Author: Clarisse Hart

“Listening to the Forest” on May 9: All Welcome!

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

All are welcome for a free, family-friendly afternoon of original music on Saturday, May 9, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. at Davis Memorial Hall (3 West. St., Petersham, Mass.).

The program features original music by Music Haven students and composer Matthew Suttor — Program Manager at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) — performed by the Haven String Quartet.

Listening to the Forest, a Resounding Nature project in collaboration with Harvard Forest, helps young people listen deeply — to their communities and to the natural world. By uniting music, science, and technology, students transform real forest data into original compositions, giving voice to nature through art.

The compositions draw on the Listening to the Forest mobile app, which turns data from Harvard Forest’s flux towers, biodiversity plots, hydrology stations, and trail systems into site-specific sound.

The program is free and open to the public, presented in collaboration with Yale CCAM and Harvard Forest, with support from Yale Planetary Solutions.

New Book Aims to Bring Back Botanizing, to Great Acclaim

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

Ben Goulet-Scott, a leader in the Education Team at Harvard Forest, has co-authored a new book, Let’s Botanize, and it recently received a glowing review in The New York Times.

Ben and his co-author, Jacob Suissa, met in 2017 as doctoral students in Harvard’s Dept. of Organizational and Evolutionary Biology. They launched Let’s Botanize on Instagram in 2021, and its popularity spurred them to create the Let’s Botanize educational nonprofit.

Ben and Jacob, two young men, stand smiling in button-down shirts in front of the green trees of a forest.

The book and the non-profit pose botanizing as an active past-time, harkening back to earlier centuries, but serving the present, looking to “combat the climate and biodiversity crises by spreading curiosity, knowledge and appreciation of plants.”

Goulet-Scott explains, “As graduate students, Jacob and I really enjoyed the hobby of botanizing, but we felt there weren’t many resources explaining or promoting the hobby to a wide audience. As our Let’s Botanize platform grew, we started dreaming about writing a book that would introduce people to the hobby. When we finally got the chance to write a book, Jacob’s experience as a botany professor and my experience as an educator at Harvard Forest were instrumental in shaping how we present plant biology as both scientifically rigorous and accessible to all.”

We are planning a series of events about the book at Harvard Forest in spring and summer 2027.

Explore the book.

Follow the project on Instagram and TikTok.

Celebrate Earth Day with Harvard Forest’s Bullard Fellow Showcase

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

On April 15 from 6:00-7:30 p.m., a public “lightning round” of brief presentations by Harvard Forest’s current Bullard Fellowship scholars will celebrate the wide range of ecological inquiry that is helping to strengthen our understanding of the globe. Five presenters will discuss changes in local wildlife, forest biodiversity, tree ring research, and art-science collaborations.

The event will take place in the Harvard Forest Fisher Museum at 324 N Main St., Petersham. All are welcome and no RSVPs are necessary.

Harvard Forest and the Fisher Museum are dedicated to ensuring an accessible and welcoming environment for all visitors. If disability accommodations can assist with your experience at Harvard Forest, please contact hfvisit@fas.harvard.edu or 978-724-3302, preferably at least one week in advance of your visit. 

Photo by Scott Foster.

March 12: Harvard Forest Annual Research Symposium (online and in person)

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

For 35 years, the Harvard Forest has hosted an Annual Ecology Symposium to bring together research collaborators to share progress and develop synergies.

This year’s Symposium, themed New Perspectives on Temperate Forest Ecology, will be held March 12, 2026, in the Harvard Forest Fisher Museum and also streamed publicly online.

Schedule

In-person registration is full, but you can still register (free!) for the Zoom webinar.

Photo by Terry Dugan.

Registration Open: Spring Bus Trip for Harvard Community Members

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

Harvard students, faculty, fellows, and staff are welcome to sign up for a free Community Bus Trip to Harvard Forest on Saturday, March 28, 2026.

Register here!

The 4 hours spent on site will be guided by educators and scientists at the Forest, including:

  • an overview of Harvard Forest’s interdisciplinary research and education programs
  • a brief, interactive tour of the Fisher Museum
  • a ~2-mile guided field tour on uneven dirt roads with low to moderate incline:
    • explore several of the Forest’s signature climate research experiments
    • optional: weather-permitting, climb a 92′ research tower
    • learn local plant and wildlife ID
    • discuss the Indigenous and colonial history of the region
    • discuss modern efforts in climate policy, land management, environmental education, and Indigenous community collaboration

Bus trips will depart Harvard Square at 10:00am and return to campus by 6:00pm. Attendees must bring their own lunch and snacks; Harvard Forest is a rural area and there is no way to purchase food or drinks here.

