Q&A
Impact of shadows on Brooklyn Botanic Garden
1:08:08
·
6 min
Council Member Crystal Hudson questions Rowan Blaik from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden about the impact of shadows from the proposed development. Blaik explains that the shadow impact is more significant than previously stated, potentially affecting plant growth and the garden's collections.
- The 15-degree scenario could create a 1.5-hour shadow impact on the conservatories in December, not just 12 minutes as claimed.
- The shadow impact affects not just duration but also the size and location of the shadow.
- Reduced sunlight could impact plant growth, health, and the variety of species the garden can maintain.
Crystal Hudson
1:08:08
Yes.
1:08:09
Thank you, chair.
1:08:11
You referenced this a little bit in your testimony, but can you go into greater detail about what we've heard in prior testimony, specifically about 3 minutes of sunlight being referenced.
1:08:25
Can you clarify the actual minutes of sunlight lost?
1:08:31
Which collections the lack of sunlight would impact and the overall impact that you mentioned just now, not just on it's not just about the sunlight directly.
1:08:42
It's also about the size of the shadow, locations, and things like that.
Rowan Blaik
1:08:46
Yes.
1:08:48
One example that I would give is the various tables, you will see that there's something like a 12 minute shadow impact to the conservatories quoted there.
1:09:00
By discounting the time from Sunrise, the sunlight from Sunrise, We know that a 15 degree scenario through working through their drawings as best as possible.
1:09:17
A 15 degree scenario would lead to around a 1 a half hour impact to the conservatories in December not a 30 minute impact.
1:09:26
Sorry, a 12 minute impact.
Crystal Hudson
1:09:28
I'm sorry.
1:09:29
Can you can you clarify that?
1:09:30
You're you're saying the the 15 degree slope would have a 1 hour 30 minute shadow impact?
Rowan Blaik
1:09:40
Approximately, yeah, somewhere between an hour an hour 25 minutes and an hour 30 minutes.
Crystal Hudson
1:09:45
Okay.
1:09:46
And then the the 10 degree would yield.
Rowan Blaik
1:09:50
It that would go down it would be closer to as of right, and so that's more to around, for example, 1 hour 10 minutes.
1:10:02
So it's not 3 minutes here and there.
1:10:05
It's not a trivial impact.
1:10:11
It's a large impact.
1:10:12
The other thing that is excluded and as I mentioned in the renderings with the different scenarios, They all illustrate a shadow at different points in the morning, so you can't make a visual comparison between the two.
1:10:27
They also don't give a top down plan view that show the actual footprint of the shadow.
1:10:33
So where there may be, you know, a comparison to be made between a 1 and a half hour versus a 1 hour 10 minute shadow impact to the conservatory, is it small additional shadow, small areas of additional shadow that that timing is based upon?
1:10:50
Or is it the entire selection of workhouses that grow the range of plants for all of the pavilions, for example?
1:10:58
That is not something that you can conclude from looking at the the images that have been produced for these alternate scenarios.
Crystal Hudson
1:11:07
So what types of images or plans would you need in order to make a thorough assessment?
Rowan Blaik
1:11:13
Well, it would be a top down view.
1:11:17
It would be considering the periods that are outside of the the the the basic seeker analysis as well.
1:11:29
For you know, this is from the point of view of of me thinking of the the plan collections that we that we hold and are responsible for to to base any kind of management of risk based on a different scenario.
1:11:43
It's what is what has been presented is, you know, it's it's bare minimum, really.
Crystal Hudson
1:11:50
Can you just give a sense of the impact on plant collections?
1:11:54
Not necessarily.
1:11:56
I guess my question is just a a broader question of, like, the impact generally of lack of sunlight, larger cat shadows being cast, what impact does that have on the garden's ability to grow specific types of species of plants and so forth?
Rowan Blaik
1:12:14
Obviously, the larger the shadow and the longer the shadow from a duration point of view means that it's going to impact more of our plant collections, and the shadow impacts are going to be more severe.
1:12:27
We grow an incredibly wide range of plant material from very high light require with high light requirements from areas such as equatorial regions, desert regions that have really high intensity long duration sunlight.
1:12:46
It would have the effect of reducing growth, reducing the health of plants, reducing the range of the collections, reducing the the breadth of our collection, what these represented countries of the world represented in our collections.
1:13:01
It would also reduce our programmatic mandates of the base upon our collections such as education, for example.
1:13:10
Currently, we can teach school groups all the way through the year because we have plants in flour and fruit and in with different structures, available to us year round, a reduction in light, as I said, and as the experts that were consulted in the developers own reports concluded it would be a gradual change.
1:13:35
It would be experimental.
1:13:36
None of them could say, you know, it would affect 10%, 20%, 30% of the collection.
1:13:41
It would be experimental in nature.
1:13:44
And, you know, we we see these very, you know, experimental from a planning point of view, experimental from an impact point of view, how can you make a a a considered, you know, decision on risk to this global collection due to the experimental nature and the very, you know, kind of last minute considerations that they're they're asking for.
