The Northeast Chapter of the SWS is sponsoring a field trip to upper Connecticut River floodplains. Christian O. Marks will conduct a tour of The Nature Conservancy’s Connecticut River floodplain restoration projects.  Trips being considered include the following:

• Visit the new Johnson Farm WMA in Canaan, VT where we can see floodplain forest restoration plantings as well as compare natural regeneration in old hay fields and old corn fields. The plantings include field trials of American elm crosses that are part of a collaboration between TNC and the USDA FS to develop new cultivars of American elm that will have greater disease tolerance as well as other desirable traits. Johnson Farm is a good place to talk about natural regeneration in floodplain forest tree species. If we have time, we could also visit the Brunault tract across the river in Colebrook, NH (which TNC will be doing conservation work on next in collaboration with NH F&G). The Brunault property has the thickest silver maple (i.e. 8 feet dbh) that I have ever seen in the Connecticut River floodplains which might be nice spot for taking a group photo.
   
• Visit a TNC floodplain preserve (e.g. Young Farm in Maidstone, VT or Potter Farm/Andritz in Groveton, NH). Things to see include not just good examples of remaining floodplain forest patches, point bars and oxbow wetlands, but also some small restoration experiments (to compare different restoration techniques) and some stream buffer plantings. These sites also have some of TNC’s floodplain forest research transects where we can talk about ecological relationships between species distributions and flooding, sediment deposition, floodplain forest succession, ecological role of American elm, etc. This is also a good place to discuss stream buffers and more particularly when they work and when they fail and why. We can also talk about our experience on factors associated with different rates of tree planting success.

TNC’s website provides some background and can be viewed here: http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/areas/connecticutriver/index.htm

More details to follow.