Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
YALE FORESTS NEWS
Brought to you by the Yale School Forests
À LA RUE FRANÇAISE
2015 ANNUAL REPORT
Mark S. Ashton
Director of School Forests, MF‘85, Ph.D.‘90
Summer Crew Report 2015
Eli Roberts, Assistant Forest Manager, MF ‘16
The great pontificator. Photo by Julius Pasay
In this newsletter we have plenty to
report in a year that seemed to me to go
so quickly.
The Year Behind…….
Our Forest Manager, Julius Pasay MF’14,
entered into the second year of his
fellowship. He has settled in nicely taking
on roles in developing the agroforestry
demonstration area and the “edible
forest understory” garden and taking a
much more active role in overseeing our
Quiet Corner Initiative (QCI). Julius also
presented on the accomplishments to
date of QCI at the New England Society
of American Foresters Conference
and Forest Stewards Guild Northeast
Meeting and is preparing something for
publication—stay tuned. The Apprentice
Forester program comprised seven
eager Masters of Forestry graduates who
performed admirably improving roads,
marking our property boundaries,
inventorying and assessing our stands,
updating our GIS map classifications,
and
implementing
silvicultural
(Continued on page 2)
Whoa, that’s a big pine. Photo by Julius Pasay
A hardy bunch of seven Master of
Forestry students moved to YaleMyers in May of last year as the
2015 Forest Crew. They transitioned
well from deftly slaying final exams
to dropping trees on target during
the Game of Logging chainsaw
safety training. They forged bonds
shoulder-to-shoulder over newly
deepened water bars, flexed their
raking muscles in the service of freeflowing ditch water, and built their
heavy machinery CVs with several
hours of mini-excavator time.
After breaking for Commencement
and a silviculture field trip to
California,
the
Crew—Akiva
Fishman ‘15, Blair Rynearson ‘15, Eli
Roberts ’16, Karen Bucht ’15, Logan
Sander ’15, Meredith Flannery ’15,
and Nick Olson, ’16—reconvened
to strategize about the French
Division: over a thousand acres of
working forest with no shortage of
mountain laurel.
Weeks of boundary marking and
forest inventory were interspersed
with lessons on the ecology, geology,
and biology of the forest, including
the collection of a hundred plant
samples arrayed on the bunk house
porch. Dr. Ashton and Mr. Pasay
put in endless hours to convert
this bunch of rag-tag ivy leaguers
into perceptive naturalists. After
collecting data, much GIS wrangling,
and re-mastering pivot tables, the
crew made their pitches to the Forest
Director and Manager for stands
eligible for various treatments.
(Continued on page 3)
1
Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
(Continued from page 1)
prescriptions to meet management
goals to diversify our forest
composition, structure and age class
distribution. This year they marked a
total of 446 MBF of sawtimber across
70 acres of crown thinnings and 67
acres of a variety of regeneration cuts
spanning first and second treatments
of irregular shelterwoods, seed tree
systems and group selection all in the
French Division.
We
started a nascent Field
Ecology Program for masters and
undergraduate students, including
two undergraduates from Yale and
students from a variety of other
institutions including the University
of Alberta (Edmonton), University
College London, and the University
of the South (SEWANEE). Students
were mentored by doctoral students
in Professor Oswald Schmitz’s lab
group and mine. This first batch
numbered five students who were all
motivated to experience a range of
different research protocols in field
ecology. In conjunction with this
program and with the Apprentice
Foresters we organized three daylong
workshops throughout the summer
on “Plant Identification and Habitat,”
“Identifying Breeding Birds and
their Calls,” and “The Ecology and
Taxonomy of Moths and Butterflies.”
These were held in collaboration with
the Peabody Museum of Natural
History. Last but not least in the way
of student programs, we started a
very nascent agricultural internship
program for students. We had one
Yale College undergraduate and one
FES Masters student participate in
a working experience on a rotation
of three very different local farms.
Students spent three weeks on each
of an organic vegetable farm, fruit
orchard, and diversified CSA farm.
There was no letup in functions
held at the forest this year. We had
43 separate events that comprised
seminars, workshops, professional
2
training events, film showings,
demonstrations, and shows for
universities, landowners, schools,
and alumni that reached over 1,500
participants.
