Author: harvardforest

Harvard Community Bus Trips to the Forest

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**Note: Registration for academic-year 2023-2024 community bus trips is now closed. Looking for info on 2024-2025 trips? Find it here!**

Harvard students, faculty, fellows, and staff may sign up for one of several free monthly bus trips to visit Harvard Forest, located 70 miles west of Harvard Square.

Trips will be geared towards undergraduate and graduate students; faculty, fellows, and staff are also welcome to sign up. There is no cost.

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

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

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

Registration is first-come, first-served, except that new visitors will be prioritized over return visitors. Trips fill quickly, and we will keep a wait-list.

Fill out a brief survey to request registration for your preferred date:

Shortly after you fill out the form, we will send an email to confirm your registration status. In severely inclement weather, the trip will be canceled, and we will notify you ASAP.

Funding for this program – which provided monthly trips in 2022-2023 – is provided by the Harvard FAS Community Renewal Fund.

The Harvard Forest welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. Learn more about accessibility at the Forest here. If you require visitor accommodations or assistance with trail accessibility, please contact hfvisit@fas.harvard.edu or 978-724-3302, preferably at least two weeks before your visit.

Please note that we recognize the inequity of offering these trips mostly on Saturdays, which excludes some community members. In future years we will seek to work with our transportation vendor to offer Sundays, as well. If you have other suggestions about how we can make these trips more equitable, please let us know at hfOutreach@fas.harvard.edu.

We look forward to seeing you at the Forest!

NYC Teacher Leader Brings Climate Lessons to Harvard

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On August 15, Dr. Elisa Margarita, veteran high school science teacher from Brooklyn Technical High School and long-time teacher-leader in the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology Program, co-presented an interactive workshop at the Arnold Arboretum with Harvard Forest scientists and educators.

About 20 teacher participants, all from the Boston Public School district, spent several hours learning about the Witness Tree science and social media project and its role in the classroom, and trying out a series of lesson plans created by Dr. Margarita and her students in summer 2022. The lessons are now freely available for use, and employ data from sensors on both rural and urban trees to highlight real-world climate issues such as urban heat island effect, photosynthesis and carbon storage, and symbiotic relationships between species.

29th Annual Symposium Highlights Summer Research Accomplishments

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Marking the culmination of nearly three months with Harvard Forest’s Summer Research Program in Ecology, 20 undergraduate students recently presented on projects related to climate change, environmental justice, data provenance, and forest regeneration. Participants came from 17 undergraduate institutions to participate in an immersive experience that bought together students, researchers, and mentors in pursuit of scientific inquiry across a variety of environmental disciplines. 

Explore the 2022 symposium program here.

Summer Institute for Teachers Offers Hands-On Training in Ecology

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The Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology program is hosting its 18th annual Summer Institute for teachers of grades 4-12 on Wednesday, August 17th. Educators will spend the day working side by side with ecologists and mentor teachers to learn one of three different field studies related to core Harvard Forest research: Our Changing Forests (forest carbon and land-use dynamics), Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming (seasonal change in trees), and Woolly Bully (invasive species).

Existing Schoolyard Ecology teachers are also welcome to sign up for a new protocol or for a refresher workshop.

All registrations are due August 11th.

Forest Welcomes 2022-2023 Bullard Fellows; Applications for 2023-2024 Due October 1

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This fall, Harvard Forest welcomes our new cohort of Charles Bullard Fellows, who since 1962 have been selected from around the world to pursue forest-related projects as mid-career scholars and practitioners. While in residence at Harvard, Fellows interact with faculty, staff, and students, give seminars, participate in conferences and symposia, and leverage Harvard’s world-class resources.  

Meet the 2022-2023 Bullard Fellows

Jennifer Bhatnagar is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Boston University. Her research focuses on the ecology of soil and plant-associated microorganisms, with a specific focus on decomposer fungi. She will spend her Bullard Fellowship studying relationships between organismal networks (fungi, plants, insects) and biogeochemical cycles during ecosystem recovery from historical land use change. She plans to collaborate with David Moreno Mateos. She earned her PhD at UC Irvine. She was awarded the NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Peter Paul Early Career Professorship. She serves as the ESA Microbial Ecology Section Chair.

Michael Dietze is a Professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University. His primary research interest is ecological forecasting. He will be using Harvard Forest as a testbed and anchor site for near-term iterative ecological forecasts of the terrestrial carbon cycle. He plans to collaborate with Neil Pederson. He earned his PhD in Ecology from Duke University. He is the Chair and Founding Director of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative, the author of Ecological Forecasting, and the former chair of NEON’s STEAC.

Daniel Grossman is a freelance journalist who has won the AAAS Science Journalism Award three times. His journalism focuses on climate change and biodiversity. During his Bullard Fellowship, he will be reporting on the research at the Harvard Forest on temperate forest carbon uptake and release. He is also writing a book on the general topic of global uptake and release of carbon by forests and the effect on the trajectory of climate change. He plans to collaborate with Benton Taylor. He earned his PhD in Political Science at MIT.

