Author: harvardforest

October 19+20: Chris Field to Present Bullard Lectures

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The Harvard Forest and the Harvard University Center for the Environment were delighted to co-present the second Charles Bullard Lectures featuring Dr. Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University.

Learn about Chris Fields’ talk at Harvard Forest in the Harvard Crimson. 

The annual Charles Bullard Lectures were established by the Harvard Forest in 2022 to honor and learn from renowned scholars of forest ecology and conservation. The Lectures are supported by the Charles Bullard endowment and are closely associated with Harvard’s long-running Bullard Fellowship, a distinguished scholar-in-residence program for forest research.

Managing the Risk of Climate Overshoot  |  Watch recorded lecture

Thursday October 19; 5:00pm | Harvard University Science Center – Hall A, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

By some measures, progress on tackling climate change is breathtaking.  Deployment of renewable energy is surging, and prices are falling across a wide range of technologies.  On the other hand, global scale emissions of greenhouse gases are not decreasing, and the prospects for meeting the goal of the Paris Agreement are dimming rapidly.  Approaches for managing the risk of missing the goal of the Paris Agreement, or Climate Overshoot, should be core elements of future climate action.  These fall into an action agenda with four components – cutting emissions, adapting, removing greenhouse gases, and exploring sunlight reflection.  These four approaches, which can be summarized with the acronym CARE, all require increased financial and policy support, as well as a framing consistent with the emergence of a broad, durable political and social coalition.

The Changing Landscape of Western Wildfire Risk  |  Watch recorded lecture

Friday, October 20; 11:00am | Zoom and Harvard Forest Fisher Museum, 324 N. Main Street, Petersham

Registration not required for in-person event

Wildfires in the West have exploded in recent years, leading to hundreds of lost lives, billions of dollars in property losses, and, for many people, a fundamental rethinking about the prospects for the region.  Climate change, fuels management, and the number of people in fire-prone regions are interacting to increase risk.  Some of the options for risk reduction are reasonably well understood and ready to deploy.  Others require not only more research but also deep conversations about the kinds of human/environment interfaces we want.  Questions about strategic relocation, redesigning the urban-wildland interface, and changing the fundamental character of ecosystems all need to be addressed. 

A flyer for the Bullard Lecture by Chris Field

Research in Action: Thompson Lab & Massachusetts' Carbon Accounting

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The Thompson Lab at Harvard Forest is working with the state to implement their new Forest as Climate Solutions initiative. As part of this work, Harvard Forest’s Director of Research Jonathan Thompson serves on a committee with the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) to shape the development of new forest management practices that will maximize carbon storage and climate resiliency. Importantly, the committee’s results will lead to more informed management guidance for state lands that have been under a timber harvesting moratorium.

Relatedly, Thompson’s Lab is leading a major study of the state’s forest carbon resources that follows up on their efforts developing the state’s Land Sector Report, a technical report of the Massachusetts 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap Study. With a release anticipated in December 2023, the present study will outline alternative scenarios of climate change, land use, and alternative energy development. Providing pathways to achieving aggressive emissions reductions, this research has already been used to support the state’s Clean Energy and Climate Plans for 2025 and 2030.

The image below shows a diagram of post-harvest carbon allocation and can be found in the Land Sector Report.

Matthes Lab Awarded $1M to Study Methane Dynamics

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Harvard Forest senior scientist Dr. Jackie Matthes was recently awarded a $1 million grant from the US Department of Energy’s Environmental System Science Program entitled “Cross-Scale Methane Dynamics at Terrestrial-Aquatic Interfaces in Temperate Forests.” In this project, the Matthes Lab at Harvard Forest will work with Dr. Missy Holbrook and Dr. Charles Harvey from MIT to measure methane dynamics at the Harvard Forest over three years.

