Canoeing in the Adirondacks
Hello, my name is Sam Gersie and I’m from northwestern New Jersey. Believe it or not, it’s actually pretty nice there. I am a rising senior at the University of Vermont, with a major in Environmental Science and minors in Forestry and in Geospatial Technologies. I love to hike, canoe, and listen to good music.
Here at Hubbard Brook I am working on a project reconstructing forest history. I am working under the guidance of Drs. Scott Bailey and Charlie Cogbill. The project involves looking at tree cores that have been taken all over Hubbard Brook Valley and analyzing them for growth releases. When a tree has a favorable growing season the ring for that year is larger. These years normally occur when a tree receives more sunlight due to another tree next to it dying. By finding these growth releases it is possible to tell when disturbances occurred in the forest. The two main disturbances to happen in Hubbard Brook include logging in the early 1900’s and a hurricane in 1938. Since we know the exact locations of the trees that have been cored, it is possible to tell when and where disturbances happened in the forest. The second part of my project will be to enter this data into GIS format to present a spatial view of the disturbance history at Hubbard Brook.