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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2016

• Title: Harvard Forest Outreach & Education - 2015
• Primary Author: Clarisse Hart (Harvard Forest)
• Additional Authors: Pamela Snow (Harvard Forest)
• Abstract:

  The Harvard Forest (HFR) Schoolyard Ecology Program, with leadership from the Schoolyard Coordinator and assistance from 4 HFR co-Is, hosted three professional development workshops for K-12 teachers from 3 states in 2015: a Summer Institute to train 27 new teachers on Schoolyard Ecology field protocols, a spring workshop for teachers to share best practices and lesson plans related to their classroom's ecological research, and a data workshop in which 17 teachers organized and produced graphs of their classroom field data.
  
  
  
  Due in large part to their work with the HFR Schoolyard Ecology program, two Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology teachers, Lise LeTellier (Holyoke Catholic High School) and Sally Farrow (Drumlin Farm), were Massachusetts state finalists for the 2015 U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching. Two additional HFR Schoolyard Ecology teachers, Joann Mossman (Overlook Middle School in Ashburnham, MA) and Sharon McDonald (Athol High School), were honored last year with state-level awards for excellence in environmental education.
  
  
  
  Courses and academic programs held in 2015 at HFR for Harvard students included a spring Freshman Seminar: “Research at the Harvard Forest: Global Change Ecology-Forests, Ecosystem Function, the Future,” and “Reading and Conserving the New England Landscape.” These field-oriented courses center on instruction from a variety of HFR co-Is, who take students to the field to discuss the many dimensions of long-term ecological research at Harvard Forest.
  
  
  
  HFR continued to facilitate networking activities for its student research community in 2015, including student reunions, social events for graduate students, the summer student blog, and social networks (Facebook, Twitter).
  
  
  
  A new interpretive trail for the public, the French Road Trail, includes several LTER V experiments, including moose and deer exclosures, land-use study plots, and carbon research. In January 2016, a Harvard undergraduate intern created a virtual tour of the trail to extend its educational reach.
  
  
  
  In 2015, Harvard Forest hosted visits from U.S. Congressman Jim McGovern and state representative Anne Gobi for tours of long-term research sites and our biomass heat facility. HFR staff and students led guided tours of LTER research sites for 900 university and K-12 students, journalists, and conservation/forestry professionals in 2015, including the LTER Science Council, Northeastern Area Association of State Foresters, journalists from the New England Science Writers, the Mass. Department of Conservation & Recreation, and the Trust for Public Land.
  
  
  
  Ongoing efforts toward media visibility have boosted the presence of Harvard Forest’s long-term research in the news, including features in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, National Geographic, BBC, NSF’s Science360, Woodland Steward Magazine, regional NPR and TV stations, and elsewhere in 2015. A special feature in IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of the world’s largest professional organization for engineering and the applied sciences, highlighted many of the major research projects in LTER V. A film crew from BBC Earth spent several days with HFR research sites and infrastructure to film an hour-long documentary on New England Forests, which was released in 2016 in the UK.
  
  
  
  New collaborations with writers and artists continue to expand our reach. Artist/designer David Buckley Borden is working with several HFR co-Is on field installation projects related to on invasive insects, land-use scenarios, and ecosystem services. Borden led a workshop Harvard students in January 2016 as part of the Forest’s ‘Reading the Landscape’ course. This year, veteran Seattle Times journalist Lynda Mapes spent her year-long Bullard Fellowship writing a book, called Witness Tree, investigating centuries of change from the perspective of one red oak.

• Research Category: