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Seminar Schedule
Previous Highlights
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Events at Harvard Forest
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Research and Education in Ecology, Conservation and Forest Biology
September Highlights
Harvard Forest Art Talk – Exploring Red Eft Colors
Tuesday, September 7, at 4:00pm, David Bryant, Harvard Forest artist in residence, will present an Art Talk and Gallery Presentation for the HF community in the Fisher Museum. The general public is also welcome. David is an illustration major at the Rhode Island School of Design and Senior Assistant at RISD’s Edna Lawrence Nature Lab. Recently, he has worked as an exhibit watercolor artist for the Harvard Museum of Natural History. During his residency at Harvard Forest, he will explore the relationship between red eft coloration and forest microclimates. See the flyer.
Plantation Harvest Field Tour
Tuesday, September 14 from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. Harvard Forest
Tour Leaders: Audrey Barker Plotkin (Harvard Forest) and Ed Faison (Highstead)
Meet at the Fisher Museum at Harvard Forest,
In 2001, the Harvard Forest began planning how to bring nearly a century of plantation research to a grand finale, and developed a management plan in which 80 of about 125 acres of our remaining plantations were harvested between 2008-2010. See attachment for more background information.
We will visit two harvested sites and talk about the long-term research a group of collaborating scientists have initiated. The first site is an ~10-minute walk from the Fisher Museum; the second is a short drive so we’ll carpool to the site and then walk in another ~10 minutes from there. This event has been submitted for review by the Massachusetts Forester License Board for continuing education credit.
Contact: Audrey Barker Plotkin, Harvard Forest. aabarker@fas.harvard.edu; 978-756-6168.
Climate Change and Hayfever Research Underway
As part of an ongoing study investigating climate change effects on human health, a team led by David Foster and Kristina Stinson (Harvard Forest) and Christine Rogers (University of MA School of Public Health & Health Sciences) recently deployed a series of pollen capturing instruments, known as Burkard traps, to monitor ragweed pollen across Massachusetts. The ragweed pollen season, which typically runs from August 1-October 31, is one of the worst for those who suffer from hay fever. Warming climate, higher atmospheric CO2 levels and conversion of forest lands to more open disturbed sites, are all predicted to exacerbate hay fever symptoms by increasing overall abundance of this species, as well as its pollen output. Five pollen traps in total will monitor local pollen counts from Boston to the Berkshires, generating data similar to those used for online allergy forecasting but at a much higher spatial resolution. Stinson and colleagues will link pollen trap data to local and regional ecological data on the abundance, flowering time, and potency of pollen in order to model and map present and future ragweed allergy “hotspots” in a number of different climate and land use scenarios. This research is funded by EPA-STAR grant # SU834359010 and creates a new research platform on human response to climate change that links to ongoing long term ecological studies such as the Harvard Forest LTER and ULTRA-X Boston programs.
Summer Archaeological Field School Unearths the Sanderson Tannery
This summer, 9 students took part in a 5-week Archaeological Field School at Harvard Forest, led by UMass Field School program director Dianna Doucette. At the Sanderson Tannery site, known to have been active from 1792 to 1829, the students uncovered a trove of colonial artifacts and also a few Native American relics: among them, ceramic sherds (pearlware, stoneware, yelloware, and others), nails, glass bottles, bones, bricks, keys, and tools. The Field School is now busy in its home lab, analyzing the thousands of artifacts that were found. Follow the field school’s highlights on their website.
Student Symposium and Video on Deep Forest History
33 Summer REU students presented findings from their research projects at a Symposium in the Fisher Museum. Several students had continued large-scale research projects that have been operating for many years at Harvard Forest. Others helped with experiments that were in their first year, but that are expected to continue long into the future. These students learned a lot about the value of collecting baseline data so that future researchers will be able to detect changes in their plots. Still other projects addressed more computational and technological advances in the field of ecology. One student used GIS to study distribution of an invasive species; others placed cameras on forest towers to detect changes in phenology, and another student developed models and simulations to learn about climate change.
Two students represented the social sciences and presented results from a survey distributed to 1,000 landowners in Vermont and New Hampshire. And, another student produced a documentary film about paleoecology, which, among other uses, will be incorporated into the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology program, where local schoolteachers introduce ecology research in their classrooms. Watch the video: "Secrets of the Mud: A Hemlock Mystery".
Grant to Support Undergraduate Research
Harvard Forest has received a 3-year, $420,000 grant from NASA's Global Climate Change Education programto support our summer undergraduate research program. This award will provide opportunities for four students from Lincoln University (Missouri), the home institution of recent Bullard Fellow Nsalambi Nkongolo, and local 5th-grade teacher Katie Bennett to work on data-model fusion and forecasting of environmental change in northeastern North America. The other co-PIs of this award are Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison, Harvard OEB Professor Andrew Richardson, and Boston University Professor Mark Friedl.