Introduction

Madison, New Jersey, while thought of as a “green” town, actually contains a little amount of forest coverage and few public walking trails and county parks according to GIS inventory. These spaces allow citizens to experience the outdoors; a lack of these spaces inhibits residents from being able to access trails conveniently. Many trails that are found in Madison are not represented on the statewide trails GIS inventory, which makes the data incomplete. The Madison Environmental Research Inventory (ERI) has already explored Open Space in Madison, and these trails and county parks are found within that space.

Data

Statewide trails is a feature layer of the NJDEP of GIS and was compiled together from linear trail data provided by multiple agencies from the Trails task force (NJ Geospatial Forum) and posted by their GIS specialist. Forest Coverage was also determined by the NJDEP Bureau of GIS, and the park layer was created by the Morris County Park Commission. 

Results

There are 338 acres of forest cover in Madison, both on private and public property. Some of the forest coverage is on private property such as Drew University and Giralda Farms which have trails on their property but are not recorded as statewide trails. There are also parks within Madison Borough that are not represented by the Morris County Park Commission, which can be found here.

There is approximately 21.6 acres of the Loantaka Brook Reservation within Madison, by far the largest county park within the borough. There is also 1 mile of the Traction Line Recreation Trail within Madison.

There is 1.1 miles of statewide trails within the Borough of Madison, separate to Loantaka and in two sections, both in the northern region of the map.

Conclusion

Despite Madison having a sufficient forest coverage and smaller parks, Madison has limited access to statewide trails within these parks and access to trails in larger parks in the area. This is due to the infrastructure and land usage. Many of parks are too small to host trails. 

In 2022, a plan was proposed to extend the Traction Line Recreation Trail into Madison. As of current, the Morris County Parks Website still refers to the extension as “proposed trail”, while the GIS map has the extension as a confirmed park. 

The Drew Forest could potentially be sold to developers for housing which would remove 53-acres of forest coverage in Madison. 

This data shows Madison’s access to trails and parks in comparison to forest coverage. It helps us be conscious of our usage of forest and availability of trails.

About the Data

These statistics came from NJDEP Bureau of GIS and managed by the NJDEPB GIS. 

The New Jersey GIS dataset about Statewide Trails can be found online here. The New Jersey GIS dataset about land coverage can be found here. 

The Statewide Trail layer was created in 2022 and has been updated as recent as July 2023. While land coverage layer was created in 2019 and has been updated in 2021.

Forest areas were determined by the NJDEP.

Find this map online: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.htmlid=e26e90b55e9545448752076c97f52c1d

Authors:

Elliot Franklyn and Elizabeth Blank, Drew University

ENV/BIOL 302 – Geographic Information Systems

Fall 2022