Background

Sneak 'Peak' is a one-day festival celebrating the landfill-to-park conversion happening on Staten Island. The 2,200 acre park is open to the public once a year during Sneak Peak and allows visitors to join in activities such as kayaking, biking, science talks and for the second year, BALLOON/KITE PHOTOGRAPHY!

The event will take place on Staten Island on Sept 28th 2014 from 11am - 4pm. - http://freshkillspark.org/event/sneakpeak

Over the past year and a half, we've been working with the Parks Department to coordinate aerial photography at the park. During this time, we've been visited the site several times - Freshkills Balloon Mapping - ITP Camp @ Freshkills - Sneak Peak Balloon Mapping. While working with the Parks Department, we learned about an invasive plant species that threatens restoration efforts at the park. Using balloon photography, we conducted tests to see if phragmites is visible from the air. And indeed it is!!! - Phragmites Landfill Invasion

Who

• NYC Parks Fresh Kills group
• Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) at NYU (Nick and Ben)
• You

Event This Year

During the Sneak Peak event this year, we hope to continue our research and collect more data about phragmites. The event last year hosted 3,000 participants in which we conducted a balloon mapping workshop. This year the event is expecting to have over 5,000 people in attendance. We hope to be able to inspire and leverage this group of visitors to help map where phragmites is located in the park with balloon/kite photography. With this next aerial photography effort, we hope to be able to track the progress(or lack of progress) of phragmites in the North Mound Wetlands area. We want to set up on the north mound by the wetlands. launch the balloon in the morning, review results over lunch, go out again in the afternoon.

For those interested in helping this year please contact nicholas at nejohnson2@gmail.com