PS 2-20 - Opportunity in recovery: Leveraging a destructive climate-driven storm to educate about climate change at the Temple Ambler Field Station

Background/Question/Methods

Field stations are living laboratories for hands-on and field-based experiences, bridging the gaps between ecological theory and observation in natural systems, but they can also provide powerful opportunities to train students on our most pressing environmental challenges. The Temple Ambler Field Station established the Temple Forest Observatory in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) as a platform for integrated research and training and to promote diversity in the sciences. Remarkably, after detailed data on more than 4,500 woody stems had been collected by students and other scientists following standardized ForestGEO protocols, the Temple Forest Observatory was struck by a destructive EF-2 tornado, resulting from Hurricane Ida in September of 2021. While this large-scale climate-driven disturbance served to remind us of one of the many symptoms of climate change, there is opportunity in recovery. We are leveraging this event and detailed pre- and post-storm data to investigate ecosystem resilience to a novel but increasingly relevant type of disturbance in forests in the northeastern US, and to provide a diversity of students with a powerful interdisciplinary opportunity to study the impacts of climate change right in suburban Philadelphia.

Results/Conclusions

While ensuring the safety of our team to conduct field work in a highly disturbed forest matrix, students engaged in a detailed assessment of woody plant survival after the tornado. This provided not only a critical post-storm dataset but a unique experience for undergraduates to study the impacts of this severe disturbance on, for example, carbon pools, patterns of species diversity, survival of dominant trees, and wildlife foraging activity, the results of which were presented by students at undergraduate research symposia. We further established a new field-based course in Disturbance Ecology, educational modules for courses, and site visits that have challenged high school and college students to think critically about climate-driven disturbances through the lens of different disciplines, including biology, environmental sciences, geology, geography and urban studies, public health, architecture, and social science. In a world where changes are happening at unprecedented rates, providing students with field-based experiences that integrate across disciplines will be critical to preparing this and future generations for tackling the urgent challenge of climate change.