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Harvard Forest Research Project 2024

• Title: Hardwood Walk-up Tower for Research, Education, Communication, and Outreach
• Principal investigator: Emery Boose (boose@fas.harvard.edu)
• Institution: Harvard Forest
• Primary contact: Mark VanScoy (mvanscoy@fas.harvard.edu)
• Team members: Clarisse Hart
• Abstract:

  The Hardwood walk-up tower provides critical infrastructure for the following:
  
  1. Within- and above-canopy access for researchers, educators, and students.
  
  2. An essential node in the HF field wireless network that links researchers with their equipment on the Prospect Hill Tract and helps to make their data available to researchers, educators, students, and the general public all over the world.
  
  3. Educational opportunities for visitors to the Harvard Forest to experience and learn about forest ecology from the ground to the top of the canopy (via guided tours for visitors 18 years or older).
  
  4. Permanent arrays of environmental sensors for measuring light, temperature, and humidity profiles through the canopy. These arrays complement similar measurements made on the EMS tower (the oldest continuously-operating eddy-covariance tower in the world) and the NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) tower at Harvard Forest.
  
  The Hardwood tower is a 92' tall scaffolding guyed tower with a foot print of 7' x 14'. It stands on a concrete foundation and has 4 guy-wires connected to dead man anchors.
  
  The tower is located at: 42.535111 deg latitude, -72.174222 deg longitude.