N.Y. ENV Law § 45-0105

§ 45-0105. Definitions.\n As used or referred to in this article unless a different meaning\nclearly appears from the context:\n 1. The term "trust" shall mean the state nature and historical\npreserve trust continued by section 45-0107 of this article.\n 2. The term "trustee" shall mean the commissioner of environmental\nconservation.\n 3. The term "real property" shall mean lands and waters, including\nimprovements thereon, structures, and hereditaments, title to which may\nbe in fee simple absolute or any lesser interest, including but not\nlimited to, easements, rights of way, uses, leases, licenses and every\nestate, interest or right, legal or equitable.\n 4. The term "preserve" shall mean the state nature and historical\npreserve, as referred to in section 4 of article XIV of the State\nConstitution.\n 5. The term "lands of ecological significance" shall mean state-owned\nlands and waters that harbor plants, animals or ecological communities\nthat are rare in New York state or exemplary occurrences of more common\necological communities. For the purposes of this article, the term\n"exemplary occurrences of an ecological community" means a\nrepresentative, high quality example of a given ecological community\ntype, characterized by a distinctive assemblage of interacting plant and\nanimal populations, including old-growth forests.\n 6. The term "old-growth forest" shall mean a parcel of at least ten\nacres which includes all of the following: an abundance of late\nsuccessional tree species, at least one hundred eighty to two hundred\nyears of age in a contiguous forested landscape that has evolved and\nreproduced itself naturally, with the capacity for self perpetuation,\narranged in a stratified forest structure consisting of multiple growth\nlayers throughout the canopy and forest floor, featuring canopy gaps\nformed by natural disturbances creating an uneven canopy and a\nconspicuous absence of multiple stemmed trees and coppices. Typically,\nold-growth forest sites also are characterized by an irregular forest\nfloor containing an abundance of coarse woody materials which are often\ncovered by mosses and lichens, show limited signs of human disturbance\nsince European settlement, have distinct soil horizons that include\ndefinite organic, mineral, alluvial accumulation, and unconsolidated\nlayers, and have an understory that displays well developed and diverse\nsurface herbaceous layers.\n