2018-2019 Bullard Fellows Announced

We are pleased to announce the Harvard Forest Charles Bullard Fellows for 2018-2019. The mission of the Bullard Fellowship Program is to support advanced research and study by individuals who show promise of making an important contribution–either as scholars or administrators–to forestry and forest-related subjects, from biology to earth sciences, economics, politics, administration, law, and the arts and humanities.

FELLOW INSTITUTION RESEARCH AREA
Timothy Cook

&

Noah Snyder

Worcester State University

Boston College

Paleoecology data synthesis investigating the causes and impacts of Holocene climate and environmental change
Linda Deegan Woods Hole Research Center Impacts of human land use, invasive forest pests, and climate change on aquatic ecosystems
Susan Masino Trinity College Scholarly review of data linking forests and brain health
Justin Maxwell Indiana University Dendrochronology: Examining species-specific drought response in eastern US trees
Robin Sears Hampshire College Science-policy nexus in forestry; connecting lessons about forest management by small-scale timber producers in the Northeast for application in South America
Thomas Sherry Tulane University New book integrating ecological and evolutionary approaches to competition and community structure in birds

Browse highlights of recent Bullard Fellows:

Registration Open: Schoolyard Ecology Workshop for Teachers

New England-based teachers of grades 4-12 are invited to build their skills in field-based data collection by registering for the Schoolyard Summer Institute for Teachers, to be held August 22 at the Harvard Forest.

The Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program, now in its 15th year, engages classrooms in field data collection at sites within walking distance of their schools. Year-round workshops, led by Harvard Forest ecologists and peer mentor teachers, help teachers learn field protocols and build skills in analyzing their own data with their students.

Teachers can choose from three long-term research projects: Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming, which teaches students about climate change, tree identification, and seasonal change; Woolly Bully, which focuses on invasive insects; and Our Changing Forests, which covers many forest concepts including carbon, conservation, ecosystem change, and biodiversity. Classrooms submit their data online, where it becomes part of a searchable data archive and graphing program

Registration for the Summer Institute is $50 and includes all materials, follow-up workshops, and resources.

Over the past 15 years of the program, teachers, ecologists, and program coordinator Pamela Snow have contributed a rich variety of teacher resources, including lesson plans, data analysis strategies, and connections to state and national learning frameworks and standards, which are all freely available online.

The Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program is supported by the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research Program, Highstead, a family foundation, and private donors.

Bullard Spotlight: Isabelle Chuine on What Makes Spring Buds Burst

Every quarter, we highlight the work of one of our visiting Charles Bullard Fellows. Isabelle Chuine is a research director at the Centre of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France. Her research lies at the interface of functional ecology and evolutionary ecology and focuses on seasonal change in forest trees, especially as climate warms. She uses a combination of modelling, experimental work in field and controlled conditions, and long-term monitoring of natural populations to develop models that forecast tree species distribution and phenology for the coming centuries. 

During her Bullard Fellowship, Chuine is based mainly at the Arnold Arboretum, conducting experiments on the factors that determine bud dormancy in trees growing at Harvard Forest (red oak, yellow birch, sugar maple, beech) — the same trees that have been annually monitored for spring bud burst and fall leaf drop for over 25 years by HF ecologist John O’Keefe. Chuine’s experiments seek to determine the optimal temperatures that release bud dormancy and trigger bud cells to grow. Current models predict that as climate warms, by the end of the 21st century, tree species with specific requirements for winter dormancy may not be able to produce leaves from their buds in spring. 

Chuine came to Harvard, she says, for “the amazing facilities available at the Arnold Arboretum, especially the growth chambers and the microscopy lab” and “inspiring discussions with people at Harvard Forest.” She describes her fellowship work as “very intensive, but very exciting and fruitful.”

(Photo of bud sections under microscopic epifluorescence with aniline blue staining of callose in the bud phloem – courtesy of Isabelle Chuine.)

Study: In Warmer Future, More Fire, Fewer Trees in Klamath

Increasing fires and summer droughts caused by global warming are drastically changing a globally unique bio-region of northern California and southwestern Oregon, according to new research from HF Senior Ecologist Jonathan Thompson’s lab, published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

The Klamath, as the region is known, is a pocket of the Pacific Northwest known for its rugged mountains, wild rivers, and Mediterranean climate. The area is a hotspot of biological diversity and a storehouse of carbon—home to an astonishing 29 species of conifers and many rare plants that exist only in this small region of the world.

These forests are well-adapted to wildfire, but more severe fires—like the region’s record-breaking Biscuit Fire of 2002, which burned 500,000 acres—have a greater impact on the area’s biodiversity. As plants recover, the iconic conifers must compete with a host of more fire-resilient shrubs and other species, which sweep through the understory and begin to grow quickly.

Jonathan Thompson, HF Senior Ecologist and co-author on the study, explains, “If the fire-free interval is too short or if the growing conditions are too dry, the shrubs can persist indefinitely, and the iconic conifers are squeezed out.”

The research team, composed of scientists from the Harvard Forest, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, and Portland State University, simulated the next 100 years of forest dynamics in the Klamath according to five potential climate futures. One climate future was simply a continuation of recent climate trends (1949-2010); the others projected shifts, from conservative to extreme, in warming and seasonal precipitation.

Every climate change scenario led to increased summer drought, which reduced plant survival overall. Climate change also increased the size, intensity, and frequency of wildfires, which can kill even the largest trees, reduce the survival rate of new tree seedlings, and pave the way for growth of those low-growing shrubs, which in turn create more fuel for future fires. Because of this shift in the plant population, the warmest climate simulations created fires that would break all records of burned area size for the region.

The most surprising result? Shrubs swept into the forest even in the absence of intensified climate change. Even with a continuation of recent climate, the region can expect at least 1/3 of the iconic cone-bearing trees to replaced by shrubs over the coming century.

The researchers believe that this is due in part to legacy of fire suppression that initially gave the conifers an edge over shrubs during the 20th century.

Looking to the future, Thompson adds, “As the climate continues to warm, big severe wildfires will be more frequent, and the dry conditions that follow will increasingly favor shrubs over conifers. The combination will mean less of the conifer forest that make the Klamath so distinct.”

(Photo of the 2002 Biscuit Fire, reburning a site burned by the Silver Fire in 1987 – courtesy of Thomas Link)

Long-Term Data on Ants Reveal Forest Dynamics

When forests change, do the ants that live there change, too? Ecologist Sydne Record (Bryn Mawr College), Aaron Ellison (HF Senior Ecologist), Tempest McCabe (Harvard Forest Summer Student ’15, now at Boston University), and Ben Baiser (University of Florida-Gainesville) answered this question in a new study in Ecosphere

Ants provide many services to forests: they aerate soils, decompose wood, and disperse seeds. However, these services depend on the community diversity of the ants, which is linked to the composition of the trees. The new study investigated whether the death of trees from a certain species shifted the number of ant species living in the forest, or the number of services the ant community provides.

They collected ants at two sites: one site with oaks removed (Black Rock Forest’s Future of Oak Forests Experiment), and one site with hemlocks removed (the Harvard Forest Hemlock Removal Experiment). Then for twelve years, they watched how ant community diversity changed compared to the same oak and eastern hemlock forests without the tree removals.

They found that the way the ant community changed depended on the type of forest. When eastern hemlocks were lost, the ant community changed, as did some of the services the ant community could provide. When oaks were lost, the ant community did not change in terms of species composition or the services that they provide.

This work implies that different trees have different levels of influence over their surrounding ecosystem. This research suggests that eastern hemlock defines its ecosystem – a hallmark of what scientists call a “foundation species” – and that removing those trees has effects that cascade all the way down to the ants. Removing an oak, on the other hand, has fewer effects.