Lynda Mapes is an environment reporter for The Seattle Times and the two-time winner of the first place international Kavli Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her work focuses on environmental topics and Indigenous governments and cultures. At Harvard Forest, she will be researching and writing Teachings of the Wild Trees, a book for a popular audience on the emergence of our scientific understanding of the unique importance of old growth and natural forest ecosystems for biodiversity, climate, and human well-being. Lynda will collaborate with Dave Orwig and Jonathan Thompson. She holds a degree in political theory from Oberlin College.

Rinku Roy Chowdhury is an Associate Professor of Geography at Clark University, where she also earned her PhD in Geography. She has received multiple awards at Clark, including the Hodgkins Junior Faculty Award. Her Bullard project will analyze the resilience of forest commons in Central Massachusetts, integrating collective action theory (CAT) and “design principles” of sustainable common-pool resource management with land system science (LSS) and environmental history (EH). She will be collaborating with Jonathan Thompson.

Michael Stambaugh is an Associate Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of Missouri. His primary research interests are the historical ecology of forests and wildland fire. He will spend his time at Harvard Forest completing a text describing environmental changes associated with changes in fire regimes across North America. He will be collaborating with Neil Pederson. He earned his PhD in Forest and Fire Ecology from the University of Missouri. In 2021, he received the US Forest Service Chief’s Award.

Applications are due October 1, 2022 for 2023-2024 program.

“Bullard Fellows are a vital and dynamic part of the Harvard Forest community,” says Missy Holbrook, Director of Harvard Forest. “Their work is propelled by the important role forests play in the carbon cycle, in sustaining biodiversity, and in supporting human livelihoods. Over the past fifty years, Bullard collaborations have forged new paths of inquiry here at Harvard Forest and in nearly every corner of Harvard University. We look forward to welcoming a new cohort of Bullard Fellows who will work with us to advance our understanding of how forests can contribute to solving some of humanity’s most pressing environmental challenges.”

Summer Interns Arrived to Pursue 11-Week Research Projects

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Last weekend, during an unseasonable heat wave, 20 undergraduate interns arrived from institutions all over the US to move into Harvard Forest’s largest dorm. Thus began their 11-week Summer Research Program internships, during which they will pursue mentored team projects on topics ranging from amplifying Indigenous voices in STEM to understanding controls on forest carbon sequestration.

The program is co-directed by Audrey Barker Plotkin and Sydne Record. This summer, Program Assistants Nautica Jones and Savanna Brown — both recent alumni of the program — will coordinate the program’s many daily aspects as well as its evening and weekend research seminars, field trips, grad school and career panels, and workshops in data analysis and science communication.

New Study and Interactive Map Point to Environmental Justice Disparities (and Solutions) in Land Conservation

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A new study in Environmental Research Letters shows striking disparities in the distribution of conserved land across multiple dimensions of social marginalization in New England – and creates a tool to help address them.

In a New England-wide analysis, the researchers found that communities in the lowest income quartile, and communities with the highest proportions of people of color have access to only about half as much protected land near where they live. These disparities persist across urban, suburban, and rural communities, and across decades.

“This is consistent with the very long history of exclusion and marginalization in conservation efforts,” says Boston-based social justice scholar Neenah Estrella-Luna, a co-author on the study. “We know that protected open space provides positive opportunities for recreation, social activities, mental and physical health, interactions with nature, food production, and resilience to heat waves. Disparities in access to these benefits that are patterned on race or other characteristics of marginalization require redress. This is a moral imperative.” 

So the team, which also included Harvard Forest researchers Lucy Lee and Jonathan Thompson, and Katharine Sims and Margot Lurie (’21) of Amherst College – didn’t stop at identifying the problems. They also created tools that can inform community-led efforts to solve them.

The researchers analyzed lands that rank highly with conventional conservation criteria – such as wildlife habitat, drinking water, and carbon sequestration – and mapped their relationship with lands that rank highly for human environmental justice criteria – including communities with low income, high percentages of people of color, and high percentages of English language learners. They found that the two sometimes don’t overlap, and that future land protection that follows the same patterns as in the past could further deepen environmental justice disparities.   

“There are many reasons for protecting land,” explains Lucy Lee, co-author and Harvard Forest Research Assistant. “By analyzing how conservation has played out with specific underlying motivations, we could compare how prioritizing land in different ways would align, or not align, with environmental justice.”

The team created a new prioritization system to help communities, state agencies, and conservation organizations identify specific opportunities for future conservation based on environmental justice criteria. They also built a free, online mapping tool to highlight these opportunities on the landscape.

“Until now, there hasn’t been an explicit way to show how protected areas across the region are distributed in relationship to environmental justice focus areas,” explains co-author Jonathan Thompson, a Senior Ecologist at Harvard Forest. “Several regional conservation groups have already reached out to us, saying they’d like to use this tool as part of their conservation prioritization process.” 

The research team emphasizes that this tool is meant to inform and support locally led efforts that center marginalized communities and their self-determined goals.

Estrella-Luna explains, “It’s really important to remember that conservation as we know it began with the explicit idea that the natural environment is only ‘good’ if it is devoid of humans, particularly Indigenous people, other people of color, and poor people. The only way to repair centuries of exclusion, neglect, and marginalization is to make justice and equity central goals of resilience planning.”

Margot Lurie, whose academic internship work at Amherst College helped to catalyze the research, also emphasized the importance of processes for community engagement and consent: “We hope that this tool can both empower local communities interested in protecting nearby land and offer guidance to conservation organizations regarding who needs to be at the table in land-use planning decisions.”

The study highlighted the multiple environmental burdens faced by marginalized communities. Ninety-six percent of the areas identified in the study as environmental justice focus areas contained at least one EPA-listed brownfield site—land where pollutants and contaminants complicate redevelopment.

Despite that, the team points to the importance of restoring existing developed land, including improving forest canopy in marginalized communities, and building new partnerships that can increase access to existing open space. 

Lead author Katharine Sims, Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Amherst College, notes that there are many ways to improve access that go beyond new land conservation, including better transportation to existing areas, park entry points that are walkable and connected to communities, and stronger support for urban food production spaces. “Conservation organizations are also increasingly understanding that even when greenspace has been available, access has been limited for many by personal experiences of racism or exclusion,” Sims points out. “Changes in leadership structure, outreach, and programming can increase access by making open spaces truly welcoming to all.”  

2/22 Webinar on Open Positions in Lab Management, Education

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The Forest is accepting applications for 2 open positions in education and laboratory coordination. 

  • The full-time Higher Education and Laboratory Coordinator will manage the year-round work of the Forest’s Summer Research Program and also coordinate activities across multiple laboratories, a greenhouse, and experimental gardens.
  • The part-time Schoolyard Ecology Program Coordinator will manage the year-round work of the Forest’s K-12 Schoolyard Ecology Program. At least two years’ experience as a full-time, formal classroom teacher of grades 4-12 is required.

A virtual information session about both positions will be held on Tuesday, February 22 at 4:00pm EST at this Zoom link. No advance registration is required. To keep the search process confidential, attendees will not be able to view the list of attendees.

At any time before or after the webinar, candidates may view our FAQ and submit anonymous questions about the position on the informational pages for each position (Higher Ed/Lab, Schoolyard Ecology).

Priority application review for both positions begins on February 28, 2022.

Winter Interns Explore US Forest Cover, Indigenous Partnerships, Museum Communication

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Four Harvard students completed intensive winter internships at the Forest this January, working virtually on a range of projects and presenting their findings to community partners and Harvard faculty and staff on January 19.

  • Nina Chung, a junior studying Integrative Biology, worked with mentors Jonathan Thompson and Valerie Pasquarella to compare the sensitivity of remote sensing products in detecting changing US forest cover. Nina’s internship was a return to the Forest after being a Freshman Seminar student in 2019.
  • Anna Christensen, a PhD candidate in the History of Science department, worked with mentor Clarisse Hart on a number of science communication projects, including a new virtual exhibit for the Fisher Museum (forthcoming in spring 2022).
  • Langa Siziba, a first-year studying Electrical Engineering, and Jaidyn Probst, a junior studying Cognitive Neuroscience and Ethnicity, Migration, & Rights, contributed to several land projects with the local Nipmuc tribe, as well as an Indigenous land & STEM voices project. Mentors included Danielle Ignace, Nia Holley, Clarisse Hart, Meghan MacLean, Marissa Weiss, and 2021 Summer Research Program alumni Lehua Blalock and Rafa Furer.  Langa and Jaidyn will be continuing their work into the spring 2022 semester.

Even in Retirement, Ellison Achieves

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Aaron Ellison retired from Harvard Forest in July 2021 after 20 years as Harvard’s Senior Research Fellow in Ecology. From 2018 – 2021, he also served as the Deputy Director of the Harvard Forest.

In retirement, Ellison has continued to achieve high honors in ecology, in August 2021 accomplishing his career-long goal of publishing a Princeton Monograph in his field, and more recently, being honored with a Humboldt Research Award, a prestigious career achievement award granted annually to a very small number of leading scientists from around the globe. With this award, in 2023, Ellison will travel to Freiberg, Germany, to collaborate with Dr. Carsten Dormann on a new textbook for statistical analysis of complex ecological data.

Video Series Offers Snapshots of Long-Term HF Research

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A new video series showcases current field research by senior scientists, post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates in the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program.

The series was filmed in summer 2021 by filmmaker and longtime Harvard Forest collaborator, Roberto Mighty.