Author: harvardforest

March 17 Ecology Symposium Rescheduled to September

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UPDATE: The 2020 Harvard Forest Ecology Symposium, originally scheduled for March 17, has been rescheduled to September 2020.

The program will include morning science talks by graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, a round of lightning talks by the lead scientists for the major experiments in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, and an afternoon focused on Harvard Forest’s approaches to education programs and their impacts on students, scientists, and educators.

The Symposium is co-organized by senior ecologists Audrey Barker Plotkin and Jonathan Thompson.

Harvard Forest Plays Key Role in Regional Food Summit

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In the months leading up to the New England Food, Farms, Fisheries, and Forests summit on February 19, HF Director David Foster and HF Research Associate Brian Donahue met regularly with with leaders at Harvard, the American Farmland Trust, and Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare to create a first-of-its-scale program that would explore food production, health, sustainability, and social justice with perspectives from non-profit, academic, indigenous, and business communities.

The event – sponsored in partnership with Harvard Forest, Food Solutions New England, and Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, Kennedy School of Government, and Law School – included talks on resilience and emergency preparedness in our local food system, the cultural and logistical shifts needed for a “planetary health diet,” and racial equity and indigenous perspectives on food justice and land access. David Foster and colleague Spencer Meyer from the Highstead Foundation contributed a regional Wildlands and Woodlands perspective that spoke to specific policy and finance mechanisms that pave the way for a resilient and equitable regional food system.

Multiple break-out sessions facilitated small-group, solutions-oriented discussions among attendees.

Study: Climate (Not Humans) Shaped Early Forests of New England

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A new study in the journal Nature Sustainability overturns long-held interpretations of the role humans played in shaping the American landscape before European colonization. The findings give new insight into the rationale and approaches for managing some of the most biodiverse landscapes in the eastern U.S.

coastal openlands
Coastal openlands at Red Gate Farm, Martha’s Vineyard. Photo by David Foster

The study, led by archaeologists, ecologists, and paleoclimatologists at Harvard and elsewhere, focuses on the coast from Long Island to Cape Cod and the nearby islands of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, and Naushon —areas that historically supported the greatest densities of Native people in New England and today are home to the highest concentrations of rare habitats in the region, including sandplain grasslands, heathlands, and pitch pine and scrub oak forests. 

“For decades, there’s been a growing popularization of the interpretation that for millennia, Native people actively managed landscapes – clearing and burning forests, for example – to support horticulture, improve habitat for important plant and animal resources, and procure wood resources,” says study co-author David Foster, Director of the Harvard Forest at Harvard University. This active management is said to have created an array of open-land habitats and enhanced regional biodiversity.

But, Foster says, the data reveal a new story. “Our data show a landscape that was dominated by intact, old-growth forests that were shaped largely by regional climate for thousands of years before European arrival.”

An opening in a hemlock forest where a hemlock tree has fallen into an ice-covered pool
Old-growth hemlock forest, north-central Massachusetts. Photo by David Foster

Fires were uncommon, the study shows, and Native people foraged, hunted, and fished natural resources without actively clearing much land. “Forest clearance and open grasslands and shrublands only appeared with widespread agriculture during the European colonial period,” says Wyatt Oswald, a professor at Emerson College and lead author of the study, “within the last few hundred years.”

The authors say the findings transform thinking about how landscapes have been shaped in the past – and therefore how they should be managed in the future. “Ancient Native people thrived under changing forest conditions not by intensively managing them but by adapting to them and the changing environment,” notes Elizabeth Chilton, archaeologist, co-author of the study, and Dean of the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences at Binghamton University. 

To reconstruct historical changes to the land, the research team combined archaeological records with more than two dozen intensive studies of vegetation, climate, and fire history spanning ten thousand years. They found that old-growth forests were predominant for millennia but are extremely uncommon today.

A student sitting cross-legged in a canoe wraps a cylindrical core of pond sediment in plastic wrap
Undergraduate researcher Maru Orbay-Carrato collecting a sediment core from Green Pond, Central Massachusetts. Photo by Wyatt Oswald

“Today New England’s species and habitat biodiversity are globallynique, and this research transforms our thinking and rationale for the best ways to maintain it,” says Oswald. “It also points to the importance of historical research to help us interpret modern landscapes and conserve them effectively into the future.” historical changes to the land, the research team combined archaeological records with more than two dozen intensive studies of vegetation, climate, and fire history spanning ten thousand years. They found that old-growth forests were predominant for millennia but are extremely uncommon today.

The authors also note the unique role that colonial agriculture played in shaping landscapes and habitat. “European agriculture, especially the highly varied activity of sheep and cattle grazing, hay production, and orchard and vegetable cultivation in the 18th and 19th centuries, made it possible for open-land wildlife species and habitats that are now rare or endangered – such as the New England cottontail – to thrive,” says Foster. Open-land species have declined dramatically as forests regrow on abandoned farmland, and housing and commercial development of both forests and farms have reduced their habitat.

