Mt. Mansfield
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The last day of our journey through the physical, social, and environmental aspects of the Champlain Basin brought us to the mountains. Mountains are the outermost boundary of any given watershed and despite their formidable appearance they can be quite fragile.
We began mountain day at the Jericho Research Forest with Bill Keaton of the UVM Forestry Department. Jericho is one of UVM’s 5 research forests received through a large land grant, and is used for long term ecological studies, interdisciplinary research, instruction, and recreation.
The research at Jericho aims to explore the outcomes of different management techniques and policies for the forested mountains of the Northeast. The forest itself is a great long term study in the re-growth of a forest. Most of the land was clear cut and used for agriculture in the early 19th century and has since begun to recover to varying extents across multiple areas. While visiting the forest, we traveled to some of these sites that have been managed by researchers investigating innovative best practices. In each of these places, questions inevitably arose as to how each management technique will best benefit the watershed as a whole.
The mature forest is characterized by its relatively high volume of large northern hardwoods. The large trees are interspersed with other trees of varying sizes providing a light canopy at all levels of the forest from the ground up. There is also a great deal of organic litter in the mature forest as well as dead and down trees and standing snags. It is difficult to know whether this the natural state of the forest or whether there were other factors involved that may have kept much of the mountainous area from looking like this even in pre-European times.
The next area we visited was an area of planted exotic species. Varying exotic species were planted by the Conservation Corps without regard for native species of trees in an attempt to quickly alleviate the flooding due to the cleared hillsides. The resulting forest in this location is a largely Ponderosa Pine and Japanese Larch grove with little understory growth. Although these species aren’t native to the area, could the watershed still benefit from their presence?
The third forested mountain area that we visited was the patch cut. This is an area that has been clear-cut in order to allow for early succession, thus mimicking the conditions that might be created by a natural event. The area consists of very dense growth of young Aspen and shrubs which have colonized and taken over very quickly and provide a valuable habitat.
An experimental site for forest management and harvesting practices was visited next. In this sylviculture manipulation area, trees of differing ages are harvested, certain trees are favored by clearing around them, and debris is added to the ground. The site is then monitored to determine and fine tune exactly which techniques most benefit the mountain forest community as a whole. How can we ensure the health of our forests and mountains knowing the services they provide to our watersheds?
From Jericho we traveled to Mt. Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont at 4393 ft.
Mt. Mansfield defines the boundary of the headwater region of the Lake Champlain watershed. As a result it is of great importance to Chittenden County and all inhabitants, homo sapiens and otherwise. So, in order to understand what happens on the mountain we met with Pete Ketchum, a field supervisor, of the Green Mountain Club (GMC).
Pete explained to us the role of the GMC in protecting and caring for the Long Trail system and other Vermont trails. Since the Long Trail travels up and along the ridge line of Mt. Mansfield, the GMC oversees conservation efforts of the mountain's sensitive ecosystems.
As the headwaters of the watershed and one of the few alpine areas in Vermont, the environment of Mt. Mansfield is precariously perched between its ongoing struggle to survive and thrive, while being an attractive area for humans to recreate, work and live. Pete described the process of managing the trail on Mt. Mansfield as an act of balancing these multi-user interests with the protection of the sensitive alpine region, through education.
Facts from the day: