Santanoni Preserve - Newcomb Lake to Moose Pond

By the time I finished my hike to Moose Pond I had, according to my GPS, covered over 17 miles. That's a long walk, but it's not as difficult as it might sound because much of the way was over trails that follow what were once well-built woods roads. That makes for relatively fast and easy walking. It also didn't hurt that it was a nearly perfect day for hiking; early fall, cool, and mosquito free. I walked the Newcomb Lake road to the Moose Pond crossover trail. Then over the crossover trial to the Moose Pond Horse trail and out the Moose Pond trail to the pond. I returned following the Moose Pond trail back to the Newcomb Lake road and out.

The route as recorded by my GPS and viewed in Google Earth. That's Newcomb lake on the right and Moose Pond at the upper left.

The highlight of the route is the five mile trail that connects the Newcomb Lake road with the Moose Pond Horse Trail. The Newcomb Lake road is the five mile long gravel road leading to Camp Santanoni on Newcomb Lake. This area is managed by DEC as a historical site and the road (closed to public vehicle traffic) is a great walk in its' own right. The road also delineates a section of the High Peaks Wilderness boundary so, when you leave the road (after four miles) you immediately enter the High Peaks Wilderness. The five mile long trail that connects the road with the Moose Pond Horse trail is a beautiful and invigorating walk.

Fall in the Adirondacks. Even the swamps look good.

The first section of the connecting trail stays south of Newcomb Lake until you reach the unnamed inlet stream at the west end of the lake. This stream flows through an extensive wetland which is crossed without difficulty over a solid bridge and then a long split-log boardwalk.

Bridge over the inlet stream.

The boardwalk crossing the Newcomb Lake Inlet. 

Just past the end of the boardwalk you reach a trail junction. Turning right the trail leads along the north shore of the lake and loops back to the great camp area and the road. The trail to Moose Pond turns left (west) and enters a spruce/cedar forest.

For someone interested in forest communities, and succession in forest communities, this section of the trail is fascinating. The terrain is flat, and wet, and the forest mix is typical for that type of terrain; dominated by Spruce and Balsam Fir. The interesting part is that the Spruce here are larger than is commonly seen. Probably not virgin timber large, but old second-growth large. Added into the mix are large Cedars that appear to be quite old. On a clear fall morning this section of trail felt like a trip back through time.

Large cedars are mixed in with Spruce, Balsam Fir and other tree species.

And this trail is little used. From the bridge the trail stays close to the stream for a mile or so and this section of trail is overgrown with some blowdown to work over and around. There are a few places where if it weren't for the trail markers you might have to search around a bit to find the path.

Eventually the route gains enough elevation that you enter a mixed hardwood forest. This section of the route covers roughly two miles before joining up with the Moose Pond Horse Trail. It's not a particularly interesting section and much of the route follows what I took to be old logging roads. The larger trees are Sugar Maple and Yellow Birch so there may have been selective logging in this area. None of the trees are particularly large and my guess is that logging took place here 50-75 years ago.

A highlight of this section is the beaver pond/swamp/meadow that you reach about half way between Newcomb Lake and the Moose Pond trail. It's an attractive spot and from the beaver dam you get an interesting view of a sharp little pinnacle on a ridge of Moose Mountain.

Fall in the Adirondacks.

Past the beaver pond the trail trends to the northwest as it contours around a couple low ridges. About a half mile before the junction with the Moose Pond trail the route veers to the south, travels in that direction for a couple hundred yards, turns west, and then back to the north.. Much of the crossover trail is faint, but at this point the route-finding becomes a significant challenge.

I knew that the Moose Pond trail was a quarter mile away to the west and I could have simply headed in that direction until I hit it. That option was unattractive, however, because a swampy wetland lies between the two trails. That quarter mile would have undoubtedly been wet and muddy so finding the path was still the best bet.

