The Northern Forest of northeastern North America extends from Maine and the Maritimes to the edge of prairies in Minnesota and Manitoba. It is large, diverse, surprisingly continuous and increasingly significant in a world where much forest has been lost or damaged.
It also includes the Adirondacks.
The Northern Forest Atlas is a print and digital project begun in 2011 by Ed McNeil and Jerry Jenkins, the Northern Forest Atlas is a unique graphically oriented way to document the region’s current biology and provide tools for the next generation to study and protect it.
The Adirondack Land Trust is set to host an online discussion and a field trip showcasing the Atlas.
On Tuesday, February 9th, at 10 am, Northern Forest Atlas Director Jerry Jenkins will present a virtual introduction to the atlas’s free online resources, including photographs, videos and other digital tools. Jenkins will also give a brief botany lesson from northernforestatlas.org. For more information or to register, visit Adirondack Land Trust’s website.
On Saturday, February 20th, at 10 am, Adirondack Land Trust staff and two Northern Forest Atlas volunteers will lead winter botany field trips at a 600-acre property the land trust protects in the town of Jay. Botanists Ray Curran and Dan Spada will apply atlas lessons on short hikes. Field trip groups will be kept small as a COVID-19 precaution. For more information or to register, visit Adirondack Land Trust’s website.
Jenkins leads fieldwork, photography, writing and graphics for the atlas. He is a former staff scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack Program. Trained in physics and philosophy, Jenkins has 50 years of field experience as a botanist and ecologist in the Northern Forest. He is the author of Climate Change in the Adirondacks (2010), Acid Rain in the Adirondacks: An Environmental History (2007), and co-author of Adirondack Atlas (2004). Jenkins is a recipient of the Harold K. Hochschild Award from the Adirondack Experience (formerly Adirondack Museum) and the W. S. Cooper award from the Ecological Society of America.
Ed McNeil, president of the atlas project and a past chair of the Adirondack Land Trust. Ed flew throughout the Adirondack Park for a nitrogen deposition study using an airplane he built especially for the project, and then built another for filming videos for the atlas website.
For more information, email info@adirondacklandtrust.org, call (518) 576-2400 or visit the Adirondack Land Trust website.
Photo of A winter field trip by Erika Bailey/Adirondack Land Trust.
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