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Land conservation modestly increases employment rates, a traditional indicator of economic growth, according to a new study of New England cities and towns, led by scientists at Harvard Forest, Amherst College, Highstead, and Boston University.

The study, published in Conservation Biology, is the first of its kind, estimating the local net impacts of both private and public land conservation

Satellite imagery, carbon dioxide measurements, and computer models all help scientists understand how climate and carbon dynamics are changing in the world’s forests. But the technology powering these high-tech data only stretches back about thirty years, limiting our picture of long-term change.

A new study in Nature Communications co-authored by HF Senior Ecologist Neil Pederson with scientists from Columbia University,

Over the next 50 years, land-use change in New England (both forest harvest and land development) will have more of an impact on forest dynamics than climate change.

And, if recent trends in regional land use are maintained, the landscape will fall far short of its potential to store carbon, explains a new paper in the journal Global Environmental Change, by HF

A partnership with Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth has led to the digitization of 600+ maps from the Harvard Forest Archive: local property maps, forest inventories, detailed maps of damage from the 1938 Hurricane, even winter range maps of local snowshoe hares! All the maps are free for download and use under a Creative Commons license.

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