The Overstory

By: Sara Santiago ’19 MF

Research has been conducted at Yale-Myers Forest for decades. For many years, Yale Forests has hosted an annual Field Research Day, welcoming visitors to YMF to learn about what the School’s faculty, staff, and students are studying.

Laura Green ’18 MF, research and extension forester for Yale Forests, revived this tradition and has organized the annual field day for the past few years. Green’s goal is to make the varied research occurring at the forest visible. “There is a lot of research happening all the time at Yale Forests and often being done by a single researcher or a small team of people,” she explains. Field Research Day is an opportunity to share these projects with the faculty, staff, and students working at the forests, the broader Yale School of the Environment community, and neighbors of the Quiet Corner by bringing them to the physical research sites to demonstrate how data is collected and how it becomes science. 

What have our researchers been doing in the woods? This year’s Field Research Day was held July 15 and highlighted both long-term and new projects on agroforestry systems, drone imagery, vernal pools, forest farming, and climate change. In case you missed it, here are some highlights from the day.

ADAPT Project for Agroforestry and Silvopasture

The day’s tour of field sites started at Hidden Blossom Farm, which is one location for the USDA-funded ADAPT (Adaptive Agroforestry Principles & Teaching-New England) project. Under the ADAPT project, Mark Ashton ’85 MF, ’90 PhD, the Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology and director of Yale Forests, Joseph Orefice ’09 MF, director of forest and agricultural operations for Yale Forests, Bernard Nyanzu ’24 MF, doctoral student, and Cayce Morrison ’26 MEM, postgraduate associate, are investigating agroforestry practices in New England. Specifically, they are examining silvopasture by addition and subtraction — either adding trees to a cleared landscape or removing trees from a forest to create an ecologically balanced pasture. 

At the YMF ADAPT site, they are conducting enrichment plantings of native berry- and nut-producing trees and shrubs in shelterwood harvest treatment sites to best determine how these trees and shrubs grow in gaps. The goal is for their model to be replicable; landowners could plant intermediate crops to produce food and welcome wildlife while waiting for a forest stand to regenerate. Morrison is excited about this research because it “offers New England landowners new knowledge and approaches to working with their land and hopefully, new awareness and appreciation, too.”

^{Cayce Morrison discusses ADAPT enrichment plantings, where fruit and nut trees like pawpaw, black walnut, hybrid chestnut, and elderberry were planted at a recent shelterwood. Credit: Owen Klein}

The “Drone Zone”

Next, participants visited the “drone zone” at the Yale-Myers Forest Lab, organized by doctoral candidate Jacob Peters. The “drone zone” is a demonstration area and funded lab that uses drones to obtain fine-scale LiDAR data and imagery of a section of the forest and compare it with direct surveys on the ground. Through LiDAR, Peters can visualize various tree characteristics, including tree height to the nearest 10 centimeters, broken branches, tree health, and topography under the stand. He can also capture aerial views of surface types and forest stands. During research day, Peters conducted a small demonstration with an undergraduate intern in the Ingalls Field Ecology Program of Yale Forests.

Vibrant Vernal Ponds

Senior lecturer Kealoha Freidenburg and doctoral candidate Julia Portmann introduced the tour to vibrant life at vernal ponds at YMF. According to Freidenburg, this research has been happening since 1996 through the Dave Skelly Lab. Researchers monitor over 60 ponds at YMF annually, contributing to a rich long-term dataset for their main target species – wood frogs. Freidenburg explains they can ask bigger landscape questions because of this data: how does climate change affect vernal pool species? 

^{Kealoha Freidenburg discusses frog biodiversity in vernal pool research at Yale-Myers Forest. Credit: Owen Klein}

Freidenburg emphasized the importance of accessing a research forest for experimental ecology. She referenced the lab’s 2014 study that found that amphibian species increased in ponds with more open canopy. Portmann agrees with the role of forest-based research sites. She says that “seasonal ponds like the one we visited at YMF are important breeding and larval habitat for many insects such as dragonflies or beetles (and of course, mosquitos) as well as other invertebrates like fairy shrimp, clams, and snails.”Portmann introduced the tour to her doctoral research, which is focused on understanding landscape and pond-level drivers of macroinvertebrate communities. Beyond YMF, their research extends to 30 suburban ponds in Madison and Guilford, CT where they are investigating the impacts of land use on wetland biota. 

^{Julia Portmann explains how aquatic invertebrate populations are used as indicators of water quality. Credit: Owen Klein}

Forest Farming

In a relatively new project, Laura Green and Nat Burr ’26 MF introduced the tour to studies on forest farming with a focus on native, medicinal understory herbs like American ginseng, goldenseal, and bloodroot. Under the guidance of Marlyse Duguid ’10 MF, ’17 PhD, director of research at Yale Forests, they are testing whether site indicator species are an appropriate method to determine where these plants should be cultivated. They are conducting this work under the umbrella of the Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition with sites across the northeast, including YMF. 

Field Research Day is an opportunity for community and science. Visit the Yale Forests website for more opportunities to visit and experience the forests.