested in astronomy, whereas quirk laments that astronomy is not often the first science that new yorkers think of. 

“in new york city, because this sky is not obviously bright, a lot of people just don’t think about the night sky. they don’t pause to look up and see whatever stars are visible or think about astronomy,” quirk said. “if we can get those people to think, just for a moment, about the cosmos and their place in it, [it]would be really exciting for us.” 

anyone can discover the secrets of the universe

quirk and her team of volunteers have tried everything from community collaboration to guerilla marketing to make new yorkers aware of capo’s programming. some volunteers have set up a telescope on a street corner and encourage passersby to look through. others have gone to local libraries and middle schools to teach students about dark matter and black holes. 

“we can have some accessible versions of bringing telescopes to campus level, so people don’t have to climb the stairs on the roof. people can take public transportation very easily to get to us. i think that is the benefit of new york, there’s just more people in the heart of the city,” quirk said.

the campaign towards creating accessible science programming involves capo’s and outside programs’ funding. columbia university’s campus has physical barriers that require the astronomy program leaders to meet students, parents and teachers who are not affiliated with the campus where they are. 

“that is one of the reasons that we do things at libraries and we do things in classrooms, because those are places where we reach kids who may not have access to technology or may not have parents who can take them to columbia on a friday night,” mead said. 

activities on campus also sometimes end with a call for listeners to express their support of science programming to their local representatives and to remind the federal government that the american people are interested in astronomy projects being completed. 

the american astronomical society has kept a close watch on public policy updates about astronomy on their website. at the end of the public outreach lecture on telescopes, a question comes from an elementary student about when the thirty meter telescope (tmt), an infrared and optical telescope under construction in hawai’i. mead answered solemnly that tmt’s funding was cut by donald trump’s national science foundation, which cited the project as unaffordable. 

quirk and mead say they are excited for the future, both lovingly refer to astronomy as a “gateway science” because of how its accessibility gets people to start thinking. capo’s participants express enthusiasm about the upcoming programming, and every outreach program involves teaching children, parents and adults something new. 

“it’s totally fair for people to have preferences, but there’s nothing actually built into our brains that says you can’t do math or you can do math,” said quirk. “astronomy can be as simple as thinking about your place in the universe, or how your culture, or your spiritual beliefs are tied to the way the earth moves or other aspects of space. i think it is a really inviting way for people to think.”

five years ago, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration’s national climate assessment, reclassified new york city from a humid continental climate to a humid subtropical climate. a subtropical climate has summers that are on average above 72 degrees fahrenheit and winters that stay above 27 degrees fahrenheit. 

“it’s kind of like, if you’re a parent, you know your kid is aging and it’s not shocking, right? but if you’re an aunt that hasn’t seen like the kid in five years, you see that and it’s like five inches taller,” said ian olsen, the director of horticulture at the broadway mall association. “it’s very shocking.”

adapting to a new climate

olsen has been in new york for a decade and has worked in the city’s environmental spaces with organizations like the horticultural society of new york and the central park conservancy. as the lead horticulturist for the broadway mall association, olsen wears many hats including assessing how to continue the organization’s beautification and native planting efforts as new york city’s climate changes.

“so we have a situation where the fall is somehow extremely dry, so we have to pay attention. we need more drought-tolerant material. we have to think more about when we plant,” olsen said. 

the broadway mall association and their volunteers are not strangers to trial and error in order to determine which plant life will survive in different outdoor malls across the city. olsen describes wanting to plant ferns throughout new york and being unable to make the plants thrive due to the direct sunlight and high heat of the medians. 

the changes that have happened in new york city’s environmental spaces are indicators of the future, especially since new york city experiences the urban heat island effect which causes the city to get hotter than the surrounding more rural areas due to man-made infrastructure that traps and reflects heat. the urban heat island effect provides a way to see how warming or a change in climate affects the native plant and animal life of a region. 

“the malls are already a space where it’s almost like a simulation of a future, of a potential warming 10 years from now. it gets so hot [in these gardens] that, in a way, it’s almost like a laboratory for seeing what plants will work in general if the climate warms by x amount of degrees over the next however many years,” olsen said about the urban heat island effect. 

what’s next for the big apple’s green spaces?

the possibility that native plants and the current vegetation that grows in the areas the broadway mall association will no longer thrive in new york is not yet a worry for olsen and his team. 