Methane is the second most powerful greenhouse gas causing climate change and is the target for urgent global anthropogenic emissions reductions from fossil fuel leakage and agricultural production. Methane is also produced and consumed by natural ecosystems, and understanding the methane dynamics of natural ecosystems and how they are changing with climate change is essential to assessing the efficacy of methane emissions reductions.

A researcher writing on a clipboard crouches next to a tree that has scientific monitoring equipment mounted on it

Measuring the methane cycle in temperate forests is particularly complex since microbes living in well-drained soils with high oxygen content consume methane, whereas microbes in flooded soils with low oxygen content produce methane. Total rainfall – particularly the amount of rainfall in extreme events – has increased due to climate change in the northeastern U.S. Consequently, this might shift the location, timing, and/or magnitude of the amount of methane consumption and production in the Forest. Additionally, it’s likely that methane produced in soils might be transported with water into roots, through trees, and ultimately into the atmosphere, but controls on this process are not well understood.

A researcher wearing a helmet and safety harness hold a piece of scientific equipment while on a canopy lift elevated into the tree canopy

The Matthes Lab will collect new field measurements in uplands, ephemeral wetlands, and two small perennial wetlands: a ~14,000-year-old forested peatland (the Black Gum Swamp) and a ~25 year old beaver-constructed wetland. This research will also leverage long-term data collection from the NSF LTER program and DOE AmeriFlux program to add new measurements of total methane and carbon dioxide exchange between the ecosystem and atmosphere. By measuring methane consumption, production, and net emissions across the landscape and throughout all seasons, this field research will be used to develop more accurate models for predicting the natural methane cycle in these complex landscapes during shifting precipitation conditions.

30th Annual Symposium Highlights Student Research Accomplishments

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Marking the culmination of nearly three months with Harvard Forest’s Summer Research Program in Ecology, 21 undergraduate students recently presented on their research at Harvard Forest’s 30th Annual Student Symposium. Student researchers presented on topics such as carbon storage and modeling, the impacts of introduced species on culturally important plants, soil warming and its effects on belowground carbon, and methane emissions of different tree species at Harvard Forest.

This year’s diverse cohort of participants came from 17 undergraduate institutions to participate in an immersive research experience with research mentors from throughout Harvard University (Harvard Forest, Arnold Arboretum, OEB), UMass Amherst, Yale School for the Environment, the University of British Columbia, the University of New Hampshire, Boston University, the University of Maine, the University of Florida, and the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. Many thanks to this year’s Assistant Program Coordinator, Abigayl Novak, for coordinating weekly seminars, workshops, field excursions, and a career panel. 

Explore the 2023 symposium program here. 

Applications now open: Bullard Fellowships in Forest Research

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Harvard Forest is now accepting applications to its Charles Bullard Fellowship in Forest Research program for 2024-2025. Awarded to a limited number of individuals representing a variety of disciplines and approaches to the study of forested ecosystems, these full-time residential fellowships allow individuals to foster their scientific and professional growth and to contribute to research on forests at Harvard. A major goal of the Bullard Fellowship program is to enhance research activities at Harvard Forest and build long-term collaborations that connect Harvard Forest with other parts of the University.

Learn more about how to apply here. 

View the listing of past fellowship recipients or learn more about this year’s Bullard Fellows.

The deadline for applications is October 1, 2023. 

Bullard Spotlight: Forest Fires in the Eastern U.S. with Mike Stambaugh

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This summer, heavy smoke from forest fires in Canada has reminded many of us of the potential for fires, the history of fire management, and importance of fires to ecosystems processes– even in the eastern part of the country. For Michael Stambaugh, the narrative of changing fire regimes has been of interest for decades, where his research and documentation of fire history improves our understanding of human-fire associations, ecosystem processes, and future land management, including controlled burning.

Finishing up six months as a Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at Harvard Forest, Stambaugh directs the Center for Tree-Ring Science and is an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of Missouri’s School of Natural Resources. By examining fire injuries demarked in the rings of old remnant dead and living trees, Stambaugh describes changes in fire across the eastern United States from about year 1500 to the present. This narrative is supplemented with an understanding of human history, past climate conditions, changing vegetation patterns, regular participation in controlled burns, and knowledge of fire behavior, effects, and use.

“The historical importance of fire in some eastern U.S. ecosystems is intensely debated and often dismissed due to the lack of fire activity during the last century or more,” notes Stambaugh, who has been involved in the collection and analysis of over 100 fire history records across the Great Plains and eastern United States. While fires in the east are often less severe than the western part of the country, most ecosystems in the eastern United States are indeed flammable and susceptible to the whims of climate change.

Stambaugh was drawn to Harvard Forest because of our researchers’ wide breadth of experience and knowledge of northeastern U.S. ecosystems. The unique nature of the New England region was also of interest: historical fire ecology is relatively understudied compared the rest of the country, and the early socio-ecological upheavals of European colonization and Tribal decimation still leave us with significant opportunity for learning.

For more information on the ecology of fire in eastern U.S. oak forests, Stambaugh recommends Fire in Eastern Oak Forests: A Primer

A man wearing a helmet holds a chainsaw to a tree stump as a group of people watch

Photo: Stambaugh working with a group of fire managers and scientists from throughout the northeastern U.S. on the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont (June, 2023). Here, samples are being cut from a dead red pine tree with multiple fire scars from the last 200-300 years to determine the exact years and seasons of historical fires.

Diversifying Partnerships in the Face of Forest Threats: New Research on EAB Management

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By Emily Johnson

As climate change challenges the resilience of our forests, the presence of nonindigenous insects and pathogens will continue to threaten the existence of certain trees and the lifeways they support. Thanks in part to a USDA NIFA Critical Research and Extension Program grant, Harvard Forest researcher Dave Orwig partnered with experts throughout the northeast, including Harvard Forest Research Affiliate Tony D’Amato (University of Vermont) to research considerations of species preservation, with a particular focus on response to the emerald ash borer (EAB).

Published in the Journal of Forestry, three new papers describe a novel framework for nonindigenous insects and pathogens (NIIP) adaptation, including unique case studies with broadened preservation values relative to EAB and new insight into how foresters and loggers approach decision-making on stands threatened by this invasive pest.

An expanded approach to defining preservation values

The first of these research articles1 introduces a broadened concept of “preservation values” that encompasses ethical responsibility, cultural integrity, genetic conservation, and ecological function. “The more preservation values a strategy seeks to protect, the more likely it is to attract diverse partners interested in collaborating, which can increase support, resources, and opportunities,” write the authors1.

Values guiding species preservation are introduced in the first paper, with specific values guiding preservation efforts related to ash species considered in the second paper, as shown in the image above.2

Building relationships is integral to this approach, as explained in the second paper2. Two case studies build from coauthor experiences to examine similarities and differences between preservation values and approaches for ash with the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment (a group working for the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe), the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance & Brown Ash Task Force (groups comprised and led by Tribal basketmakers, ash harvesters, and natural resource staff from the Wabanaki confederacy), and partnerships across state/federal agencies in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Decades before the emerald ash borer threatened the existence of ash, Tribal alliances in the Dawnland, or present-day Maine, have fostered the preservation of these trees, which are closely linked to cultural practices and lifeways, particularly in relation with brown ash. For decades, the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment (ATFE) has led brown ash restoration efforts, documented propagation procedures, and, more recently, developed a comprehensive preparedness and response plan to EAB.

Artisanal ash harvesters visit with private landowners to share site conditions contributing to quality basket grade ash as well as access to sustaining cultural lifeways. Photo by Tyler Everett.

Similarly, the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance & Brown Ash Task Force (BATF) has expanded upon decades of brown ash preservation efforts to include federal subject matter experts and ensure Tribal perspectives are incorporated into Maine’s state response. Importantly, newly developed ash inventory protocols based on ATFE and BATF preservation values have led to trainings that are offered to Tribal and non-Tribal foresters alike. Foresters are uniquely poised to incorporate this new information about preservation values into management.