Reaching a place where I could no longer pick up any hint of a path I suspected that the trail had been re-routed and that I missed a detour. So I doubled back to see if I had missed a turn. I back-tracked for over a quarter mile and, if there was a detour, I couldn't find it. In any case, continuing on where I thought the trail should be, I soon spotted a trail marker and an arrow sign nailed to a tree. From there it was just a couple hundred yards to the junction with the Moose Pond trail. If you go this way you should be comfortable finding your way through the woods.

There it is! Back on the trail.

It's hard to keep up the pace when hiking on a day such as this. Every turn of the trail brings another photo opportunity.

From the junction it's 1.3 miles to Moose Pond with a decent little hill in between. Given the the round trip from the junction to the lake would add 2.5 miles to an already long day, I thought about just turning towards home. But I'm glad that I didn't. The view across Moose Pond to Santanoni Mountain, and its' prominent slide, was a delight. And, the forest around the pond is older. Most of the old trees are hardwoods with some large Maple and Yellow Birch present. But, best of all, close to the edge of the pond I spotted a White Pine in that rare category of "trees with diameter over 48 inches". Trees of that size are rare in the Adirondacks today.

Moose Pond with Santanoni Peak in the background. The slide is well know to residents of the Long Lake/Newcomb area. You see it as you drive east towards Newcomb on Rte. 28N.

Whitehouse to Canary Pond; Quiet and Remote

The last time I stood on the suspension bridge that carries the Northville Lake-Placid Trail over the West Branch of the Sacandaga at Whitehouse I was around 10 years old. That was close to 50 years ago.

Image 1: Bridge over the Sacandaga West Branch. The bridge crosses over a rock outcrop in the center of the river (now covered with trees). The total length of the two spans is close to 300 feet. 

That visit took place during a family camping trip to the State Campground on the Sacandaga River just south of Wells. My family was one of a half dozen families who regularly camped together at various campgrounds around the State. My childhood was punctuated by those trips. If I remember correctly, on this particular outing, a couple of the Dads decided to take a bunch of the kids on a hike. The bridge at Whitehouse was new at that time and a 300 foot long suspension bridge over a major river was well worth a look; especially since several of the Dads worked for what was then called the New York State Conservation Department. I don't actually remember the bridge but I know we stood on it because there's a family photo to prove it. What I do recall is that we hiked to a place where a USGS benchmark was set into a boulder alongside the trail. There is a benchmark noted on current maps about a mile north of the bridge on the NLPT so we probably went that way.

On my more recent visit (September, 2015) I did cross the bridge. I was headed for Canary Pond and I thought I might try to go the extra couple of miles to reach Silver Lake from the north. But I turned back at Canary Pond and the nearly 14 mile round trip was plenty of hiking for one day. It took me nine hours to walk that route and a big reason for that was that it was an absolutely gorgeous early fall day with the leaves just starting to turn. I took lots of picture and that takes time.

Image 2: West Branch Sacandaga looking south from the bridge at Whitehouse. 

The human history of the area is described in fascinating detail by Bill Ingersoll in Discover the Southern Adirondacks. As Ingersoll notes, the first settlers to the area arrived in the 1850s and over the roughly 100 year period between settlement and acquisition by the State the land served many uses. The first settlers may have attempted to farm the land but the long winters and thin soil would have discouraged that idea, and from 1900 onward a succession of hotels, hunting lodges and finally a boys summer camp occupied the site. The surrounding wilderness has been owned by the state going back to the late 19th century and the 350 acres where the bridge is now located were acquired in 1962.

The hike south to Canary Pond passes through a rapidly maturing 2nd growth hardwood forest. The Silver Lake Wilderness lies in what was once part of the great northern hardwood forests that covered most of New York State. Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch, and American Beech were the dominant tree species and, today, stands of Birch and Maples are rapidly approaching maturity. The Beech are mostly gone; killed off by Beech Bark Disease. This route passes through forests where many trees are approaching 36 inches in diameter with a few larger ones mixed in. There are also stands of Hemlock and I measured one Hemlock on the slope leading up to Mud Pond Notch at 47 inches in diameter.

