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April 2012

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April 25, 2012

25 New Keystone Cooperators trained at Harvard Forest

Keystone group 2012

In late April, 25 community volunteers completed a three-day workshop at the Harvard Forest as part of the Massachusetts Keystone Program. The program trains forest landowners and community opinion leaders to be local advocates of conservation, and to help inform the land management and conservation decisions of their friends, neighbors, organizations, and communities. 

The annual training covers subjects such as forest

April 10, 2012

Climate Change and Public Health Study Featured on NBC-Learn

NBC filming on roof

Community Ecologist Kristina Stinson recently provided expert commentary for NBC Learn's "Science Behind the News" segment on allergenic plants. The video series is co-produced by the National Science Foundation.

Watch Science Behind the News: Allergies.

Learn more about Stinson's work Predicting Ragweed Allergy Hotspots in New England.

April 10, 2012

GoBotany Interactive Field Guide Launched

GoBotany screenshot

Go Botany--a free website developed by former HF Bullard Fellow Elizabeth Farnsworth and the New England Wild Flower Society--is an interactive, online field guide to more than 3,000 native and naturalized plants in New England.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the website is meant to be used by anyone from botanical beginners to trained professionals.

April 10, 2012

New Publication: Micro-climates in Declining Hemlock Forests

Hemlocks effected bu hemlock woolly adelgid

A new article by visiting researcher Nicky Lustenhouwer and HF researchers Aaron Ellison and Liza Nicoll reports impacts of forest decline, harvest, and regeneration in eastern hemlock stands affected by the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid.

Observed changes in soil and air temperature, as well as soil moisture levels -- all important ecosystem factors -- are the result of five years of microclimate

April 7, 2012

BioScience Features Lessons and New Directions from 30 Years of LTER

BioScience LTER issue

A special issue of the journal BioScience, guest-edited by David Foster, highlights the globally important role of the LTER network as it enters its fourth decade--including new research by Jonathan Thompson, linking land development trends to reduced forest carbon.

Long-term data from the Harvard Forest are incorporated throughout the six-article BioScience feature on LTER.

April 2, 2012

Graduate Student Wins Fulbright

Umass graduate student Israel Del Toro

UMass graduate student Israel Del Toro, advised by Harvard Forest senior ecologist Aaron Ellison, will spend the coming year (September 2012-September 2013) as a Fulbright Fellow working at the CSIRO Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre in the lab of Dr. Alan Andersen.

Del Toro's research will focus on how ant communities change across environmental gradients in the tropics

April 2, 2012

New Publication: Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Distribution and Impact in Central MA

Hemlock woolly Adelgid

A recent paper by David Orwig, Jonathan Thompson, David Foster, and several former Summer Research Program students discusses the factors influencing the spread of the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) in central New England hemlock forests. 

Using aerial photographs, they investigated over 86,000 hectares (more than 200,000 acres) of hemlock forest in Central Mass. and subsampled 123 stands to