A small herd of black and black and white cattle graze in a pasture
Cattle grazing on conservation land, Elizabeth Islands. Photo by David Foster

Foster notes that the unique elements of biodiversity initiated through historical activities can be encouraged through analogous management practices today. “Protected wildland reserves,” he says, “would preserve interior forest species that were abundant before European settlement. Lands managed through the diversified farming and forestry practices that created openlands and young forests during the colonial period would support another important suite of rare plants and animals.”

For successful conservation models that leverage this historical perspective, the authors point to efforts by The Trustees of Reservations, the oldest land trust in the world, which manages more than 25,000 acres in Massachusetts embracing old and young forests, farms, and many cultural resources. The organization uses livestock grazing to keep lands open for birds like bobolinks and meadowlarks, which in turn supports local farmers and produces food for local communities.

An excerpt of the 2017 book “A Meeting of Land and Sea: The Nature and Future of Martha’s Vineyard” includes an expanded exploration of early human activity on the coast. The book’s accompanying website also provides more information on the archaelogical, historical, and paleoecological research behind this paper.

Photos by David Foster and Wyatt Oswald.

Climate Teaching Tool Co-Produced by Local Teacher & HF Scientist

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A new teaching tool for middle, high school, and university classrooms guides students in using Harvard Forest tree-ring data to answer questions about local climate change. The lesson plan was produced by Elicia Andrews, a teacher at Quabbin Regional High School in Barre, MA, who also participates in the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program. Andrews was supported in summer 2019 by a grant from the National Science Foundation to complete a “Research Experience for Teachers” (RET) at Harvard Forest, as part of its Long-Term Ecological Research Program.

During her 7-week RET experience, Andrews conducted field- and lab-work in the Harvard Forest Tree Ring Lab with Senior Ecologist Neil Pederson, Research Assistant Tessa Mandra, and several undergraduates from the HF Summer Research Program. After learning to core trees and analyze tree rings via a cross-dating method, Andrews turned to drafting the educational Data Nugget, for which Andrews worked closely with the science team and with HF Schoolyard Ecology Coordinator Pamela Snow and Director of Education Clarisse Hart.

The final product is a publicly available lesson plan that allows students to graph and interpret real scientific data to evaluate how the growth of Atlantic White Cedar – a species at the edge of its climate range in Massachusetts – is responding to long-term changes in climate.

Study: Invasive Insects Increase Likelihood of Logging on Private Land

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A new study in the journal People and Nature, led by a team of scientists from Harvard Forest, UMass, and Duke University, surveyed hundreds of forest landowners in New England and found that future invasive insect outbreaks could increase the likelihood of forest harvest on private land. 

Based on survey responses, the team grouped landowners into three types, characterizing their potential reactions to a future invasive insect outbreak: 

  • The largest group, 46% of respondents, expressed that they would cut in the event of an insect outbreak, regardless of its severity. 
  • For the next-largest group, 42% of respondents, intentions to harvest trees were influenced by the severity and duration of the insect outbreak.
  • The smallest group, 12% of respondents, expressed low intentions to harvest regardless of the type of outbreak.

This likelihood of harvest – expressed by more than 80% of landowner respondents – is a significant increase over the landowners’ own reported past harvest practices (just over half of respondents reported having harvested before).

Private forest landowners own most of the forest land in New England, and the Northeastern U.S. is dense with invasive insects. The authors suggest that the collective actions of forest landowners coupled with the spread/emergence of forest pests could have significant impact on forest biomass in the region. 

This study was funded by two grants from the National Science Foundation.

(Photo by Rob Lilieholm)

Harvard's "Wired Woods" Featured in Resilient Forest Series

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Harvard Forest land and research is the newest focus of a year-long multimedia series on resilient forests by Northern Woodlands.

Listen as Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist and Deputy Director Aaron Ellison walks radio producer Erica Heilman through our “wired woods,” and up to the top of our 92′ research tower, discussing how scientists use experimental forests to measure change over time.

(Photo by Clarisse Hart)

Harvard Forest Co-Presents Award for Academic Conservation Excellence

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In a special event today, the Harvard Forest, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and Highstead Foundation, along with their partners in Academics for Land Protection in New England (ALPINE), recognized the University of Massachusetts Amherst with the Charles H.W. Foster Award for Academic Leadership in Land Conservation.

The event also honored the high-impact career of longtime UMass Professor and Extension Forester David Kittredge, who for over 20 years was a Forest Policy Analyst at Harvard Forest, and continues to be a research collaborator and part of the Wildlands and Woodlands steering committee.