“we won’t use anything that isn’t adapted to climate zone eight,” olsen said. “it’s really a matter of thinking ahead. these plants are adapted to hot but hot, dry areas where, even if we do get that like four or five degrees shift, they’ll be okay.”

five years into the city’s new classification, the effects of the subtropical climate are not theoretical. the city is hot and it is getting hotter for residents. “when i was growing up, i would always have to wear a jacket for trick or treating [on halloween]. whereas now, i could wear a t-shirt and shorts,” said emily johnson, a sustainability management master’s student and a member of the biodiversity club board at columbia university. 

johnson, a student who returned to school to study sustainability after working in the fashion industry, also mentioned she has lived through a multitude of climate events such as the large earthquake in april 2024, the smoke from canada’s wildfires and major subway flooding in the summer of 2025. 

johnson’s background in fashion gives her perspective on how industry and individuals are both affected by new york city’s reclassification. 

“when we think about what products to stock, not even just fashion, but in all industries, you base it off of the weather,” johnson said. “if the temperature changes, they’re going to have to change their buying patterns. so that’s something with fashion too, they’re going to be stocking less jackets in the fall in new york city.”

against the odds, preserving a sense of place

the changes being felt this fall follow a major decision at the federal level in july of 2025 when the trump administration removed and disbanded the national climate assessment. 

kathy jacobs, the director of the university of arizona center for climate adaptation science and solutions and former director of the third national climate assessment, told cnn that the national climate assessment is a heavily reviewed and respected document and as the public discussion around climate change shifts from mitigation to access, real people may be affected by the lack of accessible knowledge around climate change.  

“it’s a sad day for the united states if it is true that the national climate assessment is no longer available. this is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people’s access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts,” jacobs said.

olsen and new yorkers like him are invested in the city’s future, environmentally and physically. changes and reclassifications in new york city provide opportunities for growth and community involvement from like-minded, impassioned individuals who are interested in protecting green spaces in their city. 

“to do this with native plantings is something really unique. what we’re doing is building habitat and kind of creating a bit of a different kind of naturalistic beauty and then hopefully that has the effect of creating a sense of place,” olsen said.

the ground at vermejo reserve in new mexico contains a rich source of knowledge: valuable information that can explain how healthy soils are vital to the biodiverse plants and animals that survive off of it. 

the conservationists who manage and maintain the property are looking to nourish the land, but they say that they are also looking to share their findings. their next frontier is sharing what they learn on the reserve.

“i have learned that education is paramount,” said jason ladjevic, vermejo’s director of activities. “being able to convey that to our guests, i think, is very vital and very important so that they can hopefully be inspired to go home or wherever they are and inspire change within their communities.”

a well (and range) of knowledge

vermejo, owned by cnn founder ted turner, encompasses 550,000 acres and seven ecosystems in northern new mexico. the expanse of prairie, snow capped peaks and flowing streams are unique, and so are the regenerative and restorative livestock practices that the reserve is developing. 

one practice is range monitoring, a process where ranch and land management staff discover what’s growing and track changes in the edible plant life within an area of land. 

“you can get a lot of information on the landscape’s health based off of range monitoring,” said lance bernal, vermejo’s natural resource manager. the process “gives us an idea of how much production occurred during the growing season. and therefore, if we have high production, then we can actually support more animals. if we have low production, then we have to reduce our animal numbers.”

in 2009, a two year carrying capacity study monitored 61 locations across vermejo. the researchers were trying to understand what food sources were available to grazers. 

now, range monitoring happens annually. geographic information systems specialist sara holm and other vermejo team members keep tabs on 32 transects across the property.

following a call to conserve

the vermejo mantra for their land is ‘eat a third, trample a third and leave a third.’ if the animals leave a third of each ecosystem untouched, the land they walk through and graze on is able to regenerate instead of die off from over use, holm said. 

the staff attributes the health of their animals and broader ecosystems, and their local reputation as ecologically minded, with their attention to detail when it comes to all things soil-related.

“this is a special place,” said ladjevic. “people can say, ‘wow, look how lush this is.’ and i think that’s because we’re taking care of it… because we do that, you look out at these beautiful landscapes and these beautiful places, and that is essentially the fruits of our labor.”

many of vermejo’s staff treat ted turner’s mantra of “save everything” as a mandate, stating that they believe sharing their findings and techniques will only benefit their operation. 

“our work cannot stop at the fence line. there’s no trade secrets,” said ted turner reserves president jade mcbride. embedded in vermejo is a culture of belief that humans can live harmoniously with the ecosystems that surround us. 

how cooperation and knowledge-sharing is key

the reserve’s team members are deepening their connection to the turner institute of ecoagriculture, an agricultural research and education organization focused on sustainable ranching. 

vermejo staff say they want to continue to share their findings, branching into “research, programs, projects, and education that encourage the preservation, conservation, and restoration of sensitive and imperiled species and their habitats.”

“part of our mission in the coming years is to share what is working,” said tor holm, sara holm’s son and a geology intern at vermejo.

kate asmus, a wildlife ecologist, published “spatial ecology of north american bison on vermejo park ranch, new mexico ” with turner institute of ecoagriculture and the nebraska school of natural resources. asumus recently defended her thesis which focused on how and why animal populations, like the vermejo bison, move the way they do.  

asmus feels her paper is essential to the field of wildlife ecology and credits vermejo’s vastness, access and strong community as essential reasons she was able to complete her work. 

