As a graduate and PhD student under UVM Professor Emeritus Hubert (Hub) Vogelmann in the mid- to late 1960s, Thomas Siccama climbed the Camel's Hump mountain every week, winter and summer, in all kinds of weather. The result: the now-famous research of acid rain on Camel's Hump, what many have called "a brilliant study," and the UVM library special collections calls its most requested. Today Siccama is "without a doubt one of the leading field scientists in the country," said Vogelmann, "and he has international recognition for his pioneering research on terrestrial ecosystems." Siccama, now of East Haven, Connecticut, received botany degrees from UVM in 1962, 1964 and 1968. A testimony to both his CALS education and to his own abilities, he went directly from UVM to Yale University where he continues to teach and do research, though, as his daughter Carolyn Siccama joked, "they have had at least three retirement parties for my dad." Over the years he earned promotions culminating in professor of forest ecology and director of field studies at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. There, he is hailed for his popular field-work courses, won the School's top teaching and advising award — four times — and authored or co-authored more than 120 research papers. He began his work for Yale in 1967 as a field researcher on New Hampshire's Hubbard Brook. Today he is an important contributor to the now world-famous Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study. Herb Bormann, Oastler Professor Emeritus of Ecosystem Ecology at Yale, who originally hired Siccama, explained, "Tom devised a computing system to follow the response of watershed vegetation through time and space, that allowed us to understand both those systems altered by experiments as well as those that were intact." He collected, analyzed and archived thousands of plant and soil samples. He has also followed tree growth rates and spruce and sugar maple decline in Hubbard Brook's watersheds. "And that is the crux of Tom Siccama's most valuable contribution, well beyond even his own renowned research. His incomparable work is also the foundation for the work of others," said Tom Vogelmann, dean of UVM's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences as he presented the 2009 Outstanding Alumni Award to Siccama at the College's annual award dinner on May 9. "Who knew, for example, that Siccama's UVM work with Hub would help today's UVM graduate students' work with Brian Beckage, assistant professor of plant biology?" Beckage, Siccama, and colleagues demonstrated that the hardwoods on Camel's Hump increased their range upward into conifer territory — an indicator of rapid climate change. That study, published in 2008 in the esteemed Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, added new data to Siccama's work during those weekly climbs back in the sixties and created a study spanning 40 years. Likewise, Siccama's Hubbard Brook research is exquisite on its own and an extraordinary foundation for further study. In the middle of Siccama's own 13-page curriculum vitae, he switches to 18-point italics type to emphasize the importance he places on making the Hubbard Brook data widely available. Siccama writes, "In the last several years, one of my major interests has been the conversion of 30+ years of various data related to (these) projects into the World Wide Web." Posting his copious research on the Web will be a springboard to comprehensive, wide-ranging studies for generations of future scientists. CAPTION: Forest ecologist Thomas Siccama '62, G'64, PhD'68, received a CALS Outstanding Alumni Award at the 16th Annual Alumni and Friends Award Dinner at UVM's Davis Center on May 9. ~contributed photo