The role of foresters and loggers

In a concurrent study3, researchers at UMass Amherst (Marla Markowski-Lindsay and Paul Catanzaro) partnered with Harvard Forest researchers Dave Orwig, Jonathan Thompson, and Danelle LaFlower to better understand the role of foresters and loggers in response to EAB in Massachusetts and Vermont, with particular attention paid to the “secondary disturbance” caused by preemptive harvesting.

As the research team describes it, “Combined, the decisions foresters and loggers make about forest management influence thousands of acres a year in regions such as New England in the United States. To understand the total impact of EAB on forested landscapes, we must not only understand the primary ecological disturbance of EAB but also the secondary human disturbance resulting from the harvesting decisions of foresters and loggers to this invasive insect.3”

Results from this study found that one-third of respondents – which include both foresters and loggers – increased timber sales on ash properties due to the potential for future ecological impacts from EAB. Nearly 60% said that EAB changed their management activity on stands with ash. “It’s a lot of preemptive harvesting,” states Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist and co-author Dave Orwig, “but it’s not to the broad extent that we expected, because harvests were focused on maintaining future options.”

Throughout the country, landowners, conservation organizations, and agencies rely on these key decision-makers when planning in the face of novel forest threats. The research team found that both loggers and foresters expressed interest in new recommendations of silvicultural approaches that ensure the forest’s ecological well-being, particularly as they relate to future harvests.

As our conservation and research worlds grapple with a long history of excluding Tribal partners from decision-making, foresters are uniquely poised to bridge this gap, as the case studies above illustrate. “The complementary nature of recognizing both the traditional ecological knowledge and the Western science-based knowledge associated with these tree species and EAB as counterparts that are equal in value will be essential in fully understanding and developing solutions.2”

_________________________

1 Anthony W D’Amato, David A Orwig, and others, Species Preservation in the Face of Novel Threats: Cultural, Ecological, and Operational Considerations for Preserving Tree Species in the Context of Non-Indigenous Insects and Pathogens, Journal of Forestry, 2023;, fvad024, https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvad024

2 Anthony W D’Amato, David A Orwig, and others, Towards Tree Species Preservation: Protecting Ash Amidst the Emerald Ash Borer Invasion in the Northeast, Journal of Forestry, 2023;, fvad025, https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvad025

3 Marla Markowski-Lindsay and others, Forester and Logger Response to Emerald Ash Borer in Massachusetts and Vermont: a Secondary Disturbance, Journal of Forestry, 2023;, fvad019, https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvad019

Schoolyard Ecology Summer Institute for Educators: August 22-23

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Come join us this summer to train on a Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology project or dive deep into utilizing our Witness Tree project to enhance climate learning in your classroom!

Register here!


Day 1 – Tuesday, August 22nd: Project Training deep dives (Choose 1)

  • Hemlock Wooley Adelgid Invasive Species Monitoring Study
  • Our Changing Forests Study
  • Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming Phenology Study 

Day 2 – Wednesday, August 23rd: The Witness Tree Project

  • Come learn how to incorporate data from the Harvard Forest Witness Tree into your classroom with a suite of lessons written by Dr. Elisa Margarita, Math for America Master Teacher and a new classroom tool build by Harvard graduate students.

