Technology tracks the toll road salt, phosphorus, and invasive species are taking on Lake George Ancient legends say that when a mermaid dies, her soul rises from the depths to become foam, or…
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Northern Woodlands For Education
Offering free high-quality place-based environmental education resources to educators and students. Northern Woodlands Goes to School (NWGTS): This program connects classroom teachers in the K-12…
Heirloom Apples
As Eve so famously discovered, apples are alluring. These brightly colored orbs tempt us with crisp flesh and juicy sweetness. It’s no wonder that apples have spread throughout the temperate…
September 2016
Your September photos revealed high-elevation leaf color and the woods in transition. Rattlesnake plantain, an evergreen orchid, gleamed against brown leaves, while an actual snake basked. One…
Birds in Focus: Canada Geese
The Canada geese now honking overhead in V-formation, perhaps more than any other birds, exemplify the fall migration. Except when they’re not really migrating, and except when they’re not…
Raccoons Prepare for Winter
Almost every time I checked the game camera last summer – whether it was stationed near the compost, pointed into the field, or hidden at the edge of the woods – I found photos of one of…
Ghost Buck: The Legacy of One Man’s Family and Its Hunting Traditions
Dean Bennett begins this memoir by reminding his readers that, in days gone by, the most important enterprise in the small Maine town of Locke’s Mills used to close down on the first day of deer…
Cutting-edge Timber Technology
A new breed of building appeared on the UMass campus in Amherst this past winter. In a landscape full of concrete, brick, and stone rose a four-story wooden frame, fitted together like a piece of Ikea…
Slime Time
Yellow-fuzz cone slime (Hemitrichia clavata) is a slime mold that is found in clusters on rotting wood. Neither plant nor animal, slime molds are known for the dramatic transformations they go through…
Vernon Town Forest
In the southeastern corner of Vermont is a 465-acre forest owned by the town of Vernon. It’s named the J. Maynard Miller Municipal Forest, after the local dairy farmer who convinced his town to…
Wild Grapes: Vital Fruits
The grapevine was so important to the ancient Romans that they called it vitis, after the Latin word for life. Today, botanists still give the name Vitis to the genus of grapevines. While the wild…
Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting
Have you, too, been annoyed by books that should have been abbreviated and published as pamphlets – how to change a tire, organize your garage, or how to make kimchi? I was ever so slightly on…
Tricks of the Trade: Make Your Own Choker Chain
Owning just a single choker chain is a lot like having one Crescent wrench in your toolbox. Sure, you can get the job done, but it would be a lot more efficient (and enjoyable) if you had a set of…
Monarch Migration Mystery
The long, instinctive migration of monarch butterflies from the northern United States and Canada to their wintering grounds in central Mexico is considered one of the natural world’s most…
Fewer Fires in the Forest
As the composition of tree species in forests in southern New England has evolved in recent decades, many of those forests have become more vulnerable to drought. The reason for the changing forest…
Long-Distance Delivery
In the world of trees, it is difficult for seeds and seedlings to take root far from their parent plants, yet that’s a key factor in seedling survival. “The closer you are to mom, the more…
Trade-offs: Exotic Invaders Are a Threat to Our Forests
Somewhere out there is a ship carrying, in one of its thousands of steel containers, a natural disaster. The ship could be an old rust bucket. Or a brand new, high-tech cargo vessel. It might be…
Field Work: At Work Buying Veneer Logs With Phil Stannard
You’d think, in our high-tech world, there’d be some sort of sensor or detector or app that could electronically evaluate and instantly confirm that a log is truly veneer-worthy. But the…
Peruvian Non-timber Forest Products
In Peru, a botica is a pharmacy – the sterile, white kind, with glass countertops, bright lights, and shelves lined with tidy boxes. But I’ve come all the way to Pucallpa – a noisy,…