In regards to our field research, fifteen
peer-review papers were published by
seventeen School Forest researchers.
Today we have 28 researchers of all
stripes (faculty, doctoral students
and masters students) from twelve
different institutions around the
region actively working on over forty
separate research projects on the
forest.
In our extension and outreach
programs for QCI, we completed 500
acres and six steward management
plans for landowners in “Management
Plans for Protected Areas” and
implemented recommendations of
past management plans with three
silvicultural prescriptions, two timber
sales, a created a silvo-pastoral
system, a sugar bush and a shitake
mushroom demonstration. To date
we have completed 26 plans totaling
2,600 acres and have a membership of
290 landowner partners comprising
15,000 acres in three sub-watersheds.
We have a lot more to do but we are
progressing nicely.
Finally, in regards to new happenings
to buildings and facilities we installed
two new gates, built a new bridge over
the Heck Trail, enlarged the current
parking lot and built a new guest
parking lot for 30 vehicles hidden in
the old-field pine stand to the south of
the main camp.
The Year Ahead…
This coming year we envision more
of the same but with even greater
ambition with the second year of the
new field ecology program and an
even larger agricultural internship.
With the generosity of the Class of
1980 we will be building an outside
auditorium to house an audience of
over 100 at our Yale-Myers Camp.
We hope to hold our environmental
film festival, and new events in music
and theatre within this building once
completed. We have the planning
permission and secured the money
so now it is up to us to build it. We
will also be embarking on grand
plans to build a research campus that
comprises a modern station housing,
a modern laboratory, storage rooms,
a seminar room, and an experimental
area well supplied with water and
electricity for controlled experiments
in ecology.
Demonstrating the proper use of a biltmore stick to eager MODsters. Photo by Julius Pasay
Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
(after a nonexistent red pine stand that
Dr. Ashton “remembered”), Using My
Maiden Name, and a habitat-focused
variable retention thinning called
HerpFest 2015. The crew remains glad
they don’t have to see the loggers’ faces
when these names come up on bids.
In total, the crew marked 430 MBF of
sawtimber.
(Continued from page 1)
Mike Ferrucci came to the forest
for the first day of tree marking. He
was able to help the crew through
decisions about a crop tree thinning in
two pine stands, with special emphasis
on operational feasibility. After some
practice, tree decisions that were
agonizingly slow became not-quite-as
slow. Just as they got used to crop tree
thinning, the crew moved to crown
thinnings with take-tree marking,
adding complexity and time spent
with arched necks. The decisions
that seemed straightforward in the
classroom became more difficult with
the nuance and imperfection of the
real world.
The summer was not all silviculture
and sampling, however: the residents
of Yale-Myers put on a Fourth of July
party that included barbecued pork,
excessive lawn games, and more glitter
and face paint than the founding
fathers could have envisioned. Several
crew members and researchers assisted
in the slaughtering and processing
the local pig the day before. The FES
brochures tout experiential learning,
and they mean it.
The Director of School Forests
and Chief Provider of “Small Eats”
The crew of ‘15. Photo by Julius Pasay
continued the generous tradition of
Monday evening G&Ts on the Ashton
porch, and provided entertainment
to guests by hosing off potential hot
tub-goers. Head Chef Marcus Pasay
continued his unprecedented streak
of non-repeated meals that fuelled the
Myers crew through arduous overland
treks and leisurely underwater
expeditions at Bigelow Hollow.
The real fun, though, came when
it came time to mark regeneration
cuts. The crew (with Mark Ashton’s
voice echoing in their heads:
“vertical structure!”) implemented
complex first-cut shelterwoods that
considered soil moisture, aspect,
species composition, wildlife habitat,
and financial goals. In the second-cut
shelterwoods (where the illustrious
crew of 2008 had preceded), the crew
was struck by the luxury of marking
25-inch oak trees, in contrast to other
stands’ decisions between epicormic
10-inch hickories.
The marked stands were combined
into sales: Penelope’s Hard Bargain,
Take It or Leave It, Akiva’s Golden
Jewels (after an unfortunate paint
gun incident), Squirrel Punting
Dreamweaver, Le Phantom Rouge
With sales named, MODs imminent,
and proverbial nappies newly obsolete,
the crew moved to Yale-Toumey
Forest in Swanzey, New Hampshire.
