On March 13th, Josie, Kyle, and Laura presented the Ancient Forest Project, the Potential Ancient Forest Map draft, and the results of the 2024 pilot study. Visit this link to watch the recording and access a PDF of the slides. https://hvfarmscape.org/ancient-forest-project-presentation-recording/
Introduction:
During our research for the Field Guide, which was necessarily broad in nature, we identified three habitats of potentially high biodiversity value that are at risk of being unwittingly destroyed, because they are difficult to distinguish from similar, more common habitats in our region. These at-risk habitats are ancient forests, dry meadows, and wet meadows. To build upon the Field Guide, we have begun an initiative of projects and studies to dig deeper into these habitats. To learn more about this initiative and its goals click here.
The following briefly describes what ancient forests are, why we consider them worthy of more attention, what actions we hope to take to better document and raise awareness about them, and our latest update on the work.
What are Ancient Forests and why do they need to be conserved?
A forest is considered “ancient” if it has never been entirely opened for agriculture, based on evidence from historical aerial photos and LIDAR scans. They may have been at least partially logged and/or served as forest pasture, so most of our regional ancient forests are not “old-growth,” but, like old-growth, they have been forested since the return of trees after the last glaciation (11,000 years ago).
Agricultural conversion can dramatically alter soils and destroy slow-to-disperse plant populations. Studies (including our own fieldwork) have shown that ancient forests can harbor species that are absent from the secondary forests which have regrown on former farmland within the last 80-120 years. This “post-agricultural” forest makes up most of our county’s forest, especially on the flatland.
Unfortunately, most people do not distinguish between ancient and secondary regrowth, and thus development activities rarely differentiate between these two forest types. ancient forests are often located on relatively inaccessible terrain, such as hilltops/ridges. New building technology means such areas are now increasingly targeted for residential development. Once a parcel is developed, its ancient forest has been destroyed and the ecology of adjacent ancient forest stands may be at greater risk due to fragmentation and edge effects. Once ancient forests are destroyed, they are–by definition–gone forever.
What will we do? By county-wide mapping of ancient forest remnants, we will learn how much/little of this habitat is left, where it is located, and what the size of these remnants is. By conducting more field research, we hope to document additional differences between ancient forest remnants and neighboring post-agricultural forests. We plan to focus on spring wildflowers, which we have not yet properly documented, because of the timing of our previous botanical surveys; ants, which often have a close relationship with spring wildflowers; and mushrooms, which we formerly did not have the taxonomic expertise in our team to document. There is evidence from other places that the fungal communities are more diverse and abundant in ancient than in post-agricultural forests.
In summary, this project proposes to:
- Create a county-wide map of the remnant ancient forest patches to prioritize and quantify them
- Conduct field research to document the biodiversity of these forests (with a focus on plants, fungi, ants, and other soil-dwelling organisms)
- Educate the general public about the value of these unique forests through guided walks, presentations, online resources, and printed materials.
2024 Pilot Study Update
We are grateful to have secured funding to create a map of the ancient forests of Columbia County that will be publicly accessible and serve as a tool to protect these special forests. We are still looking for funding to continue our efforts to document the preserved biodiversity in the ancient forests.
This last season, we conducted a pilot study in five pairs of ancient and post-ag forests on the same soil types and sampled for organisms that were not fully represented in the Field Guide research: spring wildflowers, macrofungi (mushrooms!), ants and other soil invertebrates. For this first season, we focused on the ancient Northern Hardwood habitat, described in the Field Guide as one of our rarer forest types which has deep, rich soils and is mostly found in the northeastern part of the county (New Lebanon, Canaan, and Austerlitz). We compared this habitat to Young Hardwood Forests on the same soil types.
In the spring, Josie documented spring wildflower frequency and abundance and through the rest of the summer, conducted mushroom surveys once a month (here’s a blogpost about some finds). Kyle surveyed for ant nests while also gathering some information on forest structure and microtopography. This fall, Laura surveyed invasive plants and earthworms, which may be impacted by land use history, and collected soil samples to identify soil invertebrates that are helpful indicators of soil health and disturbance. Over the winter, we will be analyzing our data, creating the ancient forest map, and identifying more study sites for the next field season.