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Conservation Study in North Quabbin Region of Central Massachusetts 1900-1993
This study investigated the history of land protection in north central Massachusetts. For details on methods and results, please see the published paper (Golodetz, A.D. and D.R. Foster. 1997. History and importance of land use and protection in the North Quabbin region of Massachusetts (USA). Conservation Biology 11:227-235). The Abstract from the paper is reproduced below: "Evaluating the consequences and future of land protection requires broad temporal and spatial perspectives of ecological and cultural factors. We assessed the development of a system of protected areas comprising 37% of central Massachusetts in terms of changing rates and means of land protection. We compared protected areas to the surrounding matrix in terms of physical, biological, and historical features and used these results to raise issues concerning future planning. The rate, purpose, and means of land protection in the North Quabbin Region (168,312 ha) have been dynamic as a result of changes in cultural values and transformation of the landscape from predominantly agriculture to forest. Protected lands are managed by 25 federal and state agencies, private groups, and municipal departments and commissions and are physically and biologically typical of the regional landscape which results from (1) participation of diverse organizations with varied agendas; (2) predominance of large government acquisitions driven by landscape-scale criteria; and (3) absence of coordination among groups. The large area, relative homogeneity and largely undeveloped status of the North Quabbin Region suggest conservation goals distinct from those in the fragmented and extensively developed neighboring areas of the Connecticut River Valley and Cape Cod and Islands Region. Large tracts of forests, wetlands, and lakes in the North Quabbin Region provide (1) habitat for species requiring extensive, intact areas; (2) the opportunity to maintain broad-scale ecological processes; (3) connections to the regional con
Land Conservation and Human Demographics by Census Tract in New England 2014-2018
This dataset summarizes land protection, conservation prioritization layer scores, and human demographics within New England communities, defined as census tracts. This dataset was created to identify disparities in land protection according to metrics of social marginalization and assess how incorporating environmental justice criteria into land conservation prioritization systems might change conservation priorities.
Impacts of Phloem Chilling on Mature Red Maples at Harvard Forest 2019
Whether tree growth is limited by carbon supply or demand is a crucial question due to wide-ranging repercussions for projections of carbon sequestration on land. By temporarily restricting phloem transport using stem chilling, which increases phloem sap viscosity to create local bottlenecks to phloem transport, we created gradients of carbon supply in stems of mature red maples during the first half of the growing season. These carbon supply gradients had clear effects on tree physiology with radial growth in particular varying up to almost seven-fold with carbon supply. Local bulk nonstructural carbon concentrations in stems and roots remained relatively stable, suggesting that they are not rapidly modulated in response to changes in supply and demand. However, phloem and leaf nonstructural carbon accumulated above chilling-induced bottlenecks and were associated with reductions in photosynthetic capacity as well as the advancement of leaf coloration and fall, supporting the idea of within-tree feedbacks reducing carbon supply when supply exceeds demand. Most strikingly, radial growth varied systematically with carbon supply up to almost seven-fold, indicating that growth of red maple during the early growing season is strongly carbon-supply limited. The code to process these data and reproduce our results is available at https://github.com/TTRademacher/Exp2019Analysis. For more details pertaining to the methods see Rademacher et al. (2021) and contact the investigator.
Impacts of Phloem Chilling and Compression on Mature White Pine at Harvard Forest 2018
Wood formation is a crucial process for carbon sequestration on land, yet how variations in phloem-transported carbon and temperature affect wood formation, respiration and nonstructural carbon pools remains poorly understood. To better understand the role of carbon supply on allocation to wood formation, we constrained phloem transport using compression and chilling around the stem of 15 mature white pines to monitor the effects of contrasting carbon supply (enriched above and reduced below the manipulations) on local wood formation and respiration, as well as on nonstructural carbon pools in stems and roots. This data set contains all data measured during the experiment. This includes wood anatomical, xylogenetic, dendrochronological, stem CO2 efflux, and nonstructural carbon measurements in coarse roots and stems, as well as pre-dawn water potential measurements of needles and branches. Furthermore, we provide basic allometric measurements for all trees. The code to process these data and reproduce our results is available at https://github.com/TTRademacher/Exp2018Analysis. For more details pertaining to the methods see Rademacher et al. (2021) and contact the investigator.