“i think it’s really important that [my thesis work]  is published in [established journals] so that other ecologists can gain knowledge and information from what we learned,” asmus said. she later reflected on how these learning outcomes be applied more broadly to help other kinds of researchers with their work. 

asmus’s takeaway from vermejo is larger than academics, it is also about community and person-to-person information sharing.  

“they’re giving us opportunities to be able to come on to these landscapes and to be able to study these animals, which would benefit them, but it’s also benefiting other ecologists,” said asmus. “these are things that i can continue to take with me as i go.”

many of the conservationists at vermejo describe walking the vast acreage of the reserve for work or for pleasure as filling them with awe and an inspiration. 

“why do i do this?” said tor holm, “i see things everyday that a lot of people don’t see in a lifetime.”

editor’s note: this series was made possible with the generous support of turner reserves and contributions by the turner family. all editorial content is published independently. 

planet forward’s environmental media lab led this expedition to teach the power of visual storytelling in wild spaces to convey the beauty and bounty of our planet.

for vermejo, a 550,000 acre property of ted turner reserves, the soil grounds the operation. the conservation-focused staff monitor the seven ecosystems across the property, ranging from short-grass prairie to pinyon-juniper woodlands to alpine and more. their experts being the range monitoring process every fall to understand the diversity of the plant life, the amount of wildlife that can be sustained, and the health of areas frequently visited by humans and animals. 

this process of grass surveillance is called range monitoring and it’s been happening at vermejo for a little less than two decades. 

director of activities jason ladjevic and natural resources manager lance bernal explore how central the soil is to the success of vermejo and why the conservationists heading the project are excited to share what they find. 

editor’s note: this series was made possible with the generous support of turner reserves and contributions by the turner family. all editorial content is published independently.

planet forward’s environmental media lab led this expedition to teach the power of visual storytelling in wild spaces to convey the beauty and bounty of our planet.

cassandra metz took her two daughters to a national park on a whim. she drove west from their hometown of brooklyn, new york with the intention of enrolling the kids in the junior ranger program for one summer. metz and her family ended up spending days in parks hiking, walking and exploring.

she was hooked. “it was like love at first sight,” metz said.

that was 2012. since then, metz has found time to spend time in nature with her family every year. metz, a photographer, enjoys capturing travel and nature. to her, national parks are an ideal subject because of their “idyllic and sometimes rugged beauty.”

metz’s photography is often black and white, leaving the landscapes of the public spaces she visits as the main focus. as a black woman, metz is a part of the least represented group that visits national parks.

“we’ve never felt unwelcome, we’ve never felt scared or in danger, but we do recognize that we
are an anomaly,” said metz about traveling to national parks as a black family. she is a champion against the disparity and has written letters and proposals with ideas on how to bridge the gap between black people and the great outdoors.

overcoming a historical exclusion

public spaces like national parks are accessible to all members of a community, city or country. however, the complex relationship between african americans and public spaces is part of a historical legacy of disenfranchisement supplemented by exclusion, destruction and violence.

public space is central to the history of america’s development and a global understanding of the sanctity of nature. during the beginning of his second term as president of the united states, president woodrow wilson signed the “organic act of 1916,” the act that established the national park service (nps).

the nps can create accommodations for visitors, write permits for use and approve monuments. colloquially, rangers refer to nps sites as parks, but the agency and its employees are stewards of battlefields, memorials, monuments, parkways, rivers, parks and many other places americans and america’s visitors frequent. the nps and its employees are directed to conserve “the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife” by providing safety for citizens.

the mission seems simple; however, the goal to preserve public space has often excluded black
individuals and communities. the nps has 85 million acres of land and 429 sites being taken
care of by 21,000 employees and 123,000 yearly volunteers. yet, in their own words, the agency has a diversity deficit. black people are 6.7% of the nps workforce. the nps’s diversity initiative spans 60 years, but progress in all categories (race, gender, age) has been slow.

public spaces and “slow violence”

aside from the economic barriers and possible social isolation that could come from being black in the national park service, the lack of black history alienates people of color.

kangjae “jerry” lee, a researcher and professor at north carolina state university, calls the elitism and racism that affects public spaces “slow violence”: a creeping, structural violence perpetrated by oppressors to harm and marginalize minority groups.

conservation, the practice of preventing the destruction of a natural space or habitat, is a movement that the library of congress says dates back to 1850. lee, a scholar of parks, recreation and tourism management, says the conservation movement and creation of national parks is a response to immigration and urbanization.