Cost:

  • Day 1: $50 (includes supplies, year round coaching and support, set up assistance, and additional trainings and workshops in future years)–payment by PO, check, or credit card by phone
  • Day 2: Free

Details:

  • 9 am-3:30 pm each day
  • All workshops at the Fisher Museum, 324 N. Main Street, Petersham, MA
  • Bring your own bagged lunch
  • Optional additional trail walks each day
  • Dress for spending time outside
  • Overnight accommodations available for folks traveling long distances

Reach out with questions to Katharine Hinkle (katharinehinkle@fas.harvard.edu)

Aerial exploration: Research on the management of Maine's north woods

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By Lynda Mapes, Harvard Forest Charles Bullard Fellow

The northern forest of Maine is unique – some ten million acres of forestland that is mostly privately owned, and never converted to agriculture or development other than for forestry. This is a young forest. Outside of parks, nearly all the old growth of this forest was cut long ago and the rest has been repeatedly logged – some of it as much as six times. Long gone is the hand logging and river drives that most people associate with the lore of the north Maine woods. Today, logging is done by massive equipment operated by a single person, and the biggest log taken in a day might be 11 inches in diameter. Most will be far smaller, and chipped for pulp. If you want to know where America gets its toilet paper and paper towels and 2 x 4s, this is your answer.

What is the future of this forest? And what does it look and feel like?

To find out, Bullard Fellow Lynda Mapes and Harvard Forest Research Director and Senior Ecologist Jonathan Thompson chartered a seaplane to go see it for themselves, both from the air and on the ground. They had overlapping missions. Lynda, to get a sense of this place and its people for the book she is writing as her Bullard project, and Jonathan, as a start on his collaboration funded by the National Science Foundation that will bring together a range of voices to vision the future of this forest. With co-principal investigator John Daigle, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation and professor of forest recreation management at the University of Maine, Thompson will be working to bring not only science but community voices to this research.

But job one was to see this forest. The pilot was Thomas Coleman, a lifelong Mainer who works for LandVest, a forestry company. His four seater with floats was just the thing to pop up into the air from his base at Jackman, Maine, but also put down to explore the landscape. And for two days, explore they did.

Two men wearing aviation headsets seated inside a small airplane

Lucky with perfect weather, Coleman on the first day toured Thompson, Mapes and former Bullard Fellow Bob Saul over a range of ownerships and cuts to get a feel for how the forest looks. There were ragged clear cuts, herringbone-patterned partial harvests, and importantly, the grand expanse of The Nature Conservancy’s uncut old growth forest, the Big Reed Forest Preserve, to provide a sense of contrast. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the diversity of tree species, the sheer size of the forest, stretching to the horizon, and how good so much of it, for all its hard use, still looks.

Two people wearing aviation headsets seated inside a small airplane

Obvious right away was the continental, even global importance of so large an expense of forestland, still mostly devoid of towns, houses, or even paved roads. In a planet facing a biodiversity and climate crisis, what is the highest and best use of this place, that also provides fiber and rural jobs in a world that needs both?

On the second day of the flights, Lynda went up with Chuck Loring, a Penobscot tribal member and Natural Resources Director for the Penobscot Nation, and Ben Stevens, a Passamaquoddy tribal member, and the Penobscot tribe’s Forestry Director, to hear and see the tribe’s approach to forest management. This was to complement ground tours Lynda had already made of the tribe’s forestlands with Stevens and Loring a few weeks earlier. Loring and Stevens represent a new generation of young tribal land managers, professionally trained in forestry but also bringing the cultural perspective and management direction of the tribal council they work for to bear in decision making on harvests. Timber revenue is important to the tribal budget – but so is the long term stewardship of these lands.

Perhaps that was the biggest takeaway of two days of touring – that the fate of this forest is directly tied to the values of the landowners who manage it.

Aerial view of a forest with cut areas clearly visible in a herringbone pattern

An industry cut leaves a herringbone pattern on privately-owned timber lands (above), whereas Penobscot tribal trust land shows evidence of a lighter harvesting approach (below). Photos by Lynda Mapes.

Aerial view of a forest with areas that show light harvesting of trees

Bullard Spotlight: Michael Dietze on Harvard Forest's Carbon Cycle Forecasting

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Driven by a variety of factors across space, time, and processes, the predictability of the carbon cycle helps decision-makers improve forest monitoring and better understand changes in ecosystem services. During his Bullard Fellowship, Michael Dietze – who runs the Ecological Forecasting Lab at Boston University – is laying the foundation for future research that improves carbon forecasting at a regional scale, integrates additional data constraints into forecasting systems, and drives adaptive approaches to data monitoring & collection.

During his Fellowship, Michael plans to use Harvard Forest as a testbed and anchor site for near-term iterative ecological forecasts of the terrestrial carbon cycle. As part of his lab’s prior research, his team has stood up a carbon cycle forecast for Harvard Forest that runs daily to predict carbon and water pools and fluxes out 35 days at an hourly timestep. He’s currently extending the tower-scale forecast to run across a grid at a landscape scale. “I’m focusing on the 5x5km NEON airborne observatory platform footprint, and producing a 30×30 meter resolution set of predictions for all pools and fluxes over time. I’ve got this to run for a period of time in the past and am in the process of getting it set up to run every day with the data assimilation,” he explains. This sort of spatial forecast has a lot of potential value to land managers and landscape-scale carbon accreditation projects.

This summer, Michael joins other Harvard Forest mentors to work with Summer Research Program in Ecology interns to explore the idea of adaptive moniroing. Two students are using forecasts dynamically to make decisions about what variables to measure and where. Specifically, these students will be monitoring tree growth and soil respiration across different plots in Harvard Forest, and then using those measurements to validate the forecasts in real time.

For example, depending on the weather forecast for different temperatures and precipitation (e.g. cool and wet vs. hot and dry) his team might decide between measuring soil respiration at upland sites instead of in the woody wetlands because the forecast might be more uncertain for those locations. Most conventional monitoring protocols follow a static design (fixed plots, fixed remeasurement frequency); by being adaptive, his team will explore the potential to (1) gain more information for the same effort (e.g. pick up interesting events) or (2) gather the same information with less effort (e.g. avoid collecting data under well-researched conditions and instead prioritize those that are novel or more uncertain).

Michael was drawn to Harvard Forest because, as he states, “on a global scale, Harvard Forest is a hotbed for carbon cycle science, with a wide range of long-term monitoring efforts at the intersection of all the major research networks (NEON, LTER, Ameriflux, Phenocam, ForestGEO, etc.). If someone has figured out a way to measure something about the terrestrial carbon cycle, they’ve probably tried it here. As such, it is the ideal testbed for scaling out our carbon cycle synthesis and forecasting work.”

Old-Growth Forests: Elders Under Threat

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By Emily Johnson

For over a century, Harvard Forest researchers have been studying old-growth forests to better understand our past and prepare for our future. And for millennia, the People of the Dawnland – where the sun first touches the North American continent – have been in relation with these respected elders in ways far beyond measure. In more ways than we can imagine, our old-growth forests are in peril, and Harvard Forest researchers are concerned.

Walking throughout old-growth forests of the eastern seaboard, Harvard Forest researchers Dave Orwig, Neil Pederson, and Laura Smith have been following in the footsteps of Native Americans to uncover rich stories about forest change. Lynda Mapes, a Charles Bullard Research Fellow at Harvard Forest, has paid poetic homage to this research in a recent Atmos article: “What We Lose When We Lose Old-growth Forests.”

A researcher in the forest holding a tree core

Last summer, Lynda joined the research team as they extracted tree cores, or tiny cross sections of annual growth rings. “With each turn of the borer, Smith, a research assistant at the Harvard Forest, quested through the tree’s present to its deep-time past. Finally at the tree’s heart, she paused and gently slid the tray out of the borer. Cradled in it was the core: a slender, biscuit-colored wand of time and a panoramic window into the past. I leaned in close and saw the core was still moist with life,” Mapes writes. “Smith paused and held the core in her palms, respecting the moment this tree’s story was first revealed.”

Back at the Tree Ring Lab, the research team uses a microscope to measure years of growth across groves of trees. “Year by year, every tree writes its autobiography, and the elders in any grove record wisdom earned over many centuries. How they got along and managed with their neighbors, the changes in their community, the days of harmony, strife, and struggle, and seasons of feast and famine.”