One of the more interesting sights along the way to Canary Pond was the beaver dam on a small stream between Mud Pond and Canary Pond. This dam is (or was) an engineering marvel. On the day I hiked the route (Sept. 27, 2015), it was very dry; northern New York State had received below average moisture for the year and August and September were notably dry. The beaver had managed to completely block the stream and the outflow below the dam amounted to barely a trickle. As seen in images 3 through 6, the beaver pond was quite large -over 6 acres as measured in Google Earth- and water was backed up to the very top of the dam. Unfortunately for the beaver shortly after my visit the area would receive between three and four inches of rain in a 24 hour period. I have to wonder if the dam stood up to that deluge.

Image 3: Beaver Dam along the trail between Mud Pond and Canary Pond

Image 4: The pond the beaver build.

Image 5: Looking up at the dam from the stream bed. The water in the foreground was standing water in the stream bed. Almost no water was getting through the dam.

Image 6: Looking back across the pond from the far side. The dam,, and the vantage point for the three pictures, is in the farthest distant corner of this shot. On the far shore left of the beaver house. 

I'd be interested to know if the the dam stood up to the heavy rain but I'm sure the beaver will manage, they have been damming this stream for centuries if not longer. Using our ability to view historical imagery in Google Earth we can see that over just the past 15 years the pond pictured above has filled and drained several times. The sequence of images that follows comes from Google Earth showing imagery from 2013, 2011, 2009, and 2006. From this we see that the current large pond was created since the date of the most recent satellite imagery for this area dated from August 2013.

The yellow lines in image seven are the tracks capture by my GPS. There are two lines because one is the track on the way to Canary Pond and the other is the track from my return trip. As you can see, the lines don't overlap, and the difference averages around 30 feet. I keep promising to write more about GPS accuracy, and explain why the tracks differ by that amount, so maybe I'll get around to that soon.

Image 7: The beaver pond/meadow as seen in Google Earth imagery from August 2013.

Image 8: The beaver pond/meadow as seen in Google Earth Imagery from May 2011. You might also wonder why this image is "fuzzy" when compared with the one from 2013. The most recent round of imagery used in Google Earth (as seen in image 7) is at a higher resolution than was previously available.

Image 9: The beaver pond as seen in imagery from May 2009. The beaver had dammed the stream and filled the pond.

Image 10: The beaver pond/meadow as seen in Google Earth Imagery from June 2006. The dam was out and the pond was a grass-filled meadow.

I did eventually make it to Canary Pond, a lovely and remote body of water (Image 11). Along the way you pass Mud Pond, site of a lean-to that is in particularly good shape. Ingersoll says that the appreciation of Mud Pond requires a special aesthetic (images 12 and 13) and for tired through hikers on the NLPT the difficulty of getting to the pond to get water probably does lead to a bit of cursing. But I thought it was pretty enough and marshes look to me like an exceptionally good place for bird watching. By the way, the stream that Ingersoll mentions as a source of water for campers staying at the leanto, was completely dry on the day I was there.

Image 11: Canary Pond

Image 12: Mud Pond

Image 13: The path over the outlet of Mud Pond. A split log bridge passes through and should keep feet dry most of the time.

Image 14: Fall foliage along the Sacandaga West Branch.

Geyser Creek to the Kaydeross

Most visitors to Saratoga Spa State Park experience Geyser Creek by strolling to see the impressive travertine deposits along its' banks or as the lovely stream that flows through the Geyser Creek picnic area. Fed by deep springs, the creek's waters are cool and attractive on even the hottest summer days. From the picnic area a trail follows the stream to the bridge that carries the park East West Road over the creek. At that point Geyser Creek is 20 feet wide and it typically carries a good flow of water. Downstream from the bridge you can see that the the creek flows into a swampy area, but there is no hint that within a quarter of a mile the stream will have all but vanished into that swamp. Water does flow out the other side, but that flow is in the form of seeps and trickles that add to the Kaydeross at various points. Some maps show Geyser Creek as a continuous line from the bridge to the Kaydeross, but don't believe them. There is no single, reliable, channel.

