Author: harvardforest

Announcing Free Monthly Events at Harvard Forest!

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We are excited to announce that we will be hosting free monthly events at Harvard Forest! Every second Saturday, meet at the Fisher Museum (324 N. Main St, Petersham) to explore the beauty and wonder of our local landscape. Each event is FREE AND OPEN TO ALL!

See event details for information about weather cancellations. Generally, each event will include a short, level walk. Please wear long pants and closed-toed shoes. RSVP not required. Questions or accessibility considerations? Contact Elodie Eid, Education Assistant.

July 13th: Enchanting World of Moss 
10AM- 12PM 

We will walk in the woods and learn how to identify mosses at the Harvard Forest, and then we will look at some specimens under a microscope!  

  • Includes a short, level walk
  • Rain or shine, canceled in the event of lightning or thunder
Image shows event details described to the right adjacent to a depiction of a moth.

August 10th: Nighttime Moth Party
August 24th Rain Date
7:30PM – 9:30PM

Come join us with special guest Nancy Lowe for a moth cloth party! Learn how you can contribute to citizen science using iNaturalist, and enjoy nighttime creation stories from Keshia De Freece Lawrence, Harvard Forest’s Indigenous Education Specialist. Once the sun sets, we will set up cloths and lights to attract moths and record our observations. Watch and admire in amazement! We will be leaving the moth cloth up all night and folks are welcome to stay as long as they like. The best moths come out later in the night. All ages welcome!

7:30-8: iNaturalist demo in the museum
8-8:30: Creation stories from Keshia in the museum
8:30-9:30: Moth cloth party 

Please come prepared to spend time outdoors at night. There will be bugs so we recommend wearing long pants and shirts. This event will be postponed to 8/24 in the event of rain. 

September 14: All About Oaks
10AM – 12PM

Learn about the diversity, resilience, and abundance of oak trees! Oak trees are a keystone species in our local ecosystem and are a vital ally to humans, insects, and countless other living beings.  Here at the Harvard Forest, we have been making fascinating discoveries on how oaks respond to climate change and more.

  • Includes a short, level walk
  • Rain or shine. Canceled in the event of lightning or thunder.

October 12: Acorn Harvest and Processing
10AM – 12PM

Learn about acorn harvesting and processing, start to finish! Acorns are an important food for Indigenous peoples here and all over the world. Come learn about the process and its history!

  • Includes a short, level walk
  • Rain or shine. Canceled in the event of lightning or thunder.

Inaugural Schoolyard Ecology Data Jam Showcases K-12 Projects

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On Thursday, June 6th, four classes that participate in our Schoolyard Ecology program gathered to share their learning from the year in an interactive and creative way at our first ever “data jam!” Including vibrant displays that showcased their work with long-term data collected by students, fifth graders taught high school participants about the phenology of their trees through games, artwork, and interactive sculpture. High Schoolers taught the 5th graders about their work measuring carbon storage in their forest plots, how they determined the ages of their trees, and the recurrence of beech leaf disease in their field sites. 

A tree crafted out of paper and pipe cleaners next to a handmade book entitled "The Story of Our Tree"

We were wowed by the TREEmendous creativity and data literacy on display. Thank you to the students and teachers from JR Briggs Elementary School in Ashburnham, Quabbin Regional High School in Barre, St Mary’s Parish School in Westfield, and the O’Hara Nature Center in Irvington, NY.

Photos by Ava Rubin, Data Jam participant and high school senior.

**NOTE NEW DATE**: Join us on June 15 for BUG OUT: An Insect Adventure!

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**NOTE: Due to weather, this event has been moved to Saturday, June 15**

SATURDAY, June 15th 6:30-9:30
Meet the Fisher Museum
324 N Main St, Petersham, MA 01366

Come join us at the Harvard Forest for an insect* adventure! This event is FREE and all are welcome. There will be activities for all ages including a bug camouflage challenge, aquatic insect hunt, campfire and smores, followed by a night walk where we’ll discover fireflies and spider eyes! Let’s get buggin’! 

Schedule:

  • 6:30-7:00: Bug camouflage challenge 
  • 7:00-8:00: Aquatic Insect adventure (short, level walk) or food web exploration 
  • 8:00-8:45: campfire and s’mores 
  • 8:45-9:30: fireflies and spider eyes! (Short, level walk)

RSVP not required. For those joining the insect walk, please wear closed-toe shoes and long pants. Questions or accessibility considerations? Contact Elodie Eid, Education Assistant.

* Out of respect to our entomologist (and etymologist) friends, we would like to clarify that here we are using the colloquial term “insects.” We certainly don’t claim that all insects are bugs, and of course, spiders are decidedly not insects. But this would make for a much longer event description, and we wouldn’t want to give away any spoilers.

Summer Research Program in Ecology Welcomes 20 Students in its 31st Year

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Harvard Forest has commenced its 31st annual Summer Research Program in Ecology (SRPE), welcoming 20 students from 13 colleges nationwide. Research inquiries are guided by 25 researchers from institutions such as Harvard Forest, UMass Amherst, and the City University of New York – Hunter.

 Four primary research projects include numerous sub-projects that interns collaboratively advance with mentors. They include:

  • Hemlock, Oak, and the Insects of Doom
    • Forest Composition and Structure
    • Seedling Demography
    • Cascading Impacts of Hemlock Loss
    • Assessment of Wood Quality
  • Impacts of Forest Fragmentation
    • Living on the Edge
    • Thirsty Roots in Wide-Open Spaces
    • Brown Food Web
  • Tracking Carbon from Soils to Sky
    • Methane – Upland and Wetland Soils
    • Methane – Living Trees
    • Long-Term Soil Nutrient and Gas Cycling
    • Hemlock Decline and Plant-Soil Feedbacks
  • Landscape Ecology
    • Analyzing Ground Mounted Solar
    • Modeling Climate Change Impacts

The fully immersive residential program spans 11 weeks, offering interns hands-on research experience and a variety of educational and community-building programs. Harvard Forest’s SRPE is led by Ben Goulet-Scott, Higher Education & Laboratory Coordinator at Harvard Forest, with substantial support from Teressa Alexander, Assistant Coordinator and Resident Advisor. Funding for the program comes from a variety of sources, including significant support from the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

A group of students and their mentors sit on the lawn. A white house is in the background.

Bullard Spotlight: Meghan Blumstein on Forest Genomics and Climate Change

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A Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research for the 2023-2024 academic year, Meghan Blumstein’s interdisciplinary work at Harvard Forest aims to understand how temperate and boreal forests will respond to predicted global changes. During her Fellowship, Blumstein, an Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences and Architecture at the University of Virginia, has been investigating the adaptive capacity of northern red oak, integrating genetic and environmental data into predictive models. Her research scales from molecules to ecosystems, shedding light on the genetics of phenology and its interplay with changing environments.

An aerial view of a white house surrounded by trees with colorful autumn foliage. There are hills and mountains in the distance.
Differing foliage hues of red oak during fall senescence

During her Fellowship, Blumstein’s dedication has led to significant achievements in publication. Two pieces advocate for increased evolutionary research at long-term ecological sites like Harvard Forest. In one of the articles, published in New Phytologist, her contribution to an urban tree ecophysiology network examines how urban forests differ from rural forests such as Harvard Forest in their responses to stress, leveraging comparisons to long-term data collected by Long-Term Ecological Research sites. Notably, her work in the American Journal of Botany, the winner of their synthesis prize, suggests innovative ways to integrate genomics into existing records for profound eco-evolutionary insights.

In parallel with her publications, Blumstein’s Fellowship plans include deepening ties at Harvard Forest and forging new collaborations across Harvard University. Her research seeks to not only advance ecological understanding but also inform conservation strategies and urban planning initiatives worldwide. As she delves into her research on the adaptive capacity of northern red oak, Blumstein’s work holds promise for offering crucial insights into the future of forests under global change.

New Forest and Biodiversity Experiment at Harvard Farm

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Led by Jeannine Cavender-Bares – a new faculty member at the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and incoming director of the Harvard University Herbaria – the new “Forest and Biodiversity at the Harvard Forest” (“FAB”) experiment will examine how forest diversity and introduced pests and pathogens affect forest function.

The research will incorporate phylogenetic diversity, or the evolutionary relationships among biological entities, in this case trees and their associated pathogens. Using fourteen native tree species with varying susceptibility to environmental stressors, Cavender-Bares and her research team will address these questions:

  • How do multiple dimensions of biodiversity in forests, including species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and variation in ecological niches of tree species affect forest function, stability, and resilience?
  • How are interactions among tree species influenced by their ecological and phylogenetic similarities?
  • How do pests and pathogens differ in their impacts on forests depending on forest diversity?
Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Allison Scott, Mariana Susana Hernandez-Leal, Jose Antonio Guzman Quesada, Steven Augustine, and Juan Ramirez-Lerma.

The experiment will occur at Harvard Farm, located roughly ¾ miles southeast of Harvard Forest’s main campus in Petersham. Preparation of the experiment is underway and will include over 200 forest plots varying in species richness, phylogenetic diversity, climatic niche, and successional status, with some plots being monocultures of individual species and others having as many as 12 different species. Plots will include different species mixes from maple, birch, beech, walnut, pine, and magnolia families. The tree species within each family occupy relatively different ecological niches, including those that are early and late successional.

Image shows the Cavender-Bares team installing plots in 2024

Two of the species, Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) and American Beech (Fagus grandifolia), are under significant stress due to the increasing presence of introduced host-specific pathogens in the region. To better understand how the tree communities interact in the absence of these pathogens, each plot will be replicated to include Beech or Hemlock individuals that have been treated to remove pathogens.

Cavender-Bares hopes that the experiment will provide a collaborative platform for research that will lead to a better understanding of how changes in the environment affect forests locally and how to better prepare for climate change. Shown are researchers from the Advancing Spectral Biology in Changing Environments to Understand Diversity (ASCEND) team including Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Allison Scott, Mariana Susana Hernandez-Leal, José Antonio Guzmán Quesada, Steven Augustine, and Juan Ramírez-Lerma, who are planting trees. If you would like to get involved, please contact Cavender-Bares.

Harvard Forest Staff Honored With University Awards

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This spring, three Harvard Forest staff members have been recognized for their outstanding contributions to the Harvard Forest and greater Harvard University community. For their dedication and impactful contributions, Alisha Morin and Katharine Hinkle have been honored as 2024 Harvard Heroes, and for her exceptional leadership, Meg Fuchs has been honored with the 2024 Dean’s Distinction Award. 

Exemplifying the spirits of service and excellence that define the Harvard community, Alisha Morin, Financial Associate, has been a steadfast member of the Harvard Forest community since 2014. With thoughtfulness, flexibility, precision, and an unwavering commitment to community, Alisha consistently facilitates Harvard Forest’s collective success across all departments. 

Katharine Hinkle, Youth Education Manager at Harvard Forest since 2022, has seamlessly taken over leadership of the Schoolyard Ecology program, supporting K12 educators and students in collecting long-term citizen science data on climate change. She has initiated projects to make the program more accessible to urban schools and has launched educational research studies, including one on the impact of the program on middle school students’ science identity conducted in partnership with the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

In addition to celebrating Alisha and Katharine’s achievements, the Harvard Forest community honors the leadership of Meg Fuchs, Director of Administration and Facilities since 2019, on her receipt of the Dean’s Distinction award. Meg’s exceptional citizenship, collaboration, and outstanding contributions to Harvard Forest and the University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences have earned her this distinguished recognition. With good humor, integrity, and steadfast leadership, Meg inspires the Harvard Forest community by demonstrating the highest standards of professionalism, inclusion, collaboration, and equity.

Together, Alisha, Katharine, and Meg represent the Harvard Forest community’s strengths and forward momentum. Their tireless efforts and remarkable achievements enrich the Harvard community and inspire us to continuously create positive change for all.

By Emily Johnson

Causes & Consequences of Tree Mortality from Invasive Insects: Dissertation by Audrey Barker Plotkin

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We know that many tree species in the region are threatened by invasive insects, but why these trees die – and what happens next in the forest – has often remained unclear. Harvard Forest Senior Scientist and Site Manager Audrey Barker Plotkin examined these questions in her doctoral dissertation presentation on April 3 at UMass Amherst’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

Barker Plotkin, who joined the Harvard Forest team as a Research Assistant in 1998, has been studying the effects of invasive insects on trees at Harvard Forest for 20 years. For her dissertation, Causes and Consequences of Tree Mortality from Invasive Insects, Barker Plotkin discussed the effects of spongy moth (Lymantria dispar) and hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) on oaks and hemlocks, key tree species in Northeastern forests.

A group of 9 people holding oak leaves pose in front of a brick building
The 2022 Future of Oak research team included students, collaborators, and many oaks. Photo by Sophie Everbach.

Spongy moth defoliation: How does it affect energy stores and oak mortality?

Barker Plotkin carefully extracted cores from oak trees affected by a recent spongy moth outbreak and measured stored sugars and starches. She found that severely defoliated trees drew down their energy reserves, sometimes to zero, and those that died had extremely low reserves. By limiting the capacity of trees to photosynthesize, spongy moth defoliation led to decreased production of sugar – essentially starving the tree (find out more).

Next, Barker Plotkin put these findings into context by examining 50 years of forest growth and response to two spongy moth outbreaks at the Quabbin Reservoir Watershed Forest, building on her work at the Harvard Forest Lyford Plot. Using permanent plot records of tree growth and mortality, she found that although oaks remain a prominent component of the forest, spongy moth outbreaks are a major cause of oak mortality, especially for smaller trees, which may have lower starch and sugar reserves.