Oak Forest Response to Lymantria dispar Defoliation in Central Massachusetts since 2019
Invasive forest insects are a major global change driver, and the Northeastern U.S. is an invasion hotspot. Lymantria dispar is one of the region’s most destructive defoliators. After thirty years of quiescence, a surprisingly severe outbreak began in 2015 in southern New England, and by 2018 had caused dramatic oak mortality across thousands of forested acres. Lymantria dispar is considered a generalist, but in New England, oaks (Quercus sp.) are its preferred host trees. Oaks are key overstory trees in eastern North America. In New England, they have been a dominant component of the forest for thousands of years, and play a leading role in providing habitat, timber, and carbon sequestration. However, oak prominence is declining throughout New England. The reasons for oak’s decreasing abundance are the subject of lively debate but the role of L. dispar is likely underappreciated. Therefore, we need to understand the causes and consequences of oak dieback and mortality to this disturbance event, so that we can better predict responses to future outbreaks. To address this need, we established a set of permanent plots in central Massachusetts, chosen to capture a range of defoliation severity.
Survey of Wild Bee Pollinators on Nyssa Sylvatica at Harvard Forest since 2021
Black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) is amongst the latest blooming canopy species to produce vast numbers of flowers and abundant nectar and pollen within forests of the Northeastern United States, a position previously held by the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata). Prior research indicates N. sylvatica is insect pollinated and wild bees have been observed visiting flowers; we are unaware, however, of any detailed surveys and/or characterization of the Nyssa-associated wild bee community in the Northeastern United States. Wild bee species frequent the canopy from early to late spring, presumably to forage, prior to being found in blooming crops such as apple and strawberry later in the season. The late bloom time of N. sylvatica (in early June) may extend floral resource availability in the temperate forest canopy and support forest-associated wild bee communities prior to the bloom of summer-flowering plant species.
Root Systems of Individual Plants Worldwide 2022
The above- and below-ground sizes and shapes of plants strongly influence plant competition, community structure, and plant-environment interactions, but the plant size and shape across climate regimes remain incompletely understood. In this study I seek to understand how plant geometries respond to varying climates via trade-offs in shoot height and width, and root depth and spread. I more than doubled the Root Systems of Individual Plants (RSIP) database to contain 5,647 observations, to our knowledge the largest database describing the maximum rooting depth, lateral spread, and shoot size of terrestrial plants in the world. Shoot size and root system size strongly covary. Across climatic gradients woody plants show deeper-narrower root systems in arid climates and taller shoots in humid climates. Phylogeny greatly influences shoot size. Rooting depth is primarily influenced by climate seasonality and lateral root spread is strongly influenced by shoot size. Using our newly expanded global database I found that shoot size covaries strongly with rooting system size; however, these relationships are not static across the climate space, as the geometries of plants shift considerably.
Inorganic Nutrient Concentrations in Forested Headwater Streams at Harvard Forest since 2017
For the past 8000 years hemlock has been the foundation species throughout the northeast. The unique functional characteristics of Hemlock have dictated biogeochemical fluxes from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems (Ellison et al. 2005). Unfortunately, it is currently in an irreversible decline due to the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid and the consequences on riparian ecology are unknown but likely profound (Adams et al. 2012). Red maple, black birch, and northern red oak are some of the most abundant trees in southern New England and are poised to replace hemlock across the landscape (Orwig et al. 2012). Decline and loss of hemlock, and its replacement with hardwood species containing different functional traits are expected to lead to changes in litterfall inputs, forest evapotranspiration, surface water hydrology, including seasonal streamflow/stormflow dynamics, stream temperature, decomposition, and nutrient release (Ellison et al. 2005; Ford and Vose 2007; Guswa and Spence 2011;Brantley et al. 2014). This anticipated shift to hardwoods has far reaching effects as it will significantly alter receiving water primary productivity and food web structure (Humborg et al. 2000, Garnier et al. 2010) by changing watershed N:P:Si export ratios and nutrient availability downstream (e.g., Currie et al. 1996, Fulweiler and Nixon 2005, Carey and Fulweiler 2013). The goal of this ongoing project is to quantify watershed export of inorganic nutrients overtime from the three gauged forested streams at Harvard Forest. To do this we aim to collect samples weekly and then we will calculate monthly, seasonal, and annual changes in inorganic nutrient export. Further we are investigating inorganic nutrient concentration as well as flux vs. stream discharge patterns to better understand the role of physical vs. biological processes in driving watershed nutrient export.
