2004 Team - Bethany Burgee: Smith College / Thad Miller: Bethel College
Bethany and Thad studied the distribution and abundance of invasive exotic plants in relation to land use history and environmental characteristics at Highstead. They established over 100 permanent forest plots on the property, providing baseline vegetation data for our print and electronic outreach and education materials, as well as data from which all subsequent research at Highstead can draw.
2006 Team - Dana Graef: Princeton University / Lisa Schauer: New Mexico State University
Dana and Lisa extended Highstead's grid of permanent forest plots into abutting conservation lands owned by the Nature Conservancy, the Redding Land Trust, and the Town of Redding.They established and sampled over 60 plots, broadening the diversity of forest types and land use characteristics sampled on Highstead's lands and successfully forging partnerships with other conservation groups in town.
2007 Team - Catherine Erne: Shippensburg University / Jesse Taylor-Waldman: Connecticut College
Catherine and Jesse studied the distribution of forest communities and invasive plants across the Redding landscape and the role of deer browsing in oak forests of southwestern CT. They established 45 permanent vegetation plots across Redding, stratifying by bedrock type, surficial materials, and soil type; and they sampled deer browsing, antler scraping, and forest understory characteristics in 20 plots across Redding and five surrounding towns.
2008 Team - Dave Grunzel: Washington and Jefferson College / Luke Reese: University of Minnesota
Dave and Luke studied 250 years of forest compositional change in Redding, CT and assessed the impacts of deer and moose to southern New England forests. Dave and Luke sampled and identified over 800 trees across the town of Redding, sampled the herbaceous and overstory tree layer in Highstead's oak forest exclosure plots and collected baseline seedling, shrub, and herbaceous data in Harvard Forest's deer and moose exclosure plots.
2009 Team - Stephen Murphy: Denison University / Erik Yando: Connecticut College
Stephen and Erik studied five years of forest change across Highstead, focusing on the effects of deer browsing on mountain laurel sprouting and tree regeneration and the spread of invasive plants. They re-sampled 90 permanent forest plots, measured regeneration characteristics of over 100 mountain laurel stems, and calculated tree seedling density inside and outside of our three deer exclosures.