After a graduation ceremony with
past forest managers, they began the
now-familiar progression through
boundary
marking,
inventory,
prescriptions, and marking. Most of
that time was spent playing hide-andseek with surveyors’ pins, but the next
crew will certainly benefit from the
paint left behind. The Toumey totals
included 190 MBF of sawtimber.
To finish the summer, the crew
spent a weekend as guests of SOM
Professor David Cromwell in the
White Mountains of southern Maine.
Botanizing along an elevational
transect should always be punctuated
by crystal-clear swimming holes and
natural rock slides. Upon their return
to Myers, the crew spent their last days
emptying bottles to demarcate new
CFI plots, and, in the midst of MODs,
engaged in that time-honored pursuit
of MFs: convincing incoming MEMs
to change specializations.
The illustrious crew of 2015 ended the
summer older, wiser, and having taken
more ironic adult diaper pictures
than they anticipated. This signature
experience of Yale Foresters was made
possible by the hard work of many
people. These seven students will
go on to promote timely thinnings,
maintain generous stream buffers, and
equivocate about “social values” long
into the future.
3
Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
NEWS FROM THE FOREST MANAGER
Julius Pasay, Forest Manager
Another excellent year at the Yale
Forests that witnessed continued
improvements to camp facilities,
further
development
of
our
agroforestry demonstration area, and
the addition of 30 plots to our CFI.
Timber sales are cranking away this
winter on our drier sites as we wait for
this year’s winter to finally get cold.
At Yale-Myers
The French Division, just south of
camp on the other side of Centre
Pike, was the focus of this year’s
Forest Crew. Seven Master of Forestry
students in the Apprentice Forester
program took care of business in this
division, marking a total of 446 MBF
of pine and hardwood sawtimber.
As is usual, the students provided
the innovative names usually in
connection to some aspect of their
experience at the forest but please
don’t ask me what! The first sale the
students put together, known as
“Squirrel Punting Dreamweaver”,
surrounded the old French House
and included thinning old field pine
stands and hardwoods on the mesic
slope adjacent the house, as well as
a final shelterwood entry to remove
high quality hardwood logs from the
“Pie Thief ” sale of 2008.
From these sales, 35 MBF of quality
red oak will be turned into rift and
quartersawn flooring for the library,
dining hall, and communal areas of
the new Yale residential colleges that
are currently under construction.
In addition, the crew added 30 new
CFI plots to the CFI system, bringing
the total plot number up to 93. The
new plots were added to increase
sampling accuracy after 20 years of
regeneration harvests have increased
structural heterogeneity throughout
the forest. With the new CFI plots
included, Yale-Myers has 57.4 million
board feet of standing timber, 14.9
in reserve and 42.5 in production.
These numbers indicate that we
have reached a steady state and are
harvesting at current growth rates
as compared to our last inventory of
these plots ten years ago.
A new initiative that is coming
together nicely is the Yale-Myers
agroforestry demonstration area. This
area consists of three demonstrations
sites, two at Yale-Myers Forest
and one on a nearby QCI partner
property. These sites will be used
to hold agroforestry demonstration
workshops for students and Quiet
Corner residents. One of the sites,
a one-acre forest orchard, is a
demonstration site for the Climate
Change Response Framework run
by the Northern Institute of Applied
(Continued on page 5)
The Red Front Lot also received some
attention with a 35-acre thinning
called “HerpFest!” designed to create
more diverse age-class and structure
and included several small openings
for wildlife. One of our meadow burn
sites will also be enlarged during this
thinning.
Finally, the final shelterwood entry
of “Shawn Walker’s Eyeballs,” will
be paired with an adjacent irregular
shelterwood establishment cut, “Sri
Lankan Lunch”, to remove a total of
100 MBF.
4
Prime red oak logs from Alex’s Last Stand will be turned into rift and quartersawn
flooring for the new Yale Residential Colleges. Photo by Julius Pasay
Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
Climate
Science.
Educational
materials are being developed for
future workshops and tours of the
demonstration sites.