Carbon Biogeochemistry of Forested Headwater Streams at Harvard Forest 2006-2007
Headwater streams make up greater than 80% of total channel length in the United States and play important roles in regulating nutrient, organic matter, and sediment fluxes from terrestrial to downstream ecosystems. Headwater streams are common features of many upland-forested watersheds in New England, yet are not explicitly factored into forest water, carbon, and nutrient budgets. Here we report on recent efforts to examine terrestrial and stream ecosystem linkages in carbon biogeochemistry in a hemlock-dominated watershed. A prototype stream biogeochemical system (SBS) was tested at the Harvard Forest LTER. The SBS allows a suite of stream water properties to be characterized in real-time over extended periods of time thus allowing questions to be asked at a wide range of time scales. The prototype SBS was field-tested in Bigelow Brook West on the Prospect Hill research tract at Harvard Forest. Bigelow Brook West was selected because the watershed’s hydrology, stream ecology, forest composition, land-use history, and carbon sequestration have been characterized, thus aiding the interpretation of SBS data and facilitating multi-disciplinary research. The prototype system monitors stream and air temperature, pCO2 , colored dissolved organic matter, total suspended sediments, PAR, water depth, pH, and dissolved O2. Independent estimates of organic and inorganic water chemistry were used to validate and interpret SBS data. Here we report on preliminary findings from the pilot SBS at Harvard Forest to highlight the usefulness of headwater stream chemistry data to a wide-diversity of ecosystem scientists. 1) Low pH constrains dissolved inorganic carbon solute fluxes to downstream ecosystems. 2) CO2 concentrations were always supersaturated in Bigelow Brook, averaging about 6x atmospheric values in summer, thus the stream is an important source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Variation in CO2 appears to be linked to multiple mechanisms including changes in stream temperature,
Belowground Carbon Observatory Network (BeCON) at Harvard Forest since 2020
A central goal of the recent Harvard Forest C Synthesis activity was to identify high-priority needs for C-cycle research at the forest. While there were a number of areas needing follow-up research, belowground C pools and fluxes remain the single largest gap in the C budget and therefore our understanding of the C cycle of the forest. To this end, we developed the Belowground Carbon Observatory Network (BeCON) as a part of the LTER-VI grant proposal. The long-term goal of BeCON is to understand temporal and spatial variations in belowground C pools in response to the various environmental changes the forest now faces [e.g., rising CO2, changes in atmospheric N, S and O3 chemistry, invading insects, land-use change, immigrating (large) herbivores]. There are two great challenges in achieving this goal: (1) excessive spatial heterogeneity in belowground C pools; and (2) lack of automated systems for analysis. These characteristics make it very difficult to quantify changes because the work is intrinsically labor intensive with low replication and the noisy data lead to low statistical power. Here, we measured soil carbon content, root biomass and carbon content, and annual root productivity following the protocols for BeCON.
Carbon Cycle Dynamics in Soil Warming Experiments at Harvard Forest 2019
Microbes are responsible for cycling carbon (C) through soils, and predicted changes in soil C stocks under climate change are highly sensitive to shifts in the mechanisms assumed to control the microbial physiological response to warming. Two mechanisms have been suggested to explain the long-term warming impact on microbial physiology: microbial thermal acclimation and changes in the quantity and quality of substrates available for microbial metabolism. Yet studies disentangling these two mechanisms are lacking. To resolve the drivers of changes in microbial physiology in response to long-term warming, we sampled soils from 13- and 28-year-old soil warming experiments in different seasons. We performed short-term laboratory incubations across a range of temperatures to measure the relationships between temperature sensitivity of physiology (growth, respiration, carbon use efficiency, and extracellular enzyme activity) and the chemical composition of soil organic matter. We observed apparent thermal acclimation of microbial respiration, but only in summer, when warming had exacerbated the seasonally-induced, already small dissolved organic matter pools. Irrespective of warming, greater quantity and quality of soil carbon increased the extracellular enzymatic pool and its temperature sensitivity. We propose that fresh litter input into the system seasonally cancels apparent thermal acclimation of C-cycling processes to decadal warming. Our findings reveal that long-term warming has indirectly affected microbial physiology via reduced C availability in this system, implying that earth system models including these negative feedbacks may be best suited to describe long-term warming effects on these soils.
Visual Counts of Tree Reproduction near NEON plots at Harvard Forest since 2020
Mast seeding, a resource pulse that has cascading effects in the environment, is a measure that can provide insight into forest dynamics. When masting data is collected in sequential years it can provide information on how tree populations are responding to climatic and environmental variables, and can also be used to relate to other indices, such as seed-eating animal species. The objective of this study is to quantify the yearly seed production of mast seeding tree species at Harvard Forest which are located near National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) plots. This project is part of larger NEON-enabled project examining mast seeding on a continental scale at 25 NEON sites in the United States, which uses mast seeding records in conjunction with NEON collected data products like mammal box-trapping, tick drags, and bird point counts. Data collected on mast seeding can be linked to these other indices at regional and continental scales.
