David R. Foster Harvard Forest Harvard University 324 North Main Street Petersham, MA 01366 drfoster@fas.harvard.edu
Founded in 1907, the Harvard Forest (HF) is Harvard University’s field center for research and education in ecology and conservation and one of the most intensively studied landscapes in North America. HF has been an LTER site since 1988; a center for DOE-NIGEC (National Institute of Global Environmental Change) from 1990-2006; host for an NSF-REU program for ~30 undergraduates annually since 1992; and a center for an A.W. Mellon-United Negro College Education Foundation undergraduate program since 1990. Integrated research embraces the biological, physical and social sciences; all data are available through a comprehensive web-based information system. Through a cooperative agreement with the State of Massachusetts, the Harvard Forest Wildland Core Site will include the adjoining Quabbin Reservoir and Reservation, 40,000 ha of forest and water that comprise the primary water source for metropolitan Boston with 40% of the state’s population. The following features make HF the ideal core site for research, education, training, and outreach for the Northeast Domain of NEON.
Field Research Infrastructure. Through sustained support from NSF, DOE, NASA and Harvard University HF has developed integrated facilities for atmospheric, hydrological, ecological, geographical and biodiversity studies. Three eddy flux towers assess carbon, water, and energy fluxes from adjoining ecosystems that differ in composition (hardwood/conifer) and age (50-150 years old) and comprise the longest running eddy flux measurements in the world. Two walk-up towers and an 80-foot mobile lift provide canopy access. Two gauged low-order watersheds, in conjunction with the flux towers, tree stem flow analyses, and meteorological and hydrological sensors, enable a complete assessment of the local hydrological cycle. Six large-scale, long-term experiments assess the impacts of climate warming, drought, N deposition, invasive pests, hurricanes, and forest harvesting. Paleoecological, historical, and permanent plot studies, along with archives documenting 100 years of research at HF, contribute unrivaled legacy data on land-use, forest and wildlife dynamics. Six remote equipment buildings with electrical power, a wireless sensornet over the core 350-ha site and a well-developed system of forest access roads provide stable infrastructure for long-term monitoring programs.
Research and Educational Facilities. Nine renovated buildings (40,000 ft2) provide: laboratories for biogeochemistry, plant physiology, paleoecology, dendrochronology, limnology and insect diversity; research greenhouses with automated climate control; a comprehensive vascular plant flora and herbarium; the HF Archive of >100 years of historical documents, maps, photographs, data and soil/plant/water archives with electronic cataloging for over 32,000 samples; and the HF Ecological Synthesis Center, which provides cyberinfrastructure resources for residential or virtual synthesis of HF-based and regional ecological information and is being augmented through a $100,000 Harvard University grant. Ideal facilities for field trips, workshops, symposia, visiting researchers and courses include: dormitory housing for 40 people; six residences with twelve units; a commercial kitchen and dining room for 100 people; lecture hall for 125; two classrooms; and numerous discussion rooms.
An Integrated Interdisciplinary Science Team. The on-site staff of 45, together with >100 collaborating scientists, are engaged in research spanning a wide range of the biological, physical, social, and computer sciences, including: ecosystem, population, community, evolutionary and paleoecology; hydrology, meteorology, and atmospheric sciences; entomology, plant physiology, microbiology, and wildlife biology; systematics and genetics; environmental history, archaeology, geography, policy and public health; cyberinformatics and ecological statistics. An integrated administrative and facilities staff supports all aspects of research, education and outreach.
Educational and Outreach Programs. Formal and informal education programs present great opportunities for training and education of diverse groups. K-12. The HF Schoolyard LTER and EdEN programs reach rural and suburban school systems including Amherst, MA (19% children of color). A permanent exhibit of HF LTER and NEON research will be unveiled in 2008 at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, in Cambridge, which annually reaches 30,000 K-12 children in the Boston region. Undergraduate. The HF Summer Ecology Research Program engages 30 students in hands-on training with support of an NSF-REU site grant. NEON research will be featured in a new Harvard Course: Interdisciplinary Field Research in Ecology and Conservation. Graduate. More than 30 graduate students in diverse fields from more than a dozen public and private institutions annually conduct research at HF. Post-graduate Mid-Career. In addition to post-doctoral researchers, HF offers 7-10 Bullard Fellowships annually to mid-career scientists to conduct collaborating research in residence. Public. NEON research will be highlighted to the >6,000 visitors annually to HF’s Fisher Museum and > 175,000 visitors to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Professional Outreach and Application. HF cooperates with state and federal agencies and non-profit conservation groups (e.g., The Nature Conservancy, The Trustees of Reservations and Audubon Society) in creating and distributing publications and web-based products and hosting workshops for natural resource conservation professionals.
Cyberinfrastructure. Internet access at HF is through a 100 Mbps fiber optic cable to the FAS network at Harvard University; all residences and the 350-ha Prospect Hill tract support wireless access; computer facilities include >100 PCs, 4 servers, and centralized backup and storage. HF serves as the field site for the Analytical Web project, a collaboration between UMass computer scientists and HF ecologists and information technology scientists that seeks to develop novel, graphically-based methods for assisting scientists in conducting reliable and repeatable analyses of complex ecological and environmental data, and then communicating the results and associated uncertainty to policy analysts and decision makers.
Geographical Sensitivity to Climate Change and Invasive Pests. HF is centrally located relative to major Northeastern biotic and environmental gradients in the Transition Forest Zone, a floristic tension zone formed by the range limits of northern and southern taxa that is sensitive to future climate change. Representative habitats include northern, transition, and central forests; marshes, swamps, and conifer-dominated bogs; and forest plantations. HF lies at the current northern range limit of the hemlock woolly adelgid, an aphid-like insect that is killing eastern hemlock across its range. HF science infrastructure, including eddy flux towers, gauged streams, permanent plots and long-term experiments, is positioned to document the environmental and ecological impacts of this insect and other pests as it expands in the next few years.
Wildlands Assessment of Water as an Ecosystem Service. The HF site includes the Quabbin Reservoir and watershed, the source of unfiltered water for 40% of the Massachusetts population in metropolitan Boston, New England’s largest city. NEON research will be able to examine the water budget and characteristics of this water supply from headwater streams (eddy flux and weirs) through tributary streams, rivers weirs and USGS gauging stations, to tributary ponds and the reservoir (STREON & GLEON Sensornet). Coupled with gradient sites in Boston (Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum), urbanized suburbs (PIE LTER) and urbanizing suburbs (Harvard’s Estabrook Woods), the Harvard Forest is ideally positioned to undertake a comprehensive study of aquatic ecosystem processes from wildland water sources to the densely populated center where most of the water is consumed.
Grand Challenges and NEON Science Themes. HF research embraces all of the major science themes addressed in the Northeast and continentally in NEON, including: land use (land cover change; urbanization; pollution); invasive species (exotic plants; invasive pests and pathogens; infectious diseases; expanding native animals); and climate change (phenology; drought; temperature variation; long- and short-term climate change). Regionally, HF represents a rural wildland in the urban to rural gradient from Boston (Arnold Arboretum) to suburban areas outside Boston (PIE; Estabrook Woods) and New York City (IES, BRF) to the rural wildlands in Massachusetts (HF), Maine (Howland Forest) and New Hampshire (HBR LTER, Bartlett Forest).