“white elites promoted this idea that cities were dirty places inhabited by immigrants and people of color and that natural spaces were clean, quiet spaces that white people should enjoy,” lee said lee to nc state university’s college of natural resources news. empowered by government leaders like madison grant, white conservationists dismissed black americans as unworthy of nature and federally excluded black americans from public spaces.

alternatively, black environmentalists posit that black people have a different relationship to land. kimberly k. smith, an environmental ethics-focused political scientist and historian, says black people integrate wilderness into the black intellectual tradition instead of attempting to separate people from land in the name of preservation. wilderness exists in tandem with society and “its preservation facilitated the preservation of african american cultural forms and  racial consciousness,” said smith.

the legacy of black people’s exclusion from public spaces continues today. in may of 2020, birdwatcher christian cooper was threatened by a white woman in central park. cooper’s now-deleted twitter video of the harassment went viral and, according to new york times reporter sarah maslin nir, gathered over 40 million views by june of the same year. 

in the video, cooper asks the woman to leash her dog in accordance with park rules. the woman refuses and calls the police telling the operator multiple times that “an african-american man is threatening my life.” the angered woman exercises the power of america’s racial hierarchy to attempt to remove cooper from the public park. 

“there are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman, facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage,” said cooper in a 2020 interview with the new york times.

displacement and lack of representation

like cooper’s conflict, the federal government used their power to oust black americans from their land. seneca village was a thriving black neighborhood in 1820s new york. the neighborhood was attractive to black people because of its low property prices and its secluded location. the establishment of the african methodist episcopal (ame) caused people to buy the land around the church. free black people moved to seneca village and created a thriving community full of schools, gardens and other community essentials. 

when the city of new york decided to build central park, seneca village was demolished and its residents were displaced. diana wall’s “archaeology of identity and dissonance” says the destruction of seneca village was intentional. the black people living in the neighborhood could not defend themselves and fight for fair financial compensation for their homes. without property, black men were not able to protest through their vote.

in 1853, new york city officials authorized the purchase of the land that makes up the modern-day central park. the city of new york used eminent domain to acquire private property for public use. historians from the central park conservancy hosted an archeological dig to unearth the history of seneca village. the fruits of the exploration were minimal, yielding a china set and other kitchen essentials. the black residents of seneca village were erased to create a park that was supposed to unify and purify the increasing population of immigrants and people of color moving into new york.

not all parks are built on the back of a forgotten black community, but few monuments commemorate black america’s contributions. the acceptance of black landmarks as national monuments is a recent process. billionaire and philanthropist robert f. smith donated the family homes of dr. martin luther king, jr. to be designated as national historic sites. 

there are 400 national parks in the united states. there are 12 parks that are named after african americans. without smith’s outside intervention the history surrounding dr. king’s house would be lost, destroying a community’s right to history and access to an important public space.

without representation of black history and representation within the nps, black visitors to public spaces can feel isolated and unsafe. the threat of danger or violence creeps through the great outdoors.

in september of 2020, the great smoky mountains national park was vandalized. the vandalists left a large black bear skin and head draped over the sign that marked the entrance to the park.  next to the animal skin was a cardboard sign that said “here to the lake black lives don’t matter.” the sign is in reference to the black lives matter movement that stands against racism and violence against black people.  

great smoky mountains national park, located in the appalachian mountains along the tennessee and north carolina border, was a segregated park. j.r. eakin, the great smoky mountains national park’s first superintendent, claimed black people would not use it unless their facilities were designated and separate from white facilities. the parks’ legacy seeped into their segregated lunch areas and into the ancestral memory of the surrounding black communities.  

however, the lack of black people in public spaces is changing. 

“the service recognizes that, when diverse citizens visit units of the national park system and see and converse with someone who ‘looks like me,’ and who performs the various important responsibilities at these sites, it gives them a sense of being a part of and accepted by the larger community — including the national park service” and “this is beneficial for the service” and for the people it serves said jonathan jarvis, the former director of the united states department of interior.

charting new paths forward

today, organizations like black girl environmentalist, earth in color and the national black environmental network work to engage their communities in outdoor activities and to preserve the history and culture of black agrarians. 

earth in color’s mission is to affirm the “deep cultural connections” that black people have to the earth, “due to our shared ancestry and interconnected histories.” black girl hike pledges “to see brown faces in green spaces.” 

alongside the national park service, these black environmental groups have the power to address the socioeconomic and historic discrepancies between the groups that frequent public spaces. the persistence of black environmentalists who continue to show up for their home towns’s public spaces can help free america from the collective memory and policies barring black people from nature.

“this is our land and our history, so why not be in these spaces,” said cassandra metz.

kayla smernoff is a journalist studying at howard university. her article is from nikole hannah-jones’s essay writing course inspired by historical anthology ‘the 1619 project.’