Registration is first-come, first-served, except that first-time visitors and graduating students will be prioritized if registration is over-subscribed.

Photo by Amy Li.

Kashish Bastola, Two-Time HF Intern, Named Marshall Scholar

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

Kashish Bastola, a Harvard Forest winter and spring 2023 intern, and co-creator of the Forest’s Manchage Manexit Trail, has been named a 2026 Marshall Scholar and also awarded Harvard’s Paton Prize in the Humanities, recognizing the senior showing greatest promise in the humanities or fine arts.

While in the UK for two years as a Marshall Scholar, Kashish will study global and imperial history.

In project work with Nia Holley, Tyler White, Clarisse Hart, and Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila, Kashish has been a vibrant, creative, and soulful contributor to the Forest community. He reports, “Working with the Forest has set me on a path of studying histories of imperialism and colonialism with intentionality and a focus on visual/material culture and what museums say about memory.”

Kashish, the Forest is cheering you on!

Photo of Kashish (center) with Nia Holley and Tyler White, at Harvard Forest, by Ben Goulet-Scott.

New Study: A Comparison Shopper’s Guide to Forest Datasets

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

A new study from the Thompson Lab, led by Harvard Forest Research Assistant Lucy Lee, evaluated 27 publicly available data products that quantify the distribution of “forests” across the conterminous United States. They found that these tools’ estimates of the total land area of forest ecosystems differed by over 2,000,000 km2.

One example the authors offer is that, depending on the public dataset used, someone wishing to understand the status of forests in the U.S. might reasonably conclude that 81,991 km2 of forest have been lost over the past 30 years – but could just as reasonably conclude that 93,536 km2 has been gained.

The authors urge caution to researchers and practitioners in selecting a dataset, because the characteristics of the datasets vary widely (including the time resolution used to gather the data, and the threshold at which a pixel is considered “forest”).

Lucy Lee, co-lead author of the study, explains: “Intuitively, we understand what a ‘forest’ is when we are in one. So, when we see a map labeled ‘forest’, it is easy to assume that the map matches up with our expectations of what a forest is. But there are many factors, both technical and conceptual, that lead maps of ‘forest’ to be different and sometimes surprising. Today, people have many choices in what forest maps they use, and we wanted to highlight the differences between them and give people tools to choose the best data for their needs.”

The most appropriate dataset to use, the authors suggest, depends on the question the data is intended to answer, and also may require the use of statistical methods to correct biases in map-based estimates.

A figure from the paper, showing how forest cover (in bright green pixels) is documented differently by different forest datasets.

They developed a public tool for quick reference to help users understand the assumptions and characteristics behind forest datasets, and which one may be best suited to their question. They have also published their processing code so the comparative tool can be used in other regions.

Read the full scientific paper.

Explore the comparison tool.

This work was by the National Science Foundation (DEB-LTER-18-32210).

New Insights on Oak Survival in Southern New England

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

A study led by Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Audrey Barker Plotkin sheds light on the factors affecting oak tree survival during regional outbreaks of spongy moth (Lymantria dispar), an invasive insect that can cause widespread oak mortality.

The authors tracked oak tree populations from 1970 to 2020 across a network of permanent study plots in central Massachusetts forests. The 50-year timespan of data collection meant they were able to contrast the short- and long-term effects of two major spongy moth outbreaks – one that peaked in in 1980–1981, and another that peaked in 2017.

Their results showed a greater loss of oak trees and carbon biomass during the 2010s outbreak than the 1980s outbreak. The average oak tree that died between 2010 and 2020 was larger and had more than twice as much biomass than the average oak tree that died between 1980 and 1990. The authors posited that water stress in the later outbreak may have been a factor in the increased mortality of large trees. Higher mortality risk was also associated with sites that experienced more years of local defoliation during the outbreaks.

Despite major losses of oaks during the two spongy moth outbreaks, the relative abundance of oak in the study plots remained steady from 1970 to 2020, and the absolute amount of oak biomass nearly doubled. However, the survival of new oak seedlings declined over the 50-year study period and was much lower than for other tree species.

