Thank you for visiting Harvard Forest!

This website is packed with information about Harvard Forest’s research, education, events, data, and more. We've made some handy guides to exploring the website from the perspectives of educators, students, field researchers, and land stewards/conservationists, and we're working on more views this fall. Don't see your view? Let us know at hfOutreach@fas.harvard.edu.

News & Highlights

December 6, 2022

Applications Open for 2023 Summer Research Program in Ecology

Students and proctors from the 2022 research program stand at Harvard Forest's campus.

Applications are now open for the Harvard Forest Summer Research Program in Ecology. Each summer, this immersive 11-week research experience hosts approximately 20 undergraduate students who live at Harvard Forest and conduct site-based research at the forefront of ecology under the mentorship of an affiliated scientist. Next year, the program will run from May 22 –

December 1, 2022

Schoolyard Ecology Winter Data Workshop

Friday, January 13th, 2023 8:30 am - 3 pm

We are very excited to announce the return of our Winter Data Workshop! This is open to all schoolyard ecology teachers regardless of the project or how many years you've been collecting data. We will offer several levels for you to choose from. Whether its getting support entering your data or designing

October 25, 2022

Report: New England Forests Can Do More to Combat Climate Change

New England’s forests are an underrated asset in the fight against climate change, already sequestering the equivalent of 14 percent of carbon emissions across the six states and capable of much more. Through a menu of complementary strategies, forests could sequester at least 20 percent of carbon emissions while also enhancing critical co-benefits such as cleaner air and water, greater

October 24, 2022

Landscape modeling workshop explores potential to blend approaches to projecting forest change

Researchers stand in front of Shaler Hall

On October 19 and 20, 2022, Harvard Forest hosted a landscape modeling workshop centered on the LANDIS model. LANDIS - short for LAndscape DIsturbance and Succession - is a model that has been widely applied by Harvard Forest in the context of future forest conditions, alternative future scenarios, carbon storage, and other pressing policy issues for the state of Massachusetts

October 20, 2022

New Grant: Seeing and Hearing Indigenous Voices on the Land

a trail sign that says "What Does it Mean to be Seen and Heard?"

A team of Harvard Forest scientists, Nipmuc leaders, Indigenous students, and educators has received a Culture Lab Innovation Fund grant to amplify the voices of local Indigenous communities and to enhance a sense of belonging for all Indigenous community members at Harvard. Led by Nipmuc leaders and Harvard Forest postdoc S. Joseph Tumber-Dávila, To Be

October 17, 2022

Study Informs Federal Grants to Address U.S. Fuel Poverty

UMass students stand in front of newly stacked crates of firewood at the Petersham Wood Bank

HF Director of Outreach & Education, Clarisse Hart, has co-authored a new study, Food, Medicine, or Heat? How Firewood Banks Leverage Natural Resources to Support Fuel Poor Households that will directly inform the distrubition of $8 mill in federal grants to combat heating fuel poverty in the US.

Until Hart began her research in 2016, grass-roots community wood banks –