For much of the year bushwhacking into this area is a daunting prospect. Two small ridges punctuate the marsh but most of the area between the Park East West road (on the north) and Northline Road (on the south) is relentlessly wet, muddy, overgrown and buggy. During times of high water it's an impassable quagmire. The few people who visit the area mostly do so from the Kaydeross Creek. I've written previously about floating this stretch of the Kaydeross and a determined explorer could leave the creek at any number of points. As the crow flies it's just over two miles from the Canoe Launch at Gray's Crossing (Northline Road) to the launch site on Driscoll Road. The creek, however, takes four miles to cover that distance and the elevation differential is less than 20 feet. This is a flat landscape.

But there is one time of year when it is possible to enter the area on foot. In the dead of winter you can readily cross the frozen muck and mire to get a closer look at the topography and forests if not the impressive variety of flora and fauna seen during the warm weather months. Figure One shows a scene looking across the Kaydeross during the blizzard of Feb. 8, 2015. It was snowing hard.

Figure One: The banks of the Kaydeross during the blizzard of Feb. 8, 2015. Snow was falling at a rate of 2 inches per hour adding to the already deep snow pack. 

Lest you think I'm being overly dramatic talking about the conditions as a "blizzard'. You can judge for yourself from this short video. Watch the video in full screen to get the full effect.

Figure two shows my route. The snow pack was deep and airy so I left the parking near the Rte 50 Park entrance with my show shoes on. I first followed the Wetlands Overlook trail and then an abandoned road to reach the closed (and capped) Park Landfill. From there another abandoned Park road leads southwest into the forest. After a short distance I left the old road (on the left) bearing south and downhill to the edge of the swamp. I followed a route I had worked out ahead of time across the marshes and a small ridge to the Kaydeross. This route was selected to allow me to stay on State land though it's a somewhat arbitrary point in the winter. The trip covered only three miles for the round trip but with the deep snow and harsh conditions it seemed further.

Figure Two: Route from Rte. 50 parking to the Kaydeross
Map Image from Google Earth

Figure Three was made from the Ecological Communities map in the Saratoga Spa State Park Master Plan. The map legend is shown separately in Figure Four. This map also shows the outline of the State Owned lands and my route is represented by the prominent red line.

Figure Three: Ecological Communities - Saratoga Spa State Park south of the park East West Road. The red line shows my route.
Map Image captured from the Park Master Plan

Figure Four: Ecological Communities Map Legend
Image captured from the Park Master Plan

The Ecological Communities map shows the area to be a matrix of wetland community types with forest and successional fields mixed in. This is a rich ecological mix with the oxbow lakes and vernal pools being especially noteworthy. A vernal pool is an area that is reliably wet each spring but also completely dry for at least part of the year. That means no fish will be present and no fish makes vernal pools an attractive breading habitat for amphibians. Two vernal pools are shown on the map but there are certainly more. One reason that wetland complexes like this are so interesting is that the conditions are highly variable and the lines between community types are constantly being redrawn.

The weather on this day was harsh so most birds and beasts were keeping a low profile, I did see White-Tail Deer and common winter birds; Crows, Juncos, Blue Jays, a Hairy Woodpecker and a Pileated Woodpecker. In warmer weather this area is particularly rich in bird life and it is a designated Bird Conservation area. This is as good a place for bird watching as can be found in northeastern New York.

And my destination for this hike was not selected at random. I knew that the remnants of an old dam can be seen about half way between Grey's Crossing and Driscoll Road. You can find the location in the maps above because my route ends there. But the distinctive 90 degree change of direction taken by the Kaydeross at that point makes it easy to spot on any map. The broken down spillway creates a rapids and, even in this very cold winter, that's enough to maintain a small area of open water (Figure Five). As I approached the edge of the creek two White-Tails dashed into the woods. The ice around the open water was covered with deer tracks and we might surmise that they come here to drink.

Figure Five shows the spot but the flat light and deep snow make it difficult to see the outline of the former structure. I wonder when the dam was in use and its' purpose. I have not found much in the way of specific information about the dam or this area in general. If you know more, or have sources for this information, please leave a comment.

