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Summer Research Project 2016

  • Title: Group Project: Forest Time
  • Group Project Leader: Neil Pederson
  • Mentors: Clarisse Hart; Neil Pederson
  • Collaborators: Neil Pederson
  • Project Description:

    Time is an essential element in the shaping of ecosystems. The lifespan of humans hampers our ability to comprehend the amount of time required for the evolution and dynamics of forests. Research at the Harvard Forest incorporates the element of time across many ecological investigations, spanning the Holocene, the Industrial Age, the early Anthropocene, and the future.

    The selected student will have a scholarly interest in art, humanities, or history and will spend the summer investigating the element of time in the evolution of forest ecosystems. Mentored research into topics including tree-ring analysis, paleoecology, phenology, forest landowner decision-making, land disturbance and succession, and environmental literature will form the scholarly basis of the work. Biweekly field trips to old-growth forests, weekly meetings with mentors in ecology and communication, plus archival research and field and lab-based collaborations with other summer research students will provide the raw materials for the final portfolio. The final portfolio will explore how time shapes forests and, possibly, how forests shape time, as well as the how the student’s own perception of time has evolved during the course of the summer. It will include content such as blog posts, long-form essays, podcasts, and a forest timeline (on a timescale of the student’s choosing) for display in the Harvard Forest Fisher Museum.

  • Readings:

    Bormann, F. Herbert, and Gene Likens. 1979. The Steady State as a Component of the Landscape. In: Pattern and process in a forested ecosystem: disturbance, development and the steady state based on the Hubbard Brook ecosystem study. Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 192-212.

    Faison, Edward. 2015. Seeing the Landscape in Landscape Art. Arnoldia 73.2: 2-18.

    Jackson, Stephen T. 2006. Vegetation, environment, and time: the origination and termination of ecosystems. Journal of Vegetation Science 17.5: 549-557.

    Nash, Roderick F. 1967. A Wilderness Condition. In: Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 23-43.

    Oswald W, Foster D, Thompson T. 2014. Prehistory to Present. In: Hemlock: A Forest Giant on the Edge. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp 44-63.

    Pederson, Neil. 2010. External characteristics of old trees in the Eastern Deciduous Forest. Natural Areas Journal 30: 396-407.

    Perlman, Michael. 1996. Old-Growth Spirituality. In: Eastern old-growth forests: prospects for rediscovery and recovery. Edited by Davis, Mary Byrd. Island Press. pp 89-112.

    Pickett, Steward TA, and Peter S. White, eds. 1985. Chapters I & II. In: The ecology of natural disturbance and patch dynamics. Elsevier. pp1-33.

    Sprugel, Douglas G. 1991. Disturbance, equilibrium, and environmental variability: what is ‘natural’ vegetation in a changing environment? Biological conservation 58: 1-18.

    Thoreau, Henry D. Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion Of Seeds And Other Late Natural History Writings.

    Wessels, Tom. 1997. Reading the forested landscape: A natural history of New England. Vermont: The Countryman Press.

  • Research Category: Regional Studies, Large Experiments and Permanent Plot Studies, Historical and Retrospective Studies