The edges of large streams can create unique conditions for the vegetation growing upon them. Regular flooding can bring physical and hydrological challenges, while coarse soils on some sites can mean that, for portions of the year, the ground is surprisingly dry. Unique plant combinations have arisen on such lands, but their sometimes flooded conditions and the flotsam and debris of past floods often discourage exploration. Floodplain forests are commonly part of farmland because low flatlands in general often provide the best agricultural soils. Our work, largely in collaboration with Hudsonia, described variation in forest types across floodplains in Columbia and Dutchess counties. We documented some cool plants (and an impressive array of floating garbage). We also mapped such forests and provided our thoughts on their conservation.

2009 Report on the Floodplain Forests of Columbia County: This report summarizes our explorations here in Columbia County, and includes maps and diagrams of our forests.

The Dancer’s Hem:This is a popular, less data-dense version of our report for those of you who want the fluff without the meat.

2010 Report on the Floodplain forests of Dutchess and Columbia Counties: Summarizes our overview of the forests based upon our collaborative with Hudsonia.

One can rummage, wet-footed, about a swamp forest; watch butterflies and swat horse-flies in a hay field; and flip rocks on one of our sub-alpine hilltops; or one can step back and look at how these various parts of our landscape are arrayed and interconnected. It doesn’t tell you as much of the detail as the ‘up close and personal’ approach, but yet it provides you with an overview that a more myopic view wouldn’t give. The Living Land Project is our effort to explore this overall picture, both in its component parts and as it assembled to form our County. The idea is that by helping you understand a bit more about where you’re standing at any given moment (e.g., In what kind of forest? At whose favorite spot?), you’ll begin to better understand the different ‘patches’ of the landscape and so begin to put together your own vision of the quilt as a whole. Who lives where and why? What sort of lands do your neighbors like or dislike? Ultimately, we hope this work will give you insight into how human and non-human nature can coexist in the County.

Living Land Project: Updates, tools, and exploration opportunities from our Living Land Project.

A place in nature can be special in many different ways. It might be the secret place under the protective branches of a weeping willow in a child’s back yard or the favorite swimming hole of an entire community during hot summer days; a much visited hilltop that provides an exceptionally beautiful view of our hills and valleys or the hidden vernal pool visited each spring by only a few people who enjoy welcoming the frogs and salamanders back to their breeding pond. These are special places for people and a part of the socio-cultural research for the Living Land Project is dedicated to documenting these culturally special places by asking people to tell us about them.

However, we try to balance people’s perspectives and preferences with the preferences and needs of the wild creatures that share the land with us. Ecological inventories conducted as part of the Living Land Project and during other projects help us find the ecologically special places where rare and unusual native plants and animals find a home in our landscape. The cool rocky creeks tumbling out of the Taconics which seem to be the only place where Spring Salamanders live in our County; the dry meadows where the caterpillars of the rare Indian Skipper butterfly feed on the native Little Bluestem grass and where the adults can be observed for a couple of weeks each spring; the calcium rich fens which harbor the federally endangered Bog Turtle; and, yes, the vernal pools which are crucial breeding habitat for certain amphibians such as Spotted Salamanders and Wood Frogs.

Living Land Project: Learn more about our ongoing project to document ecological habitats throughout the County, alongside people’s perceptions of these places.

Culturally Special Places: Learn more about our Special Places Mapping Project (and share your special places!)  Also, stay tuned for updates from our Children’s Special Places Project and interviews with elders about their childhood special places.

Ecologically Special Places: A slide presentation that gives an overview of the native plants and animals that share the land with us and the ecologically special places where rare and uncommon wild species live in our County.

“Farms” is one of those relatively rare terms that connotes both a way of life for humans (farmers) and a way of nature (farmland). Working in a county with a long agricultural history and continued farming activity, our work touches upon both aspects. We explore how and why farmers interact with the land, and what that interaction means for nature in our landscape. Our work happens at various scales, from attempts at a county-scale overview to ecological descriptions of particular farms. We hope that our work is helpful for those farmers seeking to both support and benefit from nature, and for those members of the general public who are open to a more integrated view of their semi-agricultural landscape. Below are some links to the farm-specific work that we have done, though all of our work has been deeply informed by the County’s agricultural landscape.

Food and Farming:  This page is an introduction to the cultural dimensions of food and farm interactions.  Below are resources that particularly explore the situation of new farmers in the area:

• New Farmer Narrative Project: This describes Anna’s work with new farmers around the County.  Why are they farming? What are their rewards and challenges?  The project also features a Map of New Farms in Columbia County, depicting the location of the 50 new farms mapped in 2012

Farm and Nature Interactions:  This page is an introduction to our work at the intersection of farms and nature, and includes links to more detailed explorations of on-farm biodiversity and agroecological services provided by farms.  It also includes descriptions of habitats at two local farms, linked below.  You can also see our detailed descriptions of a variety of on-farm habitats and their management considerations.

• Description of habitats at Roxbury Farm: This map and narrative outlines the habitats and management interactions on this Kinderhook farm.
• Description of habitats at Hawthorne Valley Farm: This document describes habitats and management for our home farm here at Hawthorne Valley.

Forests have covered our landscape for most of the millennia since the last glaciations left some 15,000 years ago or so. Given our current combination of soils, temperature and rainfall, they continue to be the land’s natural inclination in the majority of the County. This means that many of our native creatures are forest species. Walk out of an upland field and into a forest, and you have usually walked out of some highly cosmopolitan mix of Asian, European and North American plant (and animal) species and into a much more richly native world. Most places on our landscape, if left to their own devices, will return to forest. There are many kinds of forests, formed by the different combinations of soil, hydrology and climate, and by the different disturbance histories – axes and chain saws, hurricanes, fires, bulldozers, deer, floodwaters…. Forests are finely textured and dynamic places. We hope our tools will help you familiarize yourself with the woods.

For more information, please see the following:

Winter Woody Plant Botany: A set of images and words meant to open your eyes to the exciting, if cold-fingered, world of winter botany.

Forests: Our web page introducing the County’s forests.

Floodplain Forests: Those muddy, messy woods along our larger streams are worth delving into; this page might help you see why.

Ancient Woodlots: The botanical variation in our forests is a product not just of variation in the physical environment, it also reflects stand history. This page explores one example of the power of happenstance.

Food is sustenance and science; ecology and taste; joy and business. While an integral part of human existence, our food is also, because of the consequences of what we raise and how we raise it, a prime determinant of the land’s ecology. Because of our interest in both the welfare of people and the health of the land, we have been looking at food production from both the sociological and ecological perspectives. What can we grow here? How can that food production support the farmers, and yet also be equitably distributed to the County’s residents? How does food build human and ecological communities?  These are ongoing questions, but below you can find two of the ways we have recently been exploring them.

Columbia County Food System Studies: A multi-faceted look at different parts of the food system in Columbia County, from the perspective of both producers and consumers.

New Farmer Narrative Project: A deeper exploration of the new farmers who are choosing to produce food locally.  What motivates somebody to take up farming in this County? What are the challenges they face and the joys they experience? This project explores the stories of 20 new farmers around the County.