What's
Cooking
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What's Cooking
We have a couple of
projects "in the
works". Most immediately, we have finished most of our summer's
fieldwork on floodplain forests. These are the occasionally flooded forests
along larger streams. They often have trees such as Sycamore, Green
Ash, Cottonwood, Silver Maple, and Box Elder. We have spent much of the
last year trying to find good study sites around the County. Our goal
has been to have at least five sites in the watersheds of each of the
three major creeks (the Kinderhook, Claverack and Roeliff Jansen Kill),
for a total of 15 sites. Our plan is to conduct surveys for a variety
of organisms in order to better understand both the value of these
forests for nature conservation and the interaction of biodiversity and
physical diversity (that is, how bumpy is the topography? how variable
the soil? how variable the moisture?) . We will add a entry to our "RESEARCH" page once we start
to have some information to share; right now, we're still out counting trees.
The other project
that is in the works is our "Know
Your Place Project" (or KYPP). This project will involve the creation of a
participatory Atlas that will help people better understand our
changing landscape. The goal is not to promote any singular opinion
about that change, rather we just want to help stimulate and inform
thought, much as a library promotes reading and offers you books, but
doesn't tell you what you have to read. We have a couple of
"concept papers" that we have developed which explain this idea in more
detail. Click here
if you want to read a Word document giving a general description of the
project; click here
if you want to read Tim Biello's Word document describing his summer's
work on the project. Tim is a Masters student in rural
sociology at the University of Missouri; he has been helping us to
understand what sort of an Atlas might be most appreciated. Aspects of
KYPP have been incorporated into our current work plan (see below).NEW (as of 16 October 2008) & a REQUEST FOR INPUT: We are working on a three-year plan for our programs activities. The linked Word document outlines this plan, and any input is much appreciated.
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