News and Highlights | Hubbard Brook

Thanks to climate change and wetter weather, forest soils are absorbing less methane

Farming, energy production, and landfills produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Forests can remove methane from the atmosphere through the activity of soil bacteria. But increasing precipitation – a symptom of climate change – is making it harder for forest soils to trap greenhouse gases, creating a feedback loop that exacerbates global warming.

HBRF creates a new Advisory Council

On May 10, 2018, the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation convened a Hubbard Brook Roundtable at Pierce Lab to kick off the first cohort of a new Adivsory Council. The HBRF Advisory Council is designed to serve as an ongoing listening post for the scientists, staff, and trustees at Hubbard Brook. The purpose of the Advisory Council is to serve four goals:

Long-term monitoring is essential to effective environmental policy

Environmental policy guided by science saves lives, money, and ecosystems. So reports a team of eleven senior researchers in Environmental Science & Policy. Using air pollution in the United States as a case study, they highlight the success of cleanup strategies backed by long-term environmental monitoring.

On the 20th Anniversary of the 1998 Ice Storm, What Do We Know Now That We Didn’t Back Then?

Hubbard Brook’s intensive study of a past natural disaster is preparing us for future extreme weather.

It’s not uncommon for technical staff at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest to encounter obstacles during New Hampshire’s harsh winter months. But what greeted forestry technician Amey Bailey when she snowmobiled into the forest one Monday morning 20 years ago was far beyond any of the usual challenges.

New Mobile Tour App

Take a virtual tour of Hubbard Brook with our new app! The U.S. Forest Service has partnered with OnCell to launch a moble tour app for the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Visitors can use the app for self-guided tours or students and teachers can use the app to prepare for a field trip.

A microburst windstorm in the Hubbard Brook forest

On 2 June 2013 Hubbard Brook was visited by a severe microburst windstorm that blew down extensive areas of the forest. We quantified the pattern and extent of damage by this rare event to improve understanding of the role of such 'intermediate disturbances' in the dynamics of the northern hardwood forest.

Cues for Masting in Sugar Maple and American Beech

Many tree species exhibit the phenomenon of seed (or fruit) “masting” in which all the trees in a population produce large seed crops in a particular year.

Sugar Maple Decline Following Whole-Tree Harvest of Watershed 5

In 1985 we conducted a whole-tree harvest experiment on W5 to evaluate how forest ecosystems respond to this intensive forest management practice and associated high nutrient removal. Periodic measurements on permanent plots across W5 have revealed that sugar maple abundance has drastically declined during thirty years of forest development on W5.