Student scientists track nation's largest collection of cherry blossom trees at Essex County park

NEWARK

— For the past month, 10 students have wandered among the thousands of cherry blossom trees in Newark’s Branch Brook Park and repeated a curious routine.

A student stands next to a tree with a yellow device that resembles an old video game console. Then, after waiting for a series of rhythmic beeps, he moves to the next tree and repeats the exercise.

It’s not apparent to the casual observer, but in that one minute, the GPS-powered device communicates coordinates and gigabytes of data to roving satellites 12,000 miles above.

The students are working with the Branch Brook Park Alliance to catalog and detail every tree in the nation's largest cherry blossom collection in one location. With aerial surveys and cutting-edge technology, park officials will soon have enough data to keep track of the trees, which draw thousands of tourists every year.

"With this data, if an arborist says tree number 375 is infected, we can look through the database for its history and then go straight to the tree," said Jim Lecky, the alliance’s executive director. "We can ask, ‘Is the prunus subhirtella pendula doing better than the Yoshino cheery in this or that part of the park?’"

The project, funded by a $40,000 federal Community Development Block Grant, is one component of a long-term plan to restore the park’s famed cherry trees.

The collection in Branch Brook Park began in 1928 with a gift of 1,985 trees from Caroline Bamberger Fuld, sister of department store magnate Louis Bamberger. With a lifespan of 40 to 50 years, those trees dwindled to just 987 in the mid-2000s, Lecky said.

N.J. students map, track Branch Brook Park's cherry bloossomsRutgers University student Sara Anthony, left, and St. Benedict's High School senior Robert Iloegbunam perform GPS mapping of cherry blossom trees in Branch Brook Park Tuesday.

Starting in 2006, Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. and the alliance began to replenish the collection, planting trees by the hundreds each summer. The park now holds more than 4,000 trees, bigger than the collection in Washington, D.C.

"Expanding the number of trees has preserved this beautiful natural treasure that fills the park with color every spring," DiVincenzo said. "Mapping the trees will help us monitor the health of our trees so that we can avoid a crisis."

The National Park Service has already surveyed Washington, D.C.’s roughly 3,800 cherry trees with GPS technology, said Bill Line, a park service spokesman. The mapping has been a crucial part of the collection’s maintenance.

"We know where each single tree is, we know the health of it, we know the age of it, and we know approximately how much trimming has been done," Line said.

For the students — two from Rutgers University and eight from Barringer High School and St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark — the project has exposed a different side of the park.

Cherry blossoms bloom in Branch Brook Park

Details of each tree have been recorded, from its condition and species to its circumference.

The biggest surprise, the students said, was gummosis, a bacterial infection that can plague the trees.

"I had never seen anything like that before," said Robert Iloegbunam, 16, a student at St. Benedict’s. "It’s like dry syrup."

The project has also been a valuable training exercise for the students, among them budding scientists like Darius Clerk, of Barringer High.

"This is a great way to get experience," he said. "It’s been a lot of fun. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I would."

At the end of their long days in the sun, the students hook up the GPS device to a laptop computer. An aerial photograph of the park then emerges, with the cherry trees appearing as neon green icons.

"This is really state of the art," Lecky said.

By Eric Goodman and Rohan Mascarenhas/The Star-Ledger

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