As tree-specific invasive pests like the hemlock woolly adelgid continue to invade our region, understanding how the loss of particular tree species will affect an ecosystem is essential for conservation and management efforts.

2018 Ecology Symposium Highlights 30 Years of Long-Term Research

Highlights and new directions from 30 years of the Forest’s Long-Term Ecological Research Program were the focus of the 2018 Harvard Forest Ecology Symposium, held on March 20 in the Fisher Museum. More than 120 attendees – scientists, students, and forestry/conservation professionals – filled the Museum, with more joining online for the live-stream. Speakers covered issues ranging from carbon cycling and conservation/science policy to forest insect pests and soil microbes.

Additional symposium activities included a poster session, a lunch session with the authors of recent Harvard Forest books, a guided walk through the Hemlock Hospice Art Installation, and a networking dinner for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

All talks were recorded and are available here, along with abstracts of other current Harvard Forest research.

(Photo by Clarisse Hart)

Science-Art Collaboration on the Road: Shifting Sites at RISD

HF Bullard Fellow David Buckley Borden and Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison took their collaborative exhibit, Hemlock Hospice, and a study model for a new sculpture, Warming Warning Walk, to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) as part of a group exhibition in March 2018.

Shifting Sites, hosted by in the RISD Department of Landscape Architecture, featured work from three award-winning practices highlighted by the department’s 2017-2018 lecture series. The exhibit was curated by RISD Assistant Professor Karli Molter, who selected work by Buckley Borden and Ellison, as well as Lateral Office and Snøhetta. Collectively, the artists’ work examined a wide range of site typologies, from natural remote landscapes to sensitive ecological forests, to dense urban public space and artificially created land. The projects looked at different attitudes and approaches to the diverse and complex sites seen through the lens of artists, designers, writers and engineers.

A man loads a wooden sculpture into the bed of a pickup truck
Artist David Buckley Borden Loading Work for Exhibit

At the core of these projects were four defining questions:

  • How does one look at and frame an understanding of a site?
  • What are the multiple scales at which we approach a site?
  • How can design be used as a tool to reveal an underlying condition, or uncover the layered narratives of a site?
  • How does the design of something new integrate with or interact with the existing site conditions?

All work on the exhibit depended on a cross-disciplinary approach to answering these questions. Engineers, scientists, artists, community groups, and both governmental and non-governmental agencies each understand “site” in fundamentally different ways.

All work on the exhibit depended on a cross-disciplinary approach to answering these questions. Engineers, scientists, artists, community groups, and both governmental and non-governmental agencies each understand “site” in fundamentally different ways.

Often collaborations like these require questioning disciplinary assumptions, says Borden, which can lead to the co-production of new knowledge. He noted that these collaborations can also allow for projects to gain a deeper understanding and therefore a more meaningful response to the complex layered social, ecological, and political landscapes that landscape architects work within.

A large room that is an art gallery with artwork hanging on the walls

HF Grad Students Present Science in Real Life

Jess Gersony, a graduate student in the Holbrook lab of Harvard’s Organismic & Evolutionary Biology (OEB) department, discussed her Harvard Forest-based research in a new episode of ‘Science in Real Life’ on YouTube this month. Fellow OEB graduate student Molly Edwards launched the YouTube channel with a grant from the American Society of Plant Biologists, with a goal of producing 10 episodes featuring the work of women plant biologists at leading research institutions across the country.

The episode features Gersony on a trip to the treetops via the Forest’s bucket lift (affectionately nicknamed ‘Bucky’) and demonstrating the pressure bomb, an instrument that measures dryness in trees. 

News from Capitol Hill: SPE Leader Presents Co-Benefits of Power Plant Standards

Kathy Fallon Lambert, Director of the Science Policy Exchange, led a team of scientists that gave a briefing to the U.S. House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) on the air quality, health, and environmental consequences of different types of power plant carbon standards. The briefing, held in Washington DC on February 6, 2018, featured a study by Lambert and colleagues from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston University, Syracuse University, and Resources for the Future.

