Air intake for mercury speciation sampling at the Underhill AQ site: photo courtesy of Eric Miller.
About VMC
The mission of the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative is to serve Vermont through improved understanding of long-term trends, annual conditions, and interdisciplinary relationships of the physical, chemical, and biological components of forested ecosystems in Vermont.
The VMC also promotes the efficient coordination of multi-disciplinary environmental monitoring and research activities among federal, state, university, and private-sector agencies and interests with common interests in the long-term health, management, and protection of Vermont's forested ecosystems.
VMC works towards its mission and goals with a professional staff, web-based Project Library, education and outreach programs, and continuing efforts to support and coordinate Vermont's forest ecosystem interests.
Study Sites
The Vermont Monitoring Cooperative, initiated in 1990, has focused its support on forest ecosystem research projects on state and university lands of Mount Mansfield in northern Vermont and in the Green Mountain National Forest Lye Brook Wilderness Area and nearby sites in southern Vermont. These sites have been thoroughly characterized for multiple ecosystem variables over several years by consistent methodology and personnel, providing a unique and valuable long-term forest monitoring and research resource to Vermont. In recent years, VMC has also supported real-time data collection from three meteorological stations on Lake Champlain to better understand atmospheric dynamics in the airshed influencing Vermont forests.
VMC Cooperators
All researchers, educators, natural resource managers, non-profit interests, and others who have worked with the Vermont Monitoring Cooperative at its key study sites on Mount Mansfield and Lye Brook and/or submitted data and data products for management and archiving to the VMC Project Library are considered VMC Cooperators. This group is highly interdisciplinary, including federal, state, and regional biologists, forest managers, water quality experts, modelers, K-12 teachers, and many others.
If you would like to work at VMC-managed study sites or store your Vermont-based forest ecosystem monitoring or research work in the VMC Project Library for VMC-facilitated data management and/or on-line public access, please contact us.
Wood frog: photo courtesy of Jim Andrews.