Our census interns have been the engine of our forest census.  We’ve had many over the years – thanks in part to our fortunate relationships with the Student Conservation Association and Alabama A&M. 

But this year’s crew deserves special praise. Some of them, like Gabriel Sullivan-Brugger, will be taking their skills to other important conservation and wildlife programs. Our long term census leader, Joao Pedro de Godoy, hopes to further his studies at prestigious universities in Europe. We’re going to miss them, but we’re doing all we can to help these folks find the positions and opportunities they deserve. That’s part of our mission.

Fortunately, three of our research interns will become part of our permanent research staff this year. Nathan Paris, an expert botanist who did his masters work on native plants of northeast Alabama, will be leading our new forest census and shortleaf pine restoration efforts. 

Mary Wells will be coordinating our bird, bat, invertebrate and cave research, working to make sure researchers have the resources they need to do their work here. 

 Landon Rakestraw will be coordinating our aquatic, mammal and fire management programs. All will be working to polish the census data they’ve so carefully collected.

Keep your eyes on Sakora Smeby. She started work as a census intern, but has evolved into a member of our communications and outreach team. You’ve already enjoyed posts and photos from Sakora over the past several months, and she’ll be alternating with Bill Finch to keep you up to date on what’s happening at the center. Look for her column logo in future newsletters.

They’re the folks who are going to help us keep this research center growing into the next century.

Finally, this non-profit is finally ready for some serious business. And for the first time in 7 years we have staff members ready to tack the business of being a non-profit. Connie Schulz is our new operations manager. Becky Sims is our new facilities manager and scheduler. They’re part-time for now, but they’re already making a world of difference in how and how well we work.

We started eight years ago with the ambition of creating the largest and most diverse forest census in North America—an outdoor laboratory for forest studies unequalled on the continent.

This week, the census is done. All 60 hectares of it, about 150 acres, an area the size of 120 football fields, 3.75 miles long and two-thirds of a mile wide.

There will be more to do to put the data to bed. Our tree ID experts will need to go back and give names to a few thousand trees. The research staff will spend a few months peering into computers, double checking the quality of our work and data. We’ll unveil it all in a grand opening in late spring.

But the amazing and arduous work of measuring, geolocating, tagging and mapping more than 85,000 trees is done. 

There were fits and starts over the years (Covid, bad surveys, funding lags, etc.). But our latest census team is so efficient, I actually asked them to slow walk this last week or two so we could relish and photograph the final steps.

Now the fun begins. 

We’re working with a great forest ecology team to begin a study of the history of this forest over the past several hundred years. We’ll know more about what role fire history played in the creation of this forest, how humans have changed it, how growth rates have responded to changes in climate. 

 We’ve started a program with University of Georgia and National Forest Service researchers to look at whether native ant species – which play a central role in maintaining our native wildflowers  – are vulnerable to replacement by invasive ants that don’t give a fig for wildflowers.   

We’re plotting a first of its kind “DNA census” which will look at the critical differences between individual trees – something we must know if we’re going to save our ash, butternut, elm, sassafras, beech and black walnut trees from aggressive new diseases devouring many North American forests.

We’re exploring the deep hollows underneath the plot, thanks to the efforts of one of the world’s top cave researchers, Hazel Barton, and in the process we’re learning a lot about how the caves shape the forest, and – oddly enough – what they may tell us about life on other planets. If we can find the sweet spots deep in the caves that hold ancient deposits, we may discover what the forests of Paint Rock looked like tens of thousands of years ago.

Dawn Lemke and her team at Alabama A&M worked with Luben Dimov at University of Vermont, Rick Condit of the Chicago Field Museum and the Research Center to prepare the first paper to utilize some of the plot data. 

We’ve got research lined up on rare migratory birds, on new species of trees and flowers, on species long thought extinct, on the future of Alabama’s largest woody grass (the native bamboo we call cane) – all of which intersects with our census plot. There are lidar fly-overs with Oak Ridge National Laboratories and universities in Maine and New Hampshire , who’ll use our ground data to test the accuracy of their remote sensing.

There will be more, much more, both on the census plot and off. We’ll be featuring and expanding on that work more or less weekly in this newsletter. So stay tuned.

But in the meanwhile, celebrate this accomplishment with us. Offer up a toast, and remember the effort of the many research interns over the past 6 years who made this possible.