The study found that an “inside the fence line” approach for reducing carbon from power plants solely by improving power plant efficiency could actually cause more conventional air pollution and premature deaths than doing nothing whereas a “beyond the fence line” approach that allows flexible compliance measures such as switching to renewable energy could generate substantial health and air quality benefits.

Harvard Forest Director Receives Book Award in Environmental Science

At its annual Prose Awards luncheon on February 8 in Washington D.C., the American Association of Publishers announced that a new book by HF Director David FosterA Meeting of Land and Sea: Nature and the Future of Martha’s Vineyard, was awarded their 2018 prize for Environmental Science.

The PROSE Awards annually recognize the best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in 58 categories.

Published in 2017, A Meeting of Land and Sea synthesizes twenty years of research in combination with over 300 color photographs, maps, and charts to explore the history, ecology and conservation of Martha’s Vineyard.  The book was published by Yale University Press and is a synthesis volume from Harvard Forest LTER program. David Foster provided the photographs and Brian Hall contributed many maps and graphics.

The cover of the book, A Meeting of Land and Sea: Nature and Future of Martha's Vineyard, by David Foster

Data from Art: Hemlock Hospice Starts Yielding Results

Based on the visitor log at the Harvard Forest Hemlock Hospice art exhibition, more than 500 people have viewed its 18 installations since the October 7 opening. Many of these visitors also have contributed to the exhibition by leaving messages on ribbons tied to the “Exchange Tree.”

Now, the co-creators of Hemlock Hospice, designer David Buckley Borden and HF Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison, have collected the first two months of ribbons (more than 200 of them), transcribed the messages, and used text-analysis software to study patterns in the messages. The data can be visualized in a “word cloud,” which sizes the words from largest (most common) to the smallest (least common). Analysis will continue while Hemlock Hospice remains on view (through November, 2018). Future researchers will be able to work with the ribbons and other materials associated with the exhibition, all of which will be stored in the Harvard Forest Archive.

A piece of plastic ribbon with a sketch of a tree and the words "Trees are wise" written in black marker

Reproducibility in Ecological Research

How can we improve the reproducibility of ecological experiments? In a paper published this month in Nature Ecology and Evolution, an international team led by Alex Milcu that included HF Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison showed that a deliberate introduction of controlled systematic variability (CSV) in experimental designs may increase the reproducibility of experiments done at multiple sites or in multiple laboratories.

According to the researchers, one would expect that if one group tried to reproduce the experimental results of another group, it would be critical to reproduce each methodological step, using, for example, identical seed sources, soils, and reagents.

But Milcu’s team tested the controversial hypothesis that such stringent levels of environmental and biotic standardization actually reduce reproducibility by amplifying the impacts of laboratory-specific environmental factors not accounted for in study designs. This hypothesis suggests that deliberately introducing “controlled systematic variability” (CSV) into an experiment should increase the likelihood that the experiment can be reproduced.

To test this hypothesis, 14 European laboratories ran a simple microcosm experiment using grass (Brachypodium distachyon) monocultures and grass + legume (Medicago truncatula) mixtures. Each laboratory introduced environmental, genotypic, or both environmental and genotypic CSV in either growth chambers or glasshouses.

Introducing genotypic CSV increased reproducibility in growth chambers, which have stringent environmental controls, but not in glasshouses, which do not. In contrast, introducing environmental CSV had little effect on reproducibility in either growth chambers or glasshouses.

Researchers and pundits have suggested multiple causes for the ‘reproducibility crisis’ in science, and ecologists have suggested that reproducibility in ecological studies may be particularly difficult. This study’s results show that the deliberate introduction of known, quantified genetic variability may be a simple way to increase the reproducibility of ecological studies done in stringently controlled environmental conditions.