Figure Five: Open water below the old dam on the Kaydeross.

Spatial Data: Pattern and Process

The topic for this post comes from an article I've just read titled; Data Science and Prediction. In the article Vassant Dhar provides a brief overview of data science and new thinking about the relationship between theory and evidence. Dhar states the idea nicely saying that data science is different because it rests on the premise that the data can reveal the interesting questions. Traditional data analysis works the other way around starting with theory and looking to data for evidence to support or dispute the theory. Data science look for patterns in data and then ask if there are interesting questions those patterns might answer. This approach is not entirely new. The history of science is full of stories where an unexpected pattern in data led to new discoveries. What is new is that we now have a lot more data to analyze. Anyway, it's a good article, well worth reading.

The broad topics discussed in the article; data science and "big data" are of great interest to me. In fact, these topics are the central themes of my other blog. That's right, I have a second blog and it is called Pattern and Process.

Pattern and Process can into being first and it is intended for a different audience. Still, if you are reading this you might find it interesting. It's all about the technical issues and concerns that go along with research methods designed to find patterns in data; especially data that has a geographic or spatial context.

While I'm on the topic of influences and resources, I've also been reading In Search of Swampland by Ralph Tiner. This book provides a surprisingly readable introduction to the hydrology and biology of swamps (let's be honest, it's not the most exciting of topics). Central to the discussion is that swamps come in many

different varieties. This led the broad use of the term wetland to categorize lands where the presence of water changes both the form and the function of the place. This would be one of those rather dry academic subjects if it weren't for the regulatory protection of wetlands by governments at various levels. I'm sure I'll return to this topic at some point, there are marked wetlands in various parts of the Hemlock Forest, but for now the book is highly recommended.

One more book that will provide insight into the topic(s) of this blog is Forest Forensics, A Field Guide to Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels. Read this book and a walk through a forest in the northeastern United States will never be the same. Many forested areas in the northeastern U.S. were cleared land in the middle of the 1800s. This book helps you recognize and interpret clues that can tell the history of of how the land was used in the past and when that use was abandoned.





References:
Dhar Vassant, Data Science and Prediction, Communications of the ACM, 12/2013, Vol. 56 No. 12

Pattern and Process ( http://dataliterate.blogspot.com/ )

Tiner, Ralph; In Search of Swampland, Second Edition; Rutgers University Press, 2005

Wessels, Tom; Forest Forensics, A Field Guide to Reading Forested Landscapes, Countryman Press; September 20, 2010

Swamps I have Known

I like swamps. I must be easily amused. Or maybe it's oddly amused. Either way, it must come with getting older because I don't remember thinking this way when I was younger. One of the reasons that I like the Hemlock Forest is that the area contains several different wetland types. Still, when you come right down to it those areas are pretty similar. So along with the swamps and bogs of the Hemlock Forest I've been visiting a larger (and wilder) swamp found in the central Adirondacks just east of Long Lake - what I call the Shaw Pond Swamp (not sure if there is a more official name). I've also made a couple of trips to Lincoln Mountain State forest just outside of Saratoga Springs. The Lincoln Mountain forest covers about 1000 acres and it contains a less common swamp ecosystem; a red-maple black-gum swamp. I'll be writing more about these areas in future posts but for now some photos will have to suffice.

Dec. 24th 2013 near the margin of the Shaw Pond Swamp.

The area includes Shaw Pond, which is not far being a swamp itself.  The "swamp" includes a progression of bogs and swamp habitats of various types. View the Map in Google Maps.

The USGS Togopgraphic map of the area names Shaw Pond and Shaw Brook. Access is from the trail leaving NY Route 28 just east of Long Lake. This is the Northville-Lake Placid Trail so the trail goes both north and south from the parking lot. The swamp is a quarter mile south of the parking area.

Early winter is a good time to explore Adirondack wetlands.