Hemlock woolly adelgid and the reorganization of a foundational habitat

Barker Plotkin also studied the consequences of the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid on Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) forests. These insects feed on the underside of hemlock needles, causing, as Barker Plotkin lovingly described it, “death by millions of tiny vampires.” As many forest managers consider salvage logging, Barker Plotkin sought to understand how the effects of standing dead hemlocks differ from human-mediated logging by synthesizing 15 years of data from the Harvard Forest’s Hemlock Removal Experiment.

Leaving dead trees standing resulted in a larger number of understory plant species and higher aboveground carbon stocks than salvage logging. Thus, while salvage logging may be appropriate to meet certain objectives, managers can support the forest’s capacity to respond to compounding disturbances in a changing world by allowing nature to run its course.

Audrey Barker Plotkin discusses oak research in 2015. Photo by Jenny Hobson.

An inspiration to the Harvard Forest community

Barker Plotkin juggled her roles as a Co-PI of the Harvard Forest LTER program, Site Manager/Forester, and Director of the Harvard Forest Summer Research Program in Ecology while leveraging her Harvard Forest-based research into her doctoral dissertation. Along the way, she mentored and inspired many undergraduate interns in their study of the “insects of doom.” Leading with contagious good humor, collaboration, an open mind, and determination, Audrey continues to be an inspiration to the Harvard Forest community.

Betsy Colburn, Harvard Forest Associate, Receives Career Award for Distinguished Service

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The Society for Freshwater Science (SFS) has presented Harvard Forest Associate Dr. Betsy Colburn with their 2024 Career Award for Distinguished Service.

As an aquatic ecologist with a holistic lens, Betsy has provided pivotal insight into the hydrological aspects of research conducted at Harvard Forest, whose experts often focus more on terrestrial and organismic research questions. Betsy also “wrote the book” (truly!) on vernal pools in 2004. The Harvard Forest community is thrilled to see Betsy’s contributions being honored by SFS. 

A researcher and educator in the Harvard Forest community since 2001, and a 2014-2015 Bullard Fellow, Betsy has also made significant contributions to the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program. She founded and led the Water in the Landscape: Vernal Pools study protocol, and has also led data analysis workshops for teachers for over a decade.

Learn more by reading the Society for Freshwater Science’s announcement.

Research Spotlight: Hurricanes Threaten Estimates of Forest Carbon Storage Capacity

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As policymakers throughout New England consider strategies to mitigate carbon emissions, carbon offset programs have become increasingly prevalent. A nature-based solution that allows participants to pay for the continued storage and sequestration of carbon through the preservation of trees, carbon offset programs are subject to agreements that ensure enrolled land will remain forested. Within this relatively new market, however, the risks to protected forest carbon are severely underestimated, for example in California carbon market, the largest regulatory market in the US, only 3% of a carbon offset project is set aside to insure for catastrophic events. Given the projections of increased hurricanes due to climate change, former Harvard Forest postdoc and current Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College Shersingh Joseph Tumber-Dávila sought to better understand the adequacy of accounting for risk using this model nationally.

A black and white image of broken and fallen trees
A huge volume of downed white pine at Harvard Forest’s Pisgah tract felled by the 1938 Hurricane. Photographer unknown.

Recently published in Global Change Biology, Tumber-Dávila’s research found that hurricanes pose a substantial and typically underestimated risk to New England’s forest carbon stocks. Specifically, the study found that tree damage caused by a single hurricane could wipe out up to 10% of total aboveground forest carbon. “As the climate warms and sea surface temperatures continue to rise, hurricanes could get stronger and will have the capacity to stay on land longer, with the potential to move inland and northward into the heavily forested regions of the Northeast,” says Tumber-Dávila.

A dirt road leading to a pond that has rows of logs floating on it
A site for storage and receiving salvage logs in Petersham after the 1938 hurricane. Photo by R. J. Lutz.

Learn more via Dartmouth College’s press release or read the full article here. 

Bullard Spotlight: Nipmuc Rematriation with Sonksq Cheryll Toney Holley

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With a 4,000-acre campus located on ancestral Nipmuc land1, Harvard Forest was humbled to receive a Bullard Fellowship application from Cheryll Toney Holley, the sonksq (female leader) of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band2. A respected historian, genealogist, and author, Toney Holley co-founded the Nipmuc Indian Development Corporation to assist in the revitalization of the Nipmuc community.

