All News & Highlights

How will climate change affect New England forests over the next century? According to a series of new studies from HF Senior Ecologist Jonathan Thompson's lab, the answer is a mixed bag. In some respects, climate will exert an even greater impact than we thought: longer growing seasons will mean more tree growth and carbon storage. In other ways, climate

A new study in the journal Science reports on 26 years of data from the world’s longest-running forest soil warming experiment, based at the Harvard Forest since 1991. It suggests that in a warming world, a self-reinforcing and perhaps uncontrollable carbon feedback will occur between forest soils and the climate system, adding to the build-up of atmospheric

The Harvard Forest, Highstead, and authors from around New England have released a new report called “Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities," which broadens a 2010 Harvard Forest vision for conservation to permanently protect forests and farmlands as natural infrastructure that sustains both people and nature in the region. 

The report was released to the

We know that forests store carbon, but how do we measure the carbon stored in trees without cutting them down? An international group of LiDaR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanning experts and forest scientists gathered at the Harvard Forest this August to compare scanning and destructive sampling methods to calculate tree volume, mass, and carbon. 

Most researchers use equations that estimate mass (and