What Is Maple Watch?
Maple Watch will be presented on March 22 at the NH Science Teachers' Association conference in Manchester.
Maple Watch is a scientific and citizen study of sugar maples, Acer saccharum. The sugar maple is an iconic tree in New England, the northern Great Lakes states and all along the northern Appalachian Mountains.
Climate change, rising temperatures and erratic weather patterns are projected to kill almost all sugar maples in the United States by 2100. Maple Watch aims to monitor the maple's response to climate change and, if possible, help conserve our sugar maples.
In autumn, the sugar maple turns a buttery yellow, the foliage patched with red, orange and every shade between. In early spring, sugar season, we who live among the maples tap them to make maple syrup.
The sugar maple is a stout, resilient tree. The photo on this page shows Isabel Keith, age 7, standing next to a "grandmother" tree at Range View. This tree was a sprout in 1690. Healthy sugar maples routinely live for 300 to 400 years. The maple has evolved to withstand storm, infestation, a hundred quirks of nature.
Native Americans have admired the sugar maple for 1000s of years. When the first European settlers came into the northern temperate forests, they found stands of maples, thinned, managed so that each tree had ample room for a wide canopy. The native Americans taught them how to tap the tree to make sugar.
Maple Watch is measuring sugar maple health and observing how this magnificent tree responds to climate change. The maple is already stressed by acid rains, pest infestations, fungus, and the stresses landowners put on trees as we "manage" its growth. A tree whose roots have been compressed by a logging skidder, defoliated by caterpillars, and drenched in acid rains may find rising average annual temperatures or unusual spring droughts the last straw in a battle for survival.
Our scientific study is a collaborative project by scientists at the University of New Hampshire and at the U.S. Forest Service Northeast Research Station in Durham, NH, with citizens throughout maple territory. In 2010, a dozen members of the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association will collect samples of spring sap for our study. As a sugar producer and a PhD candidate at UNH, I am the citizen scientist in the middle. Our Maple Watch Science page will report our work and our findings.
Our Maple Watch School page will report the work of teachers and school children who want to observe and study maples near their schools. Maple Watch grows out of Forest Watch, an award winning program supported by NASA funding at UNH. Visit this page to see what schools can do to help our study. As our study develops, the Maple Watch School page will offer curriculum activities, information and resources for teachers. And it will report what school children see among the maples.
Research
(Forest Watch)