Early-Holocene Forest at Stonewall Beach on Martha’s Vineyard 10700-9800 BP
Coastal erosion at Stonewall Beach on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, U.S.A., has exposed a thick layer of peaty sediments rich in botanical remains, including well-preserved tree trunks. We identified the species of the tree trunks based on wood anatomy, analyzed pollen and macrofossils in the sediments, and determined the ages of the tree trunks and peat with 14C dating. The tree trunks were identified as Pinus strobus (white pine), and pollen assemblages featured high percentages of P. strobus in sediments associated with the trunks. The tree trunks and peat dated to ~10,700–9800 calibrated 14C years before present. These findings confirm that Martha’s Vineyard, like other parts of southern New England, was dominated by P. strobus forest during the early Holocene. At that time, regional climate was drier than today and Martha’s Vineyard was not yet isolated from the mainland by postglacial sea-level rise.
Wildlands and Woodlands Stewardship Science Vegetation Plots in New England 2009-2015
The Wildlands and Woodlands (W&W) initiative is a broad, collaborative effort to protect 70% of New England in forest over the next 50 years. At the heart of this initiative is the awareness that our wooded landscapes provide immeasurable economic, environmental, and cultural benefits and the conviction that we should understand these systems better, manage them wisely, and conserve them for the future. As part of W&W, Stewardship Science seeks to encourage widespread application of an accessible approach to monitoring forests that interested landowners or conservation-minded individuals can use to track changes in their woods over time. Whether the motivation is active management for timber, understanding how forests are being shaped by factors ranging from climate change and ice storms to insect pests, or simple pleasure in observing nature’s dynamics, anyone equipped with a notebook, tape measure, pencil, and the willingness to puzzle through a book of tree identification can readily develop a robust and valuable set of observations. This idea is not new. For over 150 years, leading conservationists and ecological thinkers beginning with Henry David Thoreau have argued that there is much to be learned through simple, long-term measurements of forest growth and change. Yet there are still remarkably few examples of private landowners, land trusts, timber companies, or conservation organizations that base their understanding and management practices on a regular system of observations and measurements. Because the vast majority of forestland in New England is privately owned, most of these lands remain unmonitored, and management plans are often drawn up from casual rather than systematic observation. For more background information on the project, please see the Wildlands & Woodlands Stewardship Science manual. This data package contains vegetation and environmental data on 64 20x20m plots set up in four areas across New England by staff and summer field crews fro
Wildlands of New England GIS Data 1900-2022
Wildlands in New England is the first U.S. study to map and characterize within one region all conserved lands that, by design, allow natural processes to unfold with no active management or intervention. These “forever wild lands” include federal Wilderness areas along with diverse public and private natural areas and reserves. Knowing the precise locations of Wildlands, their characteristics, and their protection status is important as both a baseline for advancing conservation initiatives and an urgent call to action for supporting nature and society. Wildlands play a unique role in the integrated approach to conservation and land planning advanced by the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities (WWF&C) initiative, which calls for: at least 70 percent of the region to be protected forest; Wildlands to occupy at least 10 percent of the land; and all existing farmland to be permanently conserved. This research was conducted by WWF&C partners Harvard Forest (Harvard University), Highstead Foundation, and Northeast Wilderness Trust, in collaboration with over one hundred conservation organizations and municipal, state, and federal agencies. This dataset contains the Geographical Information System (GIS) polygon layer of Wildlands created by this project and used in all analyses for the 2023 report. Another GIS layer will be updated as new Wildlands are brought to our attention or created and will be available at https://wildlandsandwoodlands.org/ for researchers.
Juvenile Tree Responses to Soil Warming at Harvard Forest since 1995
The main goal of this study is to assess eastern tree species’ growth, survivorship, and phenological responses to soil warming in order to forecast future changes in forest succession and carbon dynamics. From 2003 through 2010, we determined that shade-tolerant, normally slower-growing species benefitted most from warming. We are continuing to study species-species responses to investigate the duration of and mechanisms behind species- and functional group responses to climate warming. Monitoring long-term demographic and physiological responses of juvenile trees with and without soil warming will allow us to model future eastern tree species successional shifts under warmer climate conditions.
