The Snor'eastercane/Frankenstorm

It's rather a nice day here, and forecast to be a very pleasant day tomorrow. After that...one local forecast that has seemed fairly accurate suggested 8 inches of rain on Monday and Tuesday next week as Hurricane Sandy sweeps in and merges with colder weather systems from the West and Canada. The media and coffee -room discussions are full of advice and alarm - it's all rather exciting. What we actually get here is still somewhat uncertain - it looks now fairly certain that a very (possibly record-breakingly) destructive storm will hit the coast between Delaware and New York, timed nicely for a full moon to maximise storm-surge damage. At 1200' here there is even a possibility of significant snow. I'll let you know what happens.

I've been learning some more about the experimental work here in the Harvard Forest - particularly noted for its long term ecological studies. There's some cool experiments going on, like the several acres of forest where the trees were winched down to artificially simulate hurricane damage (ah, the irony), and then monitored - now in the 20th year of monitoring. A more recent experiment has set out heating cables in the soil to simulate the effects of warming on soil structure and composition. The electricity bills are substantial...

In the oldest part of the forest there is a stand of 200 year old eastern Hemlocks. These probably survived because the site is poor and the trees weren't particularly valued for domestic use nor for the lucrative market in masts for sailing ships.

The pictures show the stand and the research tower used to collect information from various levels in the canopy. Its a wobbly 25m climb to the top, but terrific views over the treetops where the oaks stand out in russet tones against the pines and hemlocks. 




















In any discussion of the great northeastern forests the story of the American Chestnut looms large. Once a major component of the forest, valued for timber and nuts and simply for its impressive stature, it was lost to a blight disease imported from Asia. Knowing the story, I must confess I was surprised to find it everywhere. Rather like elms in the UK it re-grows from root systems and grows rapidly to 10m or so, after which it is killed again, in a kind of auto-coppicing process. There's a major effort to reverse the damage done by the disease through cross-breeding with Chinese chestnuts - rather like elm breeding, the confident press releases are not (yet) backed up by results. Given the depressing news about Ash dieback in the UK, one thing stands out - if there were resistant chestnut trees, they were probably felled in a great wave of 'use-it-or-lose-it' anticipatory fellings. It may not be clear which, if any, ash are resistant for some time, and perhaps tidying diseased ash is a short-sighted thing to do...



Above: Chestnut understorey in the oak forest