Starting in September, a connection was forged between the 253-acre Irvington Woods and the 4,000-acre Harvard Forest, an ecological research site that Harvard University owns in Petersham, Massachusetts.
C.J. Reilly, the head of grounds and operations for the Irvington Woods Park and the director of education for the O’Hara Nature Center, added the land he oversees to two research projects being conducted throughout New England as part of Harvard Forest’s Schoolyard Ecology Program, which started in 2004.
For one project — “Our Changing Forests” — Reilly and 20 interns in eighth through 12th grades used plastic pipes and string to mark 10 plots, each 10 meters square. Inside each plot, the condition of every tree was noted and its diameter measured at a height of 4 1/2 feet. Future measurements will be made every spring and fall.
For the other project — “Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming” — Reilly enlisted Irvington Girls Scouts in first through fifth grades to document the loss of leaves in the fall and growth of leaves in the spring on 10 trees. For each tree, the Scouts note the weekly changes to six leaves on a single branch.
To participate in the projects, Reilly was trained at Harvard Forest in August. He will return there in January. He started working for the Irvington Recreation and Parks Department part time in 2016 and full time in 2021. He has a master’s degree from Teachers College at Columbia University.
Regarding the two projects, Reilly said, “This has been an exciting experience to see students learning and working through the many challenges as they are developing a greater awareness of the delicate ecosystem of their wood parkland and how the community might best manage it for future generations to enjoy.”
Participating in the Harvard projects builds upon a tree inventory of the Irvington Woods conducted by Land Beyond Sea in 2021, and a soil inventory conducted by the Cornell Waste Management Institute in 2022.
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