The event’s keynote speaker was Massachusetts Secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Kathleen A. Theoharides. She began her remarks by harkening back to her time as a Harvard Forest Summer Research Program intern, including memories of significant debate about the role of human disturbance in the local landscape – a central concept of Prof. Kittredge’s research.

In her remarks, Theoharides extolled UMass’s many contributions to conservation, especially its role in “bringing people together to protect special places.” She explained, “Land conservation only works when all the people who have a stake in it can come together around the table. I can’t think of a more apt example than UMass of how to convene those conversations and to bring science to bear on the process.”

UMass Amherst Deputy Chancellor Steven Goodwin accepted the award on behalf of the university, calling it “a very proud moment for the university.”

ALPINE, a collaborative network of 40 academic institutions, selected the university for the award “for its exemplary leadership in the field of land conservation in the region,” said James Levitt in introducing the event. Levitt is the Director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at Harvard Forest, manages the Lincoln Institute’s land conservation programs, and is ALPINE’s director.

Levitt added, “With the award ceremony held today, we celebrate the achievements of the University to date, and the remarkable career of Professor David Kittredge, who has been instrumental in shaping the university’s conservation efforts. We also celebrate the promise shown by future generations now being trained at the university and reached through the campus’s extension programs to effectively address the profound conservation challenges which the citizens of Massachusetts will continue to face in this era of climate change.”

During the event, Levitt also addressed former congressman and UMass professor John Olver, who was in attendance, calling him “an exceptional champion of land conservation and environmental stewardship.”

Levitt hailed the day’s honoree, David Kittredge, for founding the Massachusetts Keystone Project, a workshop held annually at Harvard Forest to promote forest conservation. Since 1988, the Keystone (formerly Coverts) Project has trained hundreds of community leaders in Massachusetts, who as a result of the training have gone on to volunteer hundreds of thousands of hours to conservation in the commonwealth.

Other guests in attendance who were recognized for their conservation accomplishments were UMass Amherst alumni and students, including Gary Clayton, president of Mass Audubon; Jane Difley, president of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests; Leigh Youngblood, executive director of the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust; and Keith Ross, senior advisor at LandVest in the North Quabbin region.

The Charles H.W. Foster award is named in memory of the late Harvard professor Charles “Hank” Foster, a longtime collaborator and and advisor to the Harvard Forest, as well as the first Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, a former dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and the first paid executive director of The Nature Conservancy.

ALPINE gave its first C.W. Foster award to Middlebury College in 2016 to recognize its investment of an alumni gift to protect its 2,100-acre Bread Loaf Campus, a forest and center for creative writing.

(Photo of the Oct. 11, 2019 Charles Foster Award ceremony at the Olver Design Building at UMass Amherst, by Hannah Robbins)

NYT Op-Ed Poses Wood Building & Forest Conservation as Climate Solutions

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An op-ed in the New York Times, co-authored by Harvard Forest director David Foster, points to new forest management standards, increases in wood building projects, and protection of existing forests from development as untapped climate solutions in New England and around the world.

The piece was written with colleagues Frank Lowenstein from the New England Forestry Foundation and Brian Donahue from Brandeis University, as well as contributor Spencer Meyer from Highstead.

(Photo of Common Ground High School in New Haven, CT, by David Sundberg)

Bullard Spotlight: Robin Sears on Small-Scale Farm-Forestry Systems in Peru

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Bullard Fellow Robin Sears spent eight months at Harvard Forest in 2018-2019 working on three projects: a research manuscript on the value chain for timber from small-scale farm-forestry systems in the Peruvian Amazon; data analysis and production of popular and scientific communication deliverables on the ecological and social dimensions of high-elevation remnant Polylepis forest patches in the Peruvian Andes; and work on several manuscripts and reports for a project on ecosystem services of forests in Bhutan.

Sears describes gratitude for a fruitful fellowship, particularly in the realms of networking and collaboration. She notes a donation of decommissioned field equipment and the technical support of HF research assistant Mark VanScoy to set it up; engagement with HF senior ecologist Neil Pederson’s Tree Ring Lab, who offered ideas, encouragement, and equipment to collect tree cores and tree cookies from Peru; and engagement with Harvard Forest associates at the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy and Harvard’s Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, which resulted in her serving as moderator for a conference session on climate change, “Amazonia and Our Planetary Futures.” She also developed a relationship with the Family Forest Research Center at the University of Massachusetts. “I was really looking forward to interacting both formally and in the hallways with scientists, educators, communicators, and I was not disappointed,” she says. “The structure of weekly seminars and lab meetings stimulated interesting and productive conversations.”

Explore publications from Sears’ fellowship:

(Photo of Sears in the southern Peru altiplano, where she worked on the Polylepis project with colleagues.)

Museum Event to Explore the Ecology of Towns & Villages

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On Tuesday, September 17, Richard Forman, a renowned landscape ecologist and long-time research collaborator of the Harvard Forest, will present his new book on the ecology of towns and villages in a free public lecture in the Fisher Museum, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Those who can’t attend this talk in person can catch the live-stream of Forman’s Sept. 20 seminar on the same topic (at 11:00am ET). 

Most of what is known about the natural world has been learned by scientists studying remote ecosystems, far from the confounding bustle of cities. Cities are now defined as ecosystems, too, and many scientists – including ecologists at Harvard Forest – study urban landscapes to understand the physical, biological, human dynamics that make cities tick. But nearly half of the earth’s land surface is neither rural nor urban, escaping the eye of ecologists—until recently. Harvard professor emeritus Richard Forman, widely considered a father of the field of landscape ecology, has written a book exploring the unique ecology of towns and villages.

Forman’s new book, Towns, Ecology, and the Land (Cambridge University Press), describes towns and villages as important, dynamic environmental hotspots. Speaking ecologically, “towns are not just small cities,” says Forman. Unlike cities, they often preserve rather than bury their streams, he says, and they exude far less heat. He notes the unique dynamics of wildlife: at edges, you see a “rain of species” from surrounding rural areas—drawn by scattered bright lights, ample water, and diverse plant life.

Forman has analyzed towns and villages the world over, and still considers New England unique. In our region, glacial silt and sand made widespread colonial agriculture possible, but today many of those towns are transformed by rich forests. Despite differences in history, though, common characteristics emerge in small towns across the globe, such as orchards, fields, small family forests, and livestock in close proximity to houses. Trails radiate through the land, small-scale irrigation is common, and bird feeders attract forest birds (and bears). There are downsides, too: dogs and cats degrade wildlife habitat or populations, road salt pollutes wells.

Although simply understanding the land of towns and villages was Forman’s goal for the book, he has included ideas for making better towns, and better land. Imagine widespread solar panels on buildings, he says, and busy town centers with rich vegetation, strategic wildlife crossings, less flooding (even in extreme storms), and no traffic.

“Opening the town ecology frontier catalyzes research for both nature and us,” says Forman. With a better understanding of how these landscapes function and change over time, he suggests, residents and professionals can step forward to mold better towns for the future.

Forman will sign books at the conclusion of the event. Light refreshments will be served. Please direct questions about the event to Clarisse Hart, 978-756-6157, hart3@fas.harvard.edu.

New Tweeting Tree Is Climate Change Storyteller

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This month, Harvard Forest launched the first tweeting tree in North America. 

The project has been years in the making. The 100-year-old red oak tree first came into the spotlight in 2017, as the focal point for the climate change book Witness Tree, written by visiting Bullard Fellow Lynda Mapes. In 2018, post-doctoral fellow Tim Rademacher (from Northern Arizona University and Harvard Forest) installed sensors in and around the tree, hoping to continue Mapes’ storytelling mission through data-driven stories on social media.

In 2018, students began contributing to the social media project: Kyle Wyche and Shawna Greyeyes from the Harvard Forest Summer Research Program and Alexa Rice from the Harvard Divinity School joined Rademacher and HF Outreach Director Clarisse Hart to write program code and formulate multimedia messages that would allow the tree to tweet about its growth, sap flow, and changing environment in real time.

Since its launch on Twitter in July 2019, the Harvard Forest Witness Tree has become a sensation, engaging thousands of followers from around the world.

Future plans for the project include a Facebook account for the tree, French and Spanish versions of the project, and a tool-kit for educators to create their own tweeting trees.

Funding for the project is provided in part by the National Science Foundation.

Registration Open for Schoolyard Ecology Teacher Workshop

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Schoolteachers of grades 2-12 are invited to register for the Summer Institute for Teachers, held here at Harvard Forest on August 22 from 9:30am to 3:30pm. The cost is $50, which includes teacher materials, project supplies, and year-round support from educators and scientists at the Forest.

The Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program, now in its 16th year, works with teachers year-round from schools throughout the Northeast (explore a map of participating schools), providing scientist-led professional development in field-based data collection and data analysis/graphing.

Our goal for the program is to get more students outside – in urban and rural school districts alike – engaging in authentic scientific practices and investigation. The projects are aligned with state and national frameworks, and are augmented each year by new teacher resources.

The August 22 Summer Institute prepares teachers to set up field sites in walking distance from their schools. Teachers learn how to follow a scientific protocol designed by professional ecologists. Training includes all written materials and field supplies needed to get a project up and running in a schoolyard. No prior experience is required.

Teachers may register for one of three study project options:

  • Woolly Bully and the Hemlock Trees (invasive species)
  • Our Changing Forests (carbon, biodiversity, and ecosystem change)
  • Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming (climate and seasonal change)

The Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program is funded by the Long-Term Ecological Research Program of the National Science Foundation, the Highstead Foundation, and private foundations and donors.

(Photo by Linda Castronovo)