Articles

Are you interested in learning more about butterflies in our region, including rare habitat specialist species?

Because we are currently unable to offer any guided ecology walks in person, we are providing some new online resources to help guide your explorations of the natural world in Columbia County during this time of physical distancing.

Well, we've done it again - completed another season of work and decided to write about it.

You can find our 2019 Year in Review (.pdf) here.

Questions welcome!

Newly available aerial images (LiDAR=Light Detection and Ranging), which "look through vegetation" and depict the underlying topography, have opened a new window onto forest history in Columbia County. On this new website, Conrad tells the fascinating story of charcoaling in our forests, shares the location of remotely mapped charcoal pits (much of the mapping was done by Otter Vispo), and invites your participation in verifying the charcoal pits in your neighborhood.

We are looking back on a year full of interesting projects and wonderful encounters, and--as a natural evolution of our program--hope to embark on an exciting new adventure in the coming year. Our Year in Review shares some of the highlights of 2018 and gives a taste of things to come... 

Click on the links below to read more about our work:

We have had a busy field season spent in forests and on farms, in classrooms and in collaboration.  Our Year in Review shares some of the highlights of 2017.  Click on the links below to read more about our work.

We are offering a series of winter ecology walks (Nov 2016 - Feb 2017; check calendar for details) as an opportunity to become more familiar with the art of identifying woody plants without their leaves. We have compiled some Winter Botany resources to help walk participants and people who are interested, but can’t come to the walks, to delve deeper into the mysteries of winter botany.

An article by Dave Meyers about the Farmscape Ecology Program's work with the Hudson Valley Farm Hub that also gives a nice summary of the interchange between nature and agriculture was just posted by the Farm Hub - you can check it out HERE.

If you're curious to actually watch one of us try to make sense of all this, you now can, courtesy of the Cornell Horticulture Department. "Farming and Nature: Looking at it from both sides", a presentation given by Conrad Vispo in November 2013 at Cornell, is now available as an on-line video.