Annual Maps of Forest Harvest Events in Maine from LANDSAT Imagery 1986-2019
We used Landsat satellite imagery and forest inventory plot measurements to develop a time series of annual maps representing potential forest harvest events for the state of Maine in the Northeastern US for the years 1986 to 2019. We first generated a set of LandTrendr temporal segmentation results for three different spectral indices. Change results were filtered to remove events greater than two years in duration, then results were combined using a seven-parameter degenerate decision trees model that determined a set of thresholds on disturbance patch size, magnitude of spectral change, and change “votes” across indices. We found that we were able to detect harvest events that removed at least 30% of total basal area with a mean F1 score of 0.72 (σ = 0.02) with a mean false negative error rate (omission) of 0.32 (σ = 0.02) and mean false positive error rate (commission) of 0.23 (σ = 0.03), and these scores further improve when maps are masked to remove human land use (built and agriculture) and water based on National Land Cover Dataset and JRC Global Surface Water classifications (mean F1 = 0.73, σ = 0.02). Comparisons with an out-of-sample reference dataset and an existing national forest disturbance dataset indicate our forest harvest maps are a locally accurate source of information for characterizing spatial and temporal variability in long-term harvest patterns across the industrial forests of northern Maine. Here, we provide annual ensemble-based maps of potential harvest events; cross-validated results, which give an indication of detection agreement across subsets of our forest inventory reference datasets; and ancillary datasets that can be used to mask false detections in urban and agricultural land uses and water.
Effect of Warming on Thermal Adaptation of Soil Microbial Growth Traits at Harvard Forest 2013-2023
Adaptation of soil microbes due to warming from climate change has been observed, but it remains unknown what microbial growth traits are adaptive to warming. We studied bacterial isolates from the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site, where field soils have been experimentally heated to 5ºC above ambient temperature with unheated controls for thirty years. We hypothesized that Alphaproteobacteria from warmed plots have (1) less temperature sensitive growth rates; (2) higher optimum growth temperatures; and (3) higher maximum growth temperatures compared to isolates from control plots. We made high-throughput measurements of bacterial growth in liquid cultures over time and across temperatures from 22-37ºC in 2-3ºC increments. We estimated growth rates by fitting Gompertz models to the growth data. Temperature sensitivity of growth rate, optimum growth temperature, and maximum growth temperature were estimated by the Ratkowsky 1983 model and a modified Macromolecular Rate Theory (MMRT) model. To determine evidence of adaptation, we ran phylogenetic generalized least squares tests on isolates from warmed and control soils. Our results showed evidence of adaptation of higher optimum growth temperature of bacterial isolates from heated soils. However, we observed no evidence of adaptation of temperature sensitivity of growth and maximum growth temperature. Our project begins to capture the shape of the temperature response curves, but illustrates that the relationship between growth and temperature is complex and cannot be limited to a single point in the biokinetic range.
Land Use on the Southern New England and New York Coasts 1600-2001
The widespread influence of land use and natural disturbance on population, community, and landscape dynamics and the long-term legacy of disturbance on modern ecosystems requires that a historical, broad-scale perspective become an integral part of modern ecological studies and conservation assessment and planning. In previous studies, the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has developed an integrated approach of paleoecological and historical reconstruction, meteorological modeling, air photo interpretation, GIS analyses, and field studies of vegetation and soils, to address fundamental ecological questions concerning the rates, direction, and causes of vegetation change, to evaluate controls over modern species and community distributions and landscape patterns, and to provide critical background for conservation and restoration planning. In the current study, we extend this approach to investigate the link between landscape history and the abundance, distribution, and dynamics of species, communities and landscapes of the Cape Cod to Long Island coastal region, including the islands of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Block Island. The study region includes many areas of high conservation priority that are linked geographically, historically, and ecologically. Despite the compelling rationale for examining this coastal region as a whole and for comparing its related, though distinctive geographic areas, an integrated and comprehensive study of the region has never been undertaken. We are investigating regional controls over landscape patterns and community distribution and will focus in detail on the dynamics of sandplain communities, including grasslands, heathlands, barrens, and woodlands, which are unique components of this region and high priorities for conservation. In order to determine the historical and modern abundance and distribution of these community types, and to relate these to historical patterns of land use, fire, winds
Column-Averaged Atmospheric Carbon and Water at Harvard Forest since 2018
Ground-based total-atmospheric column measurements of CO2, CH4, CO, and H2O began at Harvard Forest in May 2018 using a solar-viewing Fourier Transform Spectrometer (Bruker EM27/Sun). Observations are made from a platform near the Fisher Meteorological Tower throughout the year on sunny days. Total column observations are sensitive to regional carbon fluxes, and are less impacted by changes in the boundary layer height than tower based in-situ observations. The Harvard Forest observations are complemented by an identical instrument operated on the Harvard campus in Cambridge MA. The two sensors are used to support studies of urban emissions, regional transport, and forest-atmosphere exchange. In addition, the total-column measurements provide key validation data for satellite measurements of greenhouse gases.
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These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.