Read the full scientific paper.

This work received funding from the National Science Foundation, both through the LTER program (NSF-DEB 1832210) and the REU program (NSF-DBI 1950364).

Photo of Audrey Barker Plotkin and an oak tree, by Jenny Meskauskas.

New Chapter for the Forest’s Signature Climate Research Tower

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

Harvard Forest’s signature climate research infrastructure – the Environmental Measurement Station tower – has gotten a vital upgrade thanks to support from the Salata Institute and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. A new, taller tower installed in summer 2025 will continue the world’s longest-running carbon flux dataset from the Forest’s Environmental Measurement Station (EMS).  

The tower measures carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides, ozone, and other trace gases several times per second. Launched by SEAS/EPS Professor Steve Wofsy in 1991, it was the first of its kind in the world, and continues to provide core (public) data for global climate models.

Crucial leadership for the tower upgrade and its data continuity was provided by HF Senior Ecologist Jackie Matthes, HF Research Assistant Mark VanScoy, HF Field Technician Maxwell Lutz, and Bill Munger, senior research fellow in atmospheric chemistry at the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The Harvard Gazette recently highlighted the new EMS tower and its vital contributions to ecosystem science.

Data from the EMS tower is free and publicly available and can be explored in the Harvard Forest data archive.

Photo by David Trilling shows Mark VanScoy climbing the newly installed EMS tower in summer 2025.

Schoolyard Ecology Supports After-School Nature Club

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

With a new grant from the Greater Worcester Community Foundation, educators from the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program are supporting a free after-school Science and Nature Club for students grades 3-6 at the Petersham Center School.

For 6 weeks in the autumn and 6 weeks in the spring, student participants collect phenology data from trees outside, explore the wild plant and animal species in their schoolyard, and graph their data on posters.

a school-age child makes a dot on a large graph on the wall of a school cafeteria, while HF educator Katharine Hinkle looks on

The program complements a range of programs the Forest offers at the Center School throughout the year, including programming for Arbor Day, and a field trip for every grade in the spring.

3rd Census of HF Global Earth Observatory Complete

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

August 2025 marked the culmination of the third census of the Harvard Forest “megaplot,” part of an international effort to track forest change at large scales over time. Over the course of two consecutive summers, 14 research assistants, led by HF Senior Ecologist Dave Orwig, contributed to the the re-census effort, working daily to measure over 70,000 woody stems in the 35-hectare (85-acre) area. 

The census is taken every 5 years, and all data are made public. Since 2020, 5,000 new stems have grown to at least 1 centimeter in diameter. Those sapling newcomers include over 1,000 hemlock trees and over 800 mountain laurel and black birch stems. 

technician paints a yellow line on a tree trunk, showing that it has been measured

This census also documented over 11,800 dead stems–with almost 5,000 of them being eastern hemlock that succumbed to the invasive insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA).  Altogether, more than 8000 hemlock have died in the plot since initial measurements in 2014.

Norway spruce and red pine plantations that were established by Harvard Forest students in the early 1900s have been steadily dying as well, leaving very few of either species remaining in the study area. 

Harvard University Community Bus Trip on Nov. 1

Posted on by Clarisse Hart

Harvard students, faculty, fellows, and staff are welcome to sign up for a free Community Bus Trip to Harvard Forest on Saturday, November 1.

Register here! (**October update: Please note: this trip is now full and we are accepting wait-list registrations.**)

The 4 hours spent on site will be guided by educators and scientists at the Forest, including:

  • an overview of Harvard Forest’s interdisciplinary research and education programs
  • a brief, interactive tour of the Fisher Museum
  • a ~2-mile guided field tour on uneven dirt roads with low to moderate incline:
    • explore several of the Forest’s signature climate research experiments
    • optional: weather-permitting, climb a 92′ research tower
    • learn local plant and wildlife ID
    • discuss the Indigenous and colonial history of the region
    • discuss modern efforts in climate policy, land management, environmental education, and Indigenous community collaboration

Bus trips will depart Harvard Square at 10:00am and return to campus by 6:00pm. Attendees must bring their own lunch and snacks; Harvard Forest is a rural area and there is no way to purchase food or drinks here.

Registration is first-come, first-served, except that new visitors will be prioritized over return visitors.