The one-acre forest orchard that was
cleared two summers ago was planted
this year. The plantings include over
30 edible fruit and nut species and
varieties and are arranged to grow
into a multi-strata forest garden.
Examples of canopy trees include
walnut, chestnut, and hickory-pecan;
midstory trees include persimmons,
pawpaws, and Korean dogwoods; and
the shrub layer includes blueberries,
raspberries, and wild cranberries.
RESEARCH NEWS
AND NOTES
Marlyse Duguid, School Forests Research
Coordinator, MF ‘10, Ph.D.‘17
What is likely my last year as research
coordinator for the Yale School Forests
I look back on this year fondly, almost
nostalgically. I continue to be impressed
with the breadth and depth of research
taking place at the Yale School Forests.
2015 was a great year for publications,
outreach, new research expansion, and
internships.
This past summer’s research seminar
series was amazing, yet again. We
learned about old-field communities in
a changing world, hormones and frogs,
wild bees, and bat conservation. The
talks were well attended and received,
with over 80 people showing up to our
final seminar of the summer. We are
currently booking speakers for this
summer, and it looks like it is shaping
up to be an interesting line-up. Mark
the dates on your calendar.
It was another great year for publishing
amongst Yale Forest’s researchers.
The folks in the Schmitz lab never
disappoint, and this past year was
no exception. Jeff Smith (MESc
’15) published his masters research
on Cascading ecological effects of
Part of the orchard was planted more
traditionally with heirloom varieties
of apples, pears, peaches, quince, and
pluot. This orchard complements,
the forest-farming site located across
the road under a small sugarbush
by the Morse house. Here, a shiitake
mushroom log rack, produced during
a QCI workshop, has been added to
the understory planting of ramps and
ginseng.
In addition to these two sites at YaleMyers, a silvopastural system is being
developed on a QCI landowner
partner property in Eastford.
Working in conjunction with an
landscape
moderated
arthropod
diversity in Oikos, and Rob Buchkowski
(MESc ’14, PhD ’19) published two
papers: Detritivores ameliorate the
enhancing affect of plant-based trophic
cascades on N cycling in an old-field
system in Biology Letters and Microbial
stoichiometry overrides biomass as a
regulator of soil carbon and nitrogen
cycling in Ecology. We also saw some
interesting work out of the Bradford
Lab. An inclusive study in Nature
Climate Change showed that Climate
fails to predict wood decomposition at
regional scales. Work by former postdoc Michael Strickland PhD (now
at Virginia Tech) with Dr. Bradford
looked at Compositional differences in
simulated root exudates elicit a limited
functional and compositional response
in soil microbial communities in
Frontiers in Microbiology.
A couple interesting studies came
from non-Yale affiliated researchers
this year as well. Hector Nuñez and
Roland de Gouvenain from Rhode
Island College published their work
from Yale-Myers, Seasonal Variation in
Understory Light Near a Gap Edge and
its Association with Conifer Seedling
Survival in a Southern New England
Forest in Northeastern Naturalist.
Robert Goodby from Franklin Pierce
and colleagues found and documented
a Native American fish dam at the Yale-
NRCS grazing specialist and a local
logger, we have marked 60MBF of
pine on 6 acres of land adjacent
to an existing cow pasture. When
finished these three sites will make
the most comprehensive agroforestry
demonstration site in Connecticut.
At Yale-Toumey
A final shelterwood harvest of the
“Embarrassment of Riches” (2013)
was just completed. The harvest
yielded 32 MBF of choice red oak,
much of which will help supply
wood for the Yale residential college
flooring. The oak regeneration in this
stand is absolutely phenomenal.
Toumey Forest, one of the first to be
documented in New England. Read
the paper The Swanzey Fish Dam: A
Large, Precontact Native American
Stone Structure in Southwestern New
Hampshire in Northeast Anthropology.
The summer of 2015 was a busy field
season with up to 10 resident researchers
at the Yale-Myers camp at any one time.
Adam Rosenblatt, PhD led the Schmitz
lab team examining how the classic
food web of spiders and grasshoppers
in old-fields respond to climate shifts.
Robert Buchkowski was back to do
some pilot work for his dissertation, and
could be found counting earthworms
and roly polies in the leaf litter. This
year we saw a great expansion of our
undergraduate field ecology research
program. Shannon Murray (MEM ’14)
returned as foreman. Sewanee student
Gabrielle Marion joined Yale college
undergraduates Serena Lian and Chase
Ammon as our core interns. They spent
the summer measuring trees, catching
grasshoppers, and learning the pains
and joys of field ecology research.
Visiting researchers Gabriel Oltean
(University of Alberta) and Louie Evans
(University College London) joined the
team for part of the summer as well. If
you know an undergraduate student
who would be interested in working as
a field ecologist for the summer send
them our way.
5
Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
NEWS FROM THE QUIET CORNER
Sara Rose Tannenbaum
The northeast corner of Connecticut
may look quiet by satellite, but the
Quiet Corner Initiative has been anything but quiet. From annual traditions to new education programs, the
QCI continues to embrace learning
in and taking care of the woods we so
love.
Last spring, we were lucky to host two
expert educators in our workshop
series. Sue Morse—the renowned
wildlife tracker, scientist and photographer—helped us interpret fresh fox
prints and pee stains in the snow at
Bigelow Hollow State Park. Tom Wessels, educator and author of Reading
the Forested Landscape, took us on
an interactive land use history walk of
Yale-Myers Forest.
Over the summer, we partnered with
three local farms for the first ever Quiet Corner Farm Internship. Abington
Grown, Buell’s Orchard, and Cranberry Hill Farm took turns hosting
Yale College student Adam Houston.
As Adam rotated between the three
different operations he learned handson about various farming methods,
including draft power.
Our 2nd annual Harvest Festival
celebrated the arrival of fall with a rollicking feast and plenty of good cheer.
This year we encouraged attendees
to bring potluck contributions. Our
friends and neighbors brought delicious dishes to pair with the locally-sourced food cooked by our student
chefs. Throughout the evening,
students and landowners worked
away at the cider press, learned about
beekeeping, and competed in crosscut
saw competitions, all to the tunes of
Yale College’s folk band Tangled Up in
Blue.
In October, we hosted 40 sixth graders
from Ashford Middle School for an
environmental education field trip at
Yale-Myers. We taught them about
forest management and landuse history. They played an interactive game
about tree competition for resources
like water, sun and nutrients, each
represented by a different color popsicle sticks.
After 5 years we have written a total of
26 management plans for our neighbors. That totals 2,600 acres! This year
we added the latest 6 from the Still
River Watershed. It is incredibly heartwarming to watch the relationships
between the students and landowners
and the land grow. Director Mark
Ashton’s new spring course on Forest
Health and Disease will continue this
tradition by using these management
plans and information on Yale-Myers
Forest to plan a neighborhood forest
health and invasive species strategy.
Looking ahead, we hope to provide
more opportunities for learning not
just about land management, but
about land conservation. In November, we partnered with the New
England Forestry Foundation to host
representatives from CT DEEP, the
American Farmland Trust, and the
NRCS. The speakers introduced us to
funding options for protecting and
maintaining Connecticut forests and
farmlands. Our new QCI staff, Rebecca Terry and Josh Morse, will be
working one-on-one with our landowner partners to help them explore
conservation options such as these so
that our Quiet Corner can stay quiet
in perpetuity.
SUMMER SEMINARS 2016
June 9th
June 23rd
July 7th
July 21st
FILM SERIES 2016
July 12th
July 26th
Refreshments 7 pm, seminars and
movies 7:30 pm. Speakers and
movies to be determined.
HARVEST FESTIVAL 2016
September date TD
6
Quiet Corner Initiative tracking workshop with Sue Morse. Photo by Dana Patterson
Yale Forests News Issue 16 February 2016
THANK YOU
We would like to acknowledge
with thanks donations and
gifts from various friends
and alumni for allowing us to
engage the students with our
neighbors and with providing
both students and landowners a
learning environment focused on
sustainable land management.
Thank you Class of 1980, and
USFS State and Private Grants
Program.
Follow us on Facebook and
Instagram!
Top: Infamous paper wasp nest
Right Upper: Red
prescription burn
pine
savannah
Right lower: Hermit thrush eggs
Left: Pileated woodpecker feeding
Bottom: Yale-Toumey pine thinning
Photos by Julius Pasay
7