New England Wide
The New England region covers great variation in environment, vegetation and the history of important natural disturbances and human activities. Many important disturbance processes and modern anthropogenic stresses such as air pollution and nitrogen deposition can be best understood at this broad scale. To evaluate these regional scale processes we are conducting select studies utilizing diverse historical, modern and modeling approaches. These efforts explore regionalization or extrapolation of point data to larger spatial scales and the use of models to project current results into a changing future.
Pre-settlement Vegetation
What was the nature of New England's vegetation at the time of European settlement, what were the distributional patterns of major tree species across the region, and how did these vary with major environmental factors? These questions have been the focus of a large collaborative research effort by scientists at the Harvard Forest and Charlie Cogbill of the Hubbard Brook LTER program. By collecting witness tree data from early surveys from towns across the region we have been able to develop a detailed map of tree species abundance and distribution and major forest vegetation patterns. These data have been analyzed in relationship to environmental factors and have been compared with data emerging from regional paleoecological studies as well as historical studies of forest and landscape change to the present.
Landscape and Regional Impacts of Hurricanes in New England, Puerto Rico & Mexico
Although hurricanes are major agents of landscape change and forest disturbance in many parts of the world their infrequent occurrence makes it difficult to assess their long-term importance or to interpret gradients of hurricane impact across a region. Harvard Forest researchers have sought to develop this type of spatial and temporal understanding of hurricane disturbance regimes and most recently, Emery Boose has produced a very effective approach that combines historical research and reconstructive modeling of individual hurricanes. To-date this approach has been used in three different parts of the world with contrasting frequencies and intensities of tropical storms as well as decidedly different vegetation: New England, Puerto Rico and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.
Two thousands years of landscape history
Harvard Forest research has always been based on the recognition that the modern environment and landscape can only be well understood in the context of its past condition and knowledge of the factors that have shaped it. In addition to providing a through context for modern ecological studies, long-term historical studies also allow us to investigate processes that take long periods of time, occur infrequently, or may be absent from the modern landscape. The most ambitious historical project that we are involved in assesses the development of the Massachusetts and New England landscape over the past 2000 years. These studies, which primarily involve paleoecological analyses of pollen and other fossils, enable us to look at forest dynamics in relationship to climate change, natural disturbance and native activity before European settlement and to explore the major changes that have occurred as a consequence of European land use activity.
Selected Publications
Malizia*, N. R., G. Motzkin, and D. R. Foster. 2005. Assessing progress and prioritizing future steps in the conservation of a forested landscape in New England. Conservation Biology (In prep.).
Foster, D. and J. Aber. (Eds) 2004. Forests in Time: The Environmental Consequences of 1000 Years of Change in New England . Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Boose, E. R., M. I. Serrano, and D. R. Foster. 2004. Landscape and regional impacts of hurricanes in Puerto Rico. Ecological Monographs 74: 335-352.
Boose, E. R. 2004. A historical-modeling method for reconstructing hurricane impacts. In R. Murnane and K. Liu (Eds.), Hurricanes and typhoons: Past, Present and Future. Columbia University Press, (In Press).
Aber, J., W. Currie, M. Castro, M. Martin, and S. Ollinger. 2004. Synthesis and extrapolation: models, remote sensing and regional analysis. Pp. 338-362 In D. Foster and J. Aber (Eds.), Forests in Time: The Environmental Consequences of 1000 Years of Change in New England. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Aber, J. 2004. The long lens of history. Pp. 394-400 In D. Foster and J. Aber (Eds.), Forests in Time: The Environmental Consequences of 1000 Years of Change in New England. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Boose, E. R., D. R. Foster, A. Barker Plotkin, and B. Hall. 2003. Geographical and historical variation in hurricanes across the Yucatan Peninsula. Pp. 495-516 In A. Gómez-Pompa, M. F. Allen, S. L. Fedick, and J. J. Jiménez (Eds.), Lowland Maya Area: Three Millennia at the Human-Wildland Interface. Haworth Press, New York.
Boose, E. R. 2003. Hurricane impacts in New England and Puerto Rico. Pp. 25-42 In D. Greenland, G. Goodin, and R. C. Smith (Eds.), Climate Variability and Ecosystem Response at Long-term Ecological Research Sites. Oxford University Press, U.K.
Boose, E. R., K. E. Chamberlin, and D. R. Foster. 2001. Landscape and regional impacts of hurricanes in New England. Ecological Monographs 7: 27-48.
Aber, J. D. and R. Freuder. 2000. Sensitivity of a forest production model to variation in solar radiation data sets for the Eastern U.S. Climate Research 15: 33-43.
Foster, D. R., M. Fluet, and E. R. Boose. 1999. Human or natural disturbance: landscape-scale dynamics of the tropical forests of Puerto Rico. Ecological Applications 9: 555-572.
Foster, D., D. Knight, and J. Franklin. 1998. Landscape patterns and legacies of large infrequent disturbances. Ecosystems 1: 497-510.
Bishop, G. D., M. R. Church, J. D. Aber, R. P. Neilson, S. V. Ollinger, and C. Daley. 1998. A comparison of mapped estimates of long-term runoff in the northeastern United States. Journal of Hydrology 206: 176-190.
Boose, E. R., K. E. Chamberlin, and D. R. Foster. 1997. Reconstructing historical hurricanes in New England. In: 22nd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA.
Aber, J. D., S. V. Ollinger, C. A. Federer, and C. Driscoll. 1997. Modeling nitrogen saturation in forest ecosystems in response to land use and atmospheric deposition. Ecological Modelling 101: 61-78.
Aber, J. D. and C. T. Driscoll. 1997. Effects of land use, climate variation and N deposition on N cycling and C storage in northern hardwood forests. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 11: 639-648.
Aber, J. D. 1997. Why don't we believe the models? Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 78: 232-233.
Foster, D. R. and E. Boose. 1995. Hurricane disturbance regimes in temperate and tropical forest ecosystems. Pp. 305-339 In M. Coutts and J. Grace (Eds.), Wind and Trees. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Aber, J. D., S. V. Ollinger, C. A. Federer, P. B. Reich, M. L. Goulden, D. W. Kicklighter, J. M. Melillo, and Jr. R. G. L. Lathrop. 1995. Predicting the effects of climate change on water yield and forest production in the northeastern U.S. Climate Research 5: 207-222.
Boose, E. R., D. R. Foster, and M. Fluet. 1994. Hurricane impacts to tropical and temperate forest landscapes. Ecological Monographs 64: 369-400.
Aber, J. D., C. Driscoll, C. A. Federer, R. Lathrop, G. Lovett, J. M. Melillo, P. Steudler, and J. Vogelmann. 1993. A strategy for the regional analysis of the effects of physical and chemical climate change on biogeographical cycles in northeastern (U.S.) forests. Ecological Modelling 67: 37-47.
Aber, J. D. 1993. Modification of nitrogen cycling at the regional scale: the subtle effects of atmospheric deposition. Pp. 163-174 In M. J. McDonnell and S. T. A. Pickett (Eds.), Humans as Components of Ecosystems. Springer-Verlag, NY.
Foster, D. R. and E. Boose. 1992. Patterns of forest damage resulting from catastrophic wind in central New England, USA. Journal of Ecology 80: 79-99.
Aber, J. D. and C. A. Federer. 1992. A generalized, lumped-parameter model of photosynthesis, evapotranspiration and net primary production in temperate and boreal forest ecosystems. Oecologia 92: 463-474.
Patterson, W. A. and D. R. Foster. 1990. "Tabernacle Pines" - the rest of the story. Journal of Forestry 89: 23-25.