The open swamp is visible here through the trees. There is a large area of flooded forest. (12/24/2013)

Back at home, looking at photos and working from memory I've been trying to figure out what kind of swamp this is. I think that it is a Larch Swamp but I need to go back and verify that. The value of taking good notes cannot be overemphasized.

Beaver are rarely faulted for a lack of ambition. Beaver have damned Shaw Brook just below the bridge the NTP crossing. As of Dec. 2013 the bridge is passable. That won't be the case if the water backs up much further.

Same area, the day before the dusting of snow seen in the photos above (12/23/13).

Same area in October of 2013.

Lincoln Mountain State Forest

Lincoln Mountain State Forest from Google Earth

One of several boggy ponds at Lincoln Mountain State Forest

A boggy flooded forest at Lincoln Mountain State Forest

The same swampy area as above from a different vantage point

The Project - The Effect of Invasive Plant Species on Native Ecological Communities

I'm interested in systems. That includes computer systems; hence my day job as a software developer. But beyond earning a living, I've long been interested in complex systems and how information is represented within those system. This may be where my fascination with ecosystems and ecological communities comes from. Of course, it's also true that I just like to tramp through forests, fields and swamps so maybe that's it.

Recently I've been thinking about how ecological communities adapt to rapid change. Ecological communities are defined by combinations of plants and animals found in a specific environmental context. The Hemlock Forest contains a half dozen or so different community types (see the NYS Natural Heritage Ecological Communities Site) with names like, "Hemlock-Hardwood Swamp" and "Appalachian Oak-Pine Forest". At the scale of an ecological community rapid change can result from events such as a fire or from someone digging a ditch to drain a wetland. Or it can unfold more slowly such as when an aggressive non-native species becomes established in an area altering the established mix of plants and animals. Rapid changes unfold on time scales that we can see; a day, a month, a few years. But even change that takes place over a decade or two is barely a smidgen of an instant in terms of geologic or evolutionary time scales. From the perspective of geologic time, humanity is altering the ecological systems on the earth at a pace that resembles a great natural cataclysm. Much like when that famous asteroid struck and killed the dinosaurs or when a super volcano explodes and alters the composition of the atmosphere. We are running a gigantic experiment on the earth's systems by rapidly altering ecosystems at every scale.

Ecologists study these sorts of things but the pace and scale of the changes taking place now far outpace their (our) capacity to understand what is happening. We have put into motion changes that will produce a range of effects that future generations will have to deal with and our children and grand-children will probably be forced to manage and repair natural systems in ways that we really can't imagine (did you grandparents imagine the world we live in today?). To do that they will need to know as much as possible about how these systems worked before we messed around with them. Information is the key and our technologies, the same ones that have the potential to be our undoing, might also save us. These days, anyone with motivation can add to the data that might really matter to those working on these problems in the future.

Of course, access to tools doesn't mean that acquiring useful data is simple or obvious. What data is valuable? How do you actually get it? How do you manage it? These are among the questions that motivated me to create this blog. I don't have all the answers but maybe I can add something that is part of the solution. Whatever you figure out, please share. Unlike most ecosystems I can adapt rapidly when a better idea comes along.

The Plan

I live in the northeastern United States where some of the most interesting ecological communities are the wetlands: swamps, marshes, fens, bogs and so on. The Hemlock Forest area contains several different wetland community types in close proximity to each other. Image One shows a flooded forest (more formally a Red Maple Hardwood Swamp). Image Two shows a Perched, Swamp White Oak, Swamp. It's a perched swamp (the defining environmental characteristic) dominated by the Swamp White Oak (species). Interestingly, this community type is considered to be rare in New York State. It's not that the individual species are rare --Swamp White Oaks are fairly common-- but the perched swamp environment has brought together an uncommon combination of species. Image three shows a third wetland type present in the Hemlock Forest; your basic Hemlock-Hardwood Swamp.

Image One: The Hemlock Forest includes several different types of wetlands. The area pictured is a Red-Maple Hardwood Swamp - often referred to as a flooded forest. The species mix present in this area has been altered by the rapid spread of non-native plants and shrubs and also by past attempts to drain the swamp.

