REU Student Presents Carbon Work at National Meeting

Kate Eisen, Summer Program for Ecology participant, presented a talk at the 2012 Society of American Foresters National Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii. The talk, "Long-Term Measurements Support Continuation of Northeastern Carbon Sink," was developed from her Summer 2011 research at the Harvard Forest. She worked with Collette Yee and mentor Audrey Barker Plotkin to complete the fifth census of a 3-ha forest stand that was originally mapped and measured in 1969. She found that forest biomass increased linearly over 42 years, from stand ages of approximately 60 to 100 years. Red oak drives this growth. However, while red oak comprises the largest percentage of the total forest biomass and basal area, it is not prominent in the understory, suggesting the forest composition may change significantly in the future.