FT 14: The Great Experiment in Conservation - Ecosystem Research in Adirondack Park, New York

Trip Itinerary: Potential Stops and Features for approximately 30 minutes of virtual touring (each topic 7-8 minutes), followed by live Q&A with AEC science staff and researchers: • Old-growth forest - search for mosses, invertebrate and fungal symbioses. This site is dominated by 350-year-old sugar maple, yellow birch, eastern hemlock and other trees that escaped fire and logging in the region in the 1800s-early 1900s. • a. Site likely harbors rare/undescribed species (e.g., discovery of mites living in epiphytic plants amid tree canopies).
• b. We may look for native pollinators, dragonflies and other interesting invertebrates.
• c. Long-term research of songbirds, plants, small mammals and new work on fungi, mosses and will illustrate concepts of resilience and change through time in an unmanaged, natural forest.
• d. The themes of conservation and refugia for biodiversity will be explored.

• Vernal pool – go underwater to see and hear the life of a small, ephemeral, forested wetland. • a. Explore adaptations of aquatic amphibian and invertebrate species to low oxygen, high-change seasonal environments.
• b. Discuss impacts of aquatic pollution on larval development and links to human health.
• c. Themes are climate change, phenology, wetland conservation and management.

• Lake ecology and loon nesting success over decades – visit a highly-studied waterbody (Arbutus Lake) to learn the story of lake recovery. • a. Acid precipitation damaged watersheds in the 20th Century, but federal clean air and water laws of 1990 enabled recovery of lake chemistry.
• b. However, loons in the region are experiencing new 21st Century issues such as (likely climate-induced) water level fluctuations that flood or isolate their shoreline nests, causing nest abandonment.
• c. Lake ice and snow cover has also changed over decades, suggesting major shifts to ecosystem processes and functions in this historically cool, wet boreal biome. We will explore the importance of winter to aquatic mammals and their prey.
• d. The fishery has also experienced change and we will discuss possible reasons and data as well as information gaps that are being studied in these protected watersheds.
• e. Themes are recovery of watersheds, population biology and predator-prey interaction.

• Harvested forest – management of overabundant understory plants, including an invasive disease complex and study of management options to maintain and restore ecosystem function. Time permitting, we will explore several of the following topics: • a. Beech Bark Disease has caused major shifts in structure and composition on managed and unmanaged forestland. Themes are: role of native species in a forested system; tradeoffs of action vs. no action in a protected landscape;
• b. Herbivory with deer exclosures to study wildflower and tree growth in the absence of white-tailed deer
• c. Black bear seasonal foods and use of heterogeneous wild and managed landscapes.
• d. Bat summer roost features in managed landscapes (note the site where White-Nose Syndrome was discovered is approximately 100 straight-line miles from HWF)

• Running through all stops are the themes of conservation land planning and policy; complex social-ecological systems; the interconnections of people and place; and the role of long-term research and monitoring at field sites.