A plaque from the Smithsonian Museum that reads: Once upon a time Indians were the Americans. Soon after Europeans arrived, they called the New World America. And they called the original inhabitants Americans. Not American Indians. Not Native Americans. Just Americans. This exhibition is titled Americans because the very name first meant the people who originally lived here.

Central to the wellness of the Nipmuc community – including the land – are kinship-based relationships that strengthen connections with ancestral lands and allow the restoration of sacred traditions. Through this process of rematriation, the Nipmuc community is actively reclaiming traditions and values, including food sovereignty, ceremony practice, and land stewardship. The return of land to the Nipmuc, or landback, has begun occurring and allows the rematriation of cultural practices that are integral to healing.

Beginning with the Farm School returning 188 acres of farmland to the Hassanamisco in 2023, several other entities are in discussion with the Nipmuc community about potential landback projects. Inquiries to support rematriation have recently increased, which has led Cheryll Toney Holley to focus on aligning the community’s values and traditions to create a tribally centered approach to stewarding the land.

During her 2023-2024 Bullard Fellowship, Toney Holley has been working from an all-of-community model (typically used for language reclamation) to concentrate on identifying two aspects of community growth each season. In poponae, winter, the group focused on art & economic development; in sequan, spring, the group is focusing on agriculture & job training; in neppinae, or summer, the group will focus on conservation & public safetly; and in ninauwaet, or fall, the group will focus on education and health.

A patch of green grass grows up through fallen oak leaves

With inspiration from Eve Tuck’s Rematriating Curriculum Studies, Toney Holley’s work incorporates community surveys, focus groups, visits to the land, storytelling, and newsletters. Recruiting community members from all generations, the project fosters collaboration between family members & elders, cultural leaders, language instructors, public relations leaders, and food sovereignty and health service workers.

“Our intention is to create a plan that is influenced by our traditions, sovereignty, language, community, environment, knowledge, and the land itself,” shares Toney Holley, “We believe that recognizing and building on the connections between the people, land, water, and our more-than-human kin requires intergenerational support and involvement at every level.”

A fish in a blue bucket

Above images courtesy of Cheryll Toney Holley

1. Thumbnail image shows bloodroot in bloom.

2. Photo shows a plaque from the Americans Exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

3. Photo shows sweetgrass in bloom.

4. Photo shows herring, a culturally significant species, in a bucket.

——————————

1The homelands of the Nipmuc, meaning “freshwater people,” extend throughout central/western Massachusetts and include portions of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Following the tragic genocide and forced removal/assimilation of Indigenous people in the region, Nichewaug was colonized by European settlers and incorporated as the town of Petersham in the 18th century. The original 2,000 acres that make up the Harvard Forest were donated to Harvard University by James Brooks.

2The Hassanamisco are one of several Nipmuc bands. Despite colonial coercion, brutality, and centuries of systemic settler-colonial policies aimed at reducing Indigenous sovereignty, the Hassanamisco Nipmuc band has retained stewardship of their 3.5-acre Hassanamesit reservation in Grafton.

By Emily E. Johnson

Harvard Forest Fellow Ahmed Siddig Selected to Serve on IPBES Task Force

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This winter, Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow Ahmed Siddig has been chosen as an Expert to serve on the prestigious Multidisciplinary Expert Panel of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Ahmed will serve on the task force on capacity-building, providing advice to the IPBES Plenary on strengthening the science-policy interface for biodiversity, ecosystem services, sustainable development, and long-term human wellbeing. He will also strengthen capacities of national governments and regional organizations towards effective implementation of the 2024-2027 IPBES work plan.

Ahmed Siddig standing in front of a photographic mural of a river

An applied ecologist and associate professor at the University of Khartoum, Sudan, Ahmed brings his unmatched interdisciplinary perspective to his role at IPBES, including participation in facilitating workshops in the IPBES fellowship programme; training and familiarization programme; youth workshops; dialogues with governments and stakeholders; support for uptake of IPBES assessments; communities of practice; IPBES capacity-building forum; and encouragement of national science-policy platforms/networks and assessments.

Being a member of such a group of highly selected and world-class scientists and practitioners is not an easy job and indeed requires a multitude of characteristics, all of which Ahmed has. His expertise in areas of ecological monitoring and global change ecology made him a perfect fit for this task force, in addition to his active initiatives on science diplomacy, young scientist mentoring and empowerment, and service as capacity-building advisor/consultant to many developmental organizations in Africa.

Overall, Ahmed is hoping that his work in the next three years with his colleagues and stakeholders at IPBES will not only enhance personal and institutional capacities worldwide – especially in developing countries – but also spread knowledge about environmental stewardship to ultimately contribute to biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing in a sustainable manner.