But with the introduction of nonnative insects, seasons of famine have taken a different form. Dave Orwig, Senior Ecologist and co-lead researcher on the project, recently wrote about his experience in the Boston Globe: “Over and over, we saw landscapes ravaged by insects and disease. Upon visiting more than 20 locations across four Eastern states, it became apparent that these forests were being irrevocably altered in a very short period of time. Most forests we studied had lost at least one dominant tree species,” Orwig writes.

And while our forests have generally remained resilient to introduced pests and disease for centuries, “now more than 450 exotic pests and diseases are present in our forests because of burgeoning global trade,” says Orwig. Nonnative organisms affecting our forests often arrive by hitching a ride in cargo containers within wood packing materials or within the soil and branches of potted plants.

Nonnative pests and pathogens threaten countless elements of our natural landscape, including carbon storage. In a 2018 paper, Orwig and a team of researchers found that the largest 1% of trees accounted for roughly 50% of the aboveground biomass. “That points to just how important big, old trees are as carbon sinks blunting climate change,” writes Mapes.

A man wearing a blaze orange vest leans on a large tree

Other forest pests – such as the emerald ash borer – threaten traditional lifeways of tribes in the region. “For the Wabanaki, the loss of the ash tree is a deep blow to their culture,” explains Mapes, who discussed the issue with Passamaquoddy basket maker Gabriel Frey, “The tree is uniquely suited to their basket making because of where and how it grows and how it can be worked. The Wabanaki call brown ash the basket tree. It also is at the heart of their creation story.”

With the future of our old forests uncertain, being considerate of our decisions can have a profound effect. “Put out the welcome mat for native pollinators, birds, and other wildlife that are drawn to native plants and sourced from local nurseries. Save a tree. Buy local goods that didn’t have to cross multiple oceans to arrive, possibly carrying stowaway pests,” advises Orwig.

Reflecting on the future, Mapes refers to Frey’s perspective on the past. “The wisdom of his elders has always called for taking only what was needed, expressing gratitude to the tree, and preserving ash for the next generation so there would always be enough to carry on their culture.”

Emily Johnson is Harvard Forest’s Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator. Photos by Lynda Mapes.

New Report Offers First Ever Accounting of Forever-Wild Land

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While 81% of the land in New England is forested, only 3.3% of that land has been legally protected as forever-wild: land that can never be developed or logged and thus holds an unmatched capacity to store carbon, protect biodiversity, and sustain the lives of plants, animals, and humans.

A new report co-authored by scientists at Harvard Forest, Highstead Foundation, and Northeast Wilderness Trust, in collaboration with over one hundred conservation organizations and municipal, state, and federal agencies, answers 3 key questions:

  • Where are Wildlands located in New England?
  • What are the characteristics of these Wildlands?
  • What is their current protection status?

Several Harvard Forest researchers were core to the report’s analysis: Emily Johnson, Brian Hall, David Foster, Jonathan Thompson, and David Orwig.

Augmenting the report is a new, interactive web-map documenting the location, size, and ownership of wildlands in New England – a valuable tool for conservation professionals and the most detailed accounting of wildlands anywhere in the U.S.

The report’s recommendations outline state-by-state goals for wildlands in New England, calling for a large increase in the amount of land protected in wildlands status, as a core part of a regional mosaic of managed woodlands, farms, wetlands, and equitably supported human communities.

Importantly, the recommendations touch on nuances that for the past several years have been the subject of deep engagement by Harvard Forest researchers, particularly in relation to local Indigenous communities. Harvard Forest leaders and students are working year-round with tribal partners, state agencies, and land trusts to reimagine and re-shape the policies and procedures for land conservation in New England in ways that prioritize Indigenous community self-determination, sovereignty, and access. 

(Photo by John Burk)