AMST105[Type text]Spring 2017
The Eastern Forest:
Paleoecology to Policy
Brian Donahue
Rabb 348
781-736-3091
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 11-1; or by appointment
Course Description
The purpose of this course is to help students appreciate and live responsibly within the EasternForest. This major North American biome stretches from Arkansas to North Carolina, from Minnesota to Nova Scotia. It is the world’s greatest remaining temperate deciduous forest, retaining more of its areal extent and biological richness than the two similar forests that once covered Northern Europe and East Asia.
The first part of the course will examine the paleoecological development of the forest, its ecological structure, and its long history of human interaction. We will follow the development of American attitudes toward the forest, and our mixed record of stewardship and abuse. The last part of the course will look more closely at New England, a region 80% covered by a diverse forest that ranges from the oak woodlands of Connecticut to the spruce forest of northern Maine. We will explore the challenge of balancing sustainable use of forest resources with protection of biodiversity and ecological integrity.
The course will be heavily field oriented, with most Monday three-hour blocks away from campus. We will make field trips to local forests in Weston and Concord, with one all-day Saturday field trip to centralMassachusetts. About half of the field days will be devoted to experiental learning by participating in forest work in Weston including woodsplitting, making maple syrup, and forest inventory transects.
Each student will write a two -part research paper on the ecology, history, management and conservation of a major species within the EasternForest. The grade will be based 50% on the paper (15% on each of the two parts, and 20% on the final redraft), 25% on an exam that covers the first part of the course, 15% on class participation,and 10% on a reflective essay.
Success in this 6 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 12 hours of study time per week in preparation for class and working on research papers. There are field trips on Mondays, with accompanying journal notes and a brief reflective essay at the end of the course. The reading load is similar to a normal 4 credit course, is discussed during the classroom session on Wednesdays, and students are responsible for this material on the exam. In addition, the course has a major research paper of 20-30 pages, written in two parts and then revised for a final combined version.
This is an Experiential Learning course. In the eastern United States we inhabit one of the world’s great deciduous forests, which brings us many many benefits ranging from clean water to wood products. The course is designed to actively connect us to our forest. We will visit several local woodlands and will work splitting and stacking firewood, collecting maple sap and making syrup, and planting chestnut trees, gaining an understanding of forests and wood that is muscular as well as intellectual. We will meet with foresters, loggers, researchers, and wood artisans, experiencing something of how they see the world. We will work together or in smaller groups, overcoming the obstacles that winter woods work presents. We will discuss these experiences and write reflective essays about them, looking forward to how we might actively interact with surrounding ecosystems wherever we may come to live.
If you are a student with a documented disability at Brandeis University
and if you wish to request a reasonable accomodation for this class, please
see me immediately. Please keep in mind that reasonable accomodations are
not provided retroactively. You are expected to be honest in all your academic work. The University policy on academic honesty is distributed annually as section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Instances of alleged dishonesty will be forwarded to the Office of Campus Life for possible referral to the Student Judicial System. Potential sanctions include failure in the course and suspension from the University. If you have any questions about my expectations, please ask.
Reading
Required (most of book assigned):
Charles H.W. Foster, Stepping Back to Look Forward: A History of the MassachusettsForest, 1998.
Gordon Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present, 1994.
Course Schedule
Wed Jan 18Introduction
Mon Jan 23Weston TownForest Walk
Wed Jan 25Geology & Paleoecology: 100,000 year glacial cycles, paleoecological record of species migration since the glacial maximum 20,000 years ago.
Readings:
Thomas J. Crowley, “Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record,” CONSEQUENCES: Volume 2, Number 1 1996, (Latte)
John W. Williams et al, “Late-Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics in North America,” Ecological Monographs 72(2),2004, (Latte) BROWSE!
(browse this website – follow the migration of a few key species such as spruce, pine, oak, maple, beech, hemlock)
Mon Jan 30WestonTownForest: Tree Felling demonstration and Woodsplitting
Wed Feb 1Forest Ecology: Forest regions, ecosystem formation and stability under different climate, soil and disturbance regimes, landscape ecology.
Readings: Whitney, Ch 3-4
Mon Feb 6Rees Tulloss – woodworking
Wed Feb 8The People of the Forest: Native American occupancy, ecological impact of fire, hunting, shifting cultivation.
Reading: Whitney, Ch 5; Foster, “Ecological History of Massachusetts Forests,” pp 19-66.
Mon Feb 13Weston Town Forest—Winter woodlands ecology
Wed Feb 15America’s Wooden Age: Colonial and early 19th C period of
the farmer/logger and reliance on local woodlands.
Reading: Whitney, Ch 7; Foster, “Economic Uses of Massachusetts Forests,” pp 67-100.
Mon Feb 27Weston town forest: woodsplitting
Wed Mar 1“Letting Light into the Swamp”: The forest under assault. 19th C logging boom and the impact of agricultural and industrial expansion.
Reading: Whitney, Ch 8-9; Tall Trees, Tough Men (cruise)
Mon Mar 6Weston: Maple Syrup
Wed Mar 8“Woodsman, Spare that Tree”: 19th C Wilderness and Conservation
Reading: Henry Thoreau, “Walking,” “Huckleberries,” in The Natural History Essays (Latte)
George Perkins Marsh, “Man’s Responsibility for the Land,” in Roderick Nash, ed, The American Environment (Latte)
Mon Mar 13Film: The Greatest Good
First paper due
Wed Mar 15“Something for Hope”: 20th C reforestation with agricultural decline, establishment of federal, state, and local forest.
Reading: Whitney, from Ch 10 (pp 244-49);Foster, “Massachusetts Contributions to National Forest Conservation,” and “TownForests: The Massachusetts Plan,” pp 257-316.
Mon Mar 20Timber Framing – Bud Haworth, Berlin
Wed Mar 22Weston Town Forest—community forests
Reading: Brian Donahue, “The Town Forest,” Reclaiming the Commons, 1999
Exam due – 11:59 PM
Mon Mar 27Weston Town Forest -- Deer
Wed Mar 29Deer & Wildlife
James Sterba and others, “Does Hunting Make us Human?”
Mon Apr 3Weston Town Forest – woodsplitting
Wed Apr 5Invasives in the New England Forest
Reading: TBA
Sun Apr 9[or Sat Apr 8] Field Trip: HarvardForest, Gill logging site
Wed Apr 19Weston Town Forest – Hemlocks, ecological research
Mon Apr 24Weston Town Forest – woodsplitting
Wed Apr 23Urban Forests
Reading: Peter del Tredici, “Introduction,” Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, 2010
Mon May 1WestonTownForest: Chestnut Orchard
Wed May 3Wildlands & Woodlands
Reading: D. R. Foster et al, “Wildlands & Woodlands: Vision for the New England Landscape,” 2010