Senator Shaheen talks with students at Hubbard Brook

Senator Jeanne Shaheen visited the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest on Monday to highlight her legislation to give high school students greater access to innovative STEM education programs.

“To stay ahead of our global competitors like China, and to prepare our young people for the jobs of tomorrow, we must support science and technology education today,” Shaheen said.  “Hubbard Brook is doing great work to help teachers present science in new, innovative ways to our students.  We need to do more of that, which is why I introduced the Innovation Inspiration School Grant Program.

While at Hubbard Brook, Senator Shaheen spoke with teachers, middle school students and researchers about the long-term research and importance of science education. Read more here.

Black-throated Blue Warbler (Photo by M. Cline)

Demography of Songbird Populations in a Rapidly Changing World: The Importance of Long-Term Studies

by H. R. Sofaer, K. M. Langin, J. Wilson, T. S. Sillett

HBRF’s Education Associate Jackie Wilson is a co-author of a newly published article in the journal American Biology Teacher.  A team of graduate students created an online population ecology learning module for HBRF and wrote up their project for the journal. See abstract and links to article and web site below.

Abstract

A major goal of ecological research is to understand how ecological factors, such as food and predator abundance, interact to shape birth and death rates. Case studies describing this research can provide students with an understanding of how ecological conditions affect demographic rates, as well as an opportunity to explore and interpret real data. We have developed a Web-based teaching module based on a long-term study of a migratory songbird, the black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens). The website describes this species and the ecological factors that affect its population growth.

Resources

Module web site: http://hubbardbrookfoundation.org/what-limits-the-reproductive-success-of-migratory-birds/ (sign-in required).

Article: Sofaer, H.R., K.M. Langin, J. Wilson, and T. S. Sillett. Demography of Songbird Populations in a Rapidly Changing World: The Importance of Long-Term Studies. The American Biology Teacher. 73 (5): 285–287.

Request permission to download, photocopy or reproduce article content at the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions Web site at: www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. ISSN 0002-7685, electronic ISSN 1938–4211. ©2011 by National Association of Biology Teachers. All rights reserved.

By Sarah Thorne, 2010 participant in NSF’s Research Experience for Teachers

Have you ever noticed a two-month old sugar maple seedling, too young to have grown its distinctive lobes? Have you ever contemplated the fungi, soils, and neighbors that affect seedling survival? Have you ever tickled the roots of an American Beech, all in the interest of determining their respiration rate? Last summer, I had the opportunity to do all these things and more with the scientists who work at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

The author at Hubbard Brook

How did I get here from my classroom at Prospect Mt. High School (serving Barnstead and Alton, NH)? As a result of my participation in the Project Learning Tree (PLT)’s Forest for Every Classroom training program during 2009-2010, I was invited to apply for this summer position by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF) who secured funding from the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Teachers program.

I was like a kid in a candy shop, soaking in the knowledge of scientists from all over the country who converge on the 7800-acre watershed each summer. Hubbard Brook is famed for pioneering the use of small watersheds in ecosystem science and has the longest running data set in the nation. Scientists who have studied atmospheric deposition, hydrology, nutrient cycling, biomass production, and wildlife populations here over the past five decades are helping us understand the ecosystem impacts of acid rain, and climate change, and other human and natural perturbations.

My principal project was to gather data for Dr. Natalie Cleavitt and her forest community ecology team. We measured sugar maple seedling regeneration and condition in plots in various watersheds. The project is still underway and Dr. Cleavitt will analyze the relationships between site characteristics, soils, proximity to neighbors, disease, and seedling survival.

I’m developing lessons based on the findings of Hubbard Brook scientists, from bird abundance to seedling survival. This winter I’ll be piloting the lessons, and others developed by HBRF in my high school field ecology classes. If all goes well, the lessons will appear on the HBRF website for broader use within the next year. Check out www.hubbardbrookfoundation.org for more information.

Thank you PLT for opening this opportunity for me and my students!

Reprinted with permission from the NH Fish and Game’s Project WEB newsletter (January 2011) which also features the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Read the entire Project Wet newsletter. More teachers’ resources can be found at http://www.wildnh.com/Education/for_teachers.htm

Follow this link to HBRF’s Education web site.

January 18, 2011

Green Mountain College (GMC) and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF) are collaborating on a plan called the Poultney Woodshed Project to fuel the College’s new biomass facility from local sources of sustainably harvested woodchips. The $73,658 project is funded by the Rutland Regional Planning Commission (with funds from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program), the High Meadows Fund, the Riverledge Foundation and the Luce Foundation.

The Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF) is working with GMC to secure woodchips harvested from privately owned forestlands located relatively close to Poultney. If successful, this project will produce carbon savings resulting from lower transportation distances for woodchips and support the local economy by engaging traditional stewards of the forest: landowners, foresters, loggers, chippers and truckers.

On April 22, 2010—the 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day—Green Mountain College inaugurated its new wood biomass co-generation facility in Poultney. The facility provides 85 percent of heat required by the College and 20 percent of its electricity, thus helping fulfill the college’s environmental mission by using renewable biomass energy instead of fossil fuels.

“The biomass project substantially reduces the use of number six fuel oil, which was the College’s main fuel source until this year,” said GMC President Paul Fonteyn. “As much as possible, we want to use woodchips from sustainably harvested local sources, which is environmental friendly and helpful to the local economy.”

The two organizations will recruit private and public partners working cooperatively to determine if biomass harvesting protocols set forth by the Forest Guild are acceptable to local landowners, foresters and loggers; to determine if sustainable harvesting practices can be done cost effectively; and to determine the amount of biomass that GMC can hope to purchase from local landowners over time. The overriding question the Poultney Woodshed Project will answer is this: “Is there a viable market for sustainably harvested, locally sourced woodchips?”

“Hubbard Brook and GMC hope to nurture no less than a community-supported energy enterprise akin to operations spawned by the community-supported agriculture (CSA) movement,” said David Sleeper, executive director of Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. “Our intention is that this new project will be self-sustaining and can be replicated in other communities throughout Vermont and the Northern Forest region.”

Based in Hanover, N.H., Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF) is a nonprofit organization established in 1993 to support the world-renowned Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study with policy and education initiatives, including recent projects on carbon cycling, biomass energy and ecosystem services. Green Mountain College was named by Sierra magazine as the “greenest school in the country,” reflecting GMC’s overall commitment to environmental initiatives. The College expects to be the first higher education institution in the nation to be carbon neutral by 2011 after having reduced its own emissions by over 50 percent.