Ice Storm Experiment (ISE)
Project Overview
Hubbard Brook researchers created the world’s first ever experimental ice storms in order to understand more about how forests respond to—and recover from—these dramatic winter weather events. Ice storms are common in the northeastern US and have the potential to reshape ecosystems, but they are notoriously challenging to study given their unpredictability in time and space and the dangerous conditions they produce.
The Ice Storm Experiment involved three main efforts: (1) experimental ice storms, conducted within controlled plots at a research forest, to understand and quantify the effects of different amounts of icing on hardwood forests; (2) synthesis of research related to the 1998 ice storm in New England to understand the long-term impacts of ice storms on forests; and (3) climate modeling to understand the frequency and intensity of ice storms under possible future climate change scenarios.
Principal Investigators
- Charles Driscoll, Syracuse University
- Lindsey Rustad*, USDA Forest Service
- John Campbell, USDA Forest Service
- Paul Schaberg, USDA Forest Service
- Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
- Sarah Garlick, Hubbard Brook Research Foundation
* project contact
Campbell, John L.; Rustad, Lindsey E.; Garlick, Sarah; Newman, Noah; Stanovick, John S.; Halm, Ian; Driscoll, Charles T.; Barjenbruch, Brian L.; Burakowski, Elizabeth; Hilberg, Steven D.; Sanders, Kristopher J.; Shafer, Jason C.; Doesken, Nolan J. 2020. A Comparison of Low-Cost Collector Configurations for Quantifying Ice Accretion. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. 59(9): 1429-1442. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-19-0280.1.
Campbell, John L.; Rustad, Lindsey E.; Driscoll, Charles T.; Halm, Ian; Fahey, Timothy J.; Fakhraei, Habibollah; Groffman, Peter M.; Hawley, Gary J.; Leuenberger, Wendy; Schaberg, Paul G. 2020. Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems. Journal of Visualized Experiments. 160: e61492. 15 p. https://doi.org/10.3791/61492.
Fahey, Robert T.; Atkins, Jeff W.; Campbell, John L.; Rustad, Lindsey E.; Duffy, Meghan; Driscoll, Charles T.; Fahey, Timothy J.; Schaberg, Paul G. 2020. Effects of an experimental ice storm on forest canopy structure. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 50(2): 136-145. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2019-0276.
Rustad, Lindsey E.; Campbell, John L. 2012. A novel ice storm manipulation experiment in a northern hardwood forest. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 42: 1810-1818. https://doi.org/10.1139/X2012-120.
Current Projects
We combine long-term monitoring with visionary experiments to advance our understanding of forest ecology.