Hello all,
As I stood at the banks of the creek in my shady spot in Centennial Woods, the snow crunching under my feet were the only distinguishable sounds I heard. The naked branches of red oaks and sugar maples loomed over me, while the trigonal cones of Eastern white pines stood tall and green. There is some diversity between gymnosperms and angiosperms, but the forest is maturing and the nude hardwoods around me signified that I was standing in a Northern hardwood forest. The more hilly sections of the forest behind me seem to be composed of more acidic soil, as there is an abundance of Eastern white pines. The creek is still frozen as it was when I last visited, and there seems to be about an equal amount of snow underneath me. Being from California, I always assume spring will start in March, but Vermont has other plans. I see no buds and no green on the landscape, just strokes of white and brown. Using the Biofinder GIS program to further investigate ecological characteristics of my spot, I discovered that Centennial Woods is both a priority of conservation activities because of its physical landscape and because it is an block that contains interior forest. The physical landscape of this location has been shaped by thousands of years of glacier activities and sediment buildup from Lake Champlain, and to develop it would disturb the geological and ecological processes that have previously been perpetually driven. Centennial Woods is an interior forest block, which means it is a block of continuous forest, rather than a something like a roadside strip. This buffers the edge effect and allows a greater diversity of species to thrive within the forest. I hope this has been as educational for you as it has been for me! I’m starting to fall in love with the landscape and I hope I’m able to get that across.