Image Two: The Perched, Swamp White Oak, Swamp area. It is a perched swamp because the surface water is disconnected from the water table by a layer of impermeable clay. The characteristic species is the Swamp White Oak; The large tree on the left is a Swamp White Oak.

Image Three: The forest contains numerous small Hemlock-Hardwood Swamps. The trees in the foreground are Hemlocks and the entire forest area is named after the stand of old growth hemlocks present in the northern half of the preserve.

The varied ecological communities present in this 300 acre forest make it appealing as a place to learn more about how ecological communities adapt to the introduction of aggressive non-native species. I've focused on plants and shrubs because they are relatively easy to identify and the Hemlock Forest area has significant populations of several non-native shrubs and vines including:

• Asiatic Bittersweet (Image Four)
• Japanese Barberry
• Burning Bush
• Japanese Knotweed

Image Four: A tangle of Asiatic Bittersweet vines. This aggressive invader is present throughout the forest where ever there is a break in the canopy.

Other invasive plants, shrubs, and trees (and creatures of various types) are present but these four spread rapidly and alter the composition of existing native communities. This raises additional questions, including:

• Why are these species so successful? Not all introduced species out-compete natives species or spread so rapidly
• To what extent, and how quickly, do native species adapt to these newcomers?
• Do non-native species alter established patterns of succession within native community types?
• Are there effective control methods for these species? And, if the makeup of a community has been altered by the established presence of non-native species, what effects might come from "controlling" the invader(s)? In other words, can "controlling" the invading species make matters worse?

These are bread-and-butter questions for ecologists and these plants have been studied extensively. Still, answers to these questions commonly start with, "It's unclear" or "It depends...". It depends on which invasive you are talking about and it depends on which ecological community type has been invaded. Asiatic Bittersweet (AB) is present in the forest where ever there is a break in the canopy. It is found along the margins of wetland areas and in successional areas used in the past for agricultural. But what about isolated breaks in the canopy such in the small marsh located near the center of the forest? I have not yet spotted any AB there. That marsh does contain Japanese Barberry, and quite likely other non-native wetland invaders, but why no AB? Is there something about the ecology of the marsh or is it simply that AB had not yet spread to that location?

There are many unknowns around how native communities adapt to species that suddenly appear on the scene. And that is the basis for my assertion that anyone can do important research by capturing data about these communities. The key is the use of methods that preserve the meaning of the data for the long term.

My project is based on an assumption that well established non-native species are part of a new norm for these communities. In other words, we may need to define new communities that incorporate the presence of these species. With that as a starting point I want to know whether newly adapted communities will be more or less resilient in the face of future changes. And these questions go well beyond new plant species appearing in swamps that few people ever see. Ecological changes also alter the mix and behaviors of non-plant species including friendly insects such as ticks and mosquitos. I grew up running and playing and tramping through forests and fields and swamps and ticks were almost never seen. A word of warning that if you visit the Hemlock Forest area, you need to take precautions against the deer ticks (Brown Legged Ticks) that carry Lyme disease. These little critters are very common and very friendly. The paper referenced in this article proposes that greater bio-diversity reduces the spread of parasitic disease and we are reducing biodiversity at a pace and scale that has rarely occurred in the past (the deep past, millions of years).

This post is a lot longer than I had intended but there you have it; the what and why; next up, the how.

References and Resources
Landscape Ecology (Wikipedia)
Study Shows How Biodiversity can Protect Against Disease

Where is this place? The Hemlock Forest

Where is this place I've been calling the Hemlock Forest?. The map below should help. Open up Google Maps and view the Saratoga Springs (NY) area (terrain view is best). The park is a prominent feature south of the city.

Map from Google Maps. The Hemlock Forest area is the park area (darker green) on the right. The orange lines show the trails and the marker is at the location of the parking area.

Of particular interest to me are the ecological communities present within the park and surrounding areas and the 2009 Park Master Plan includes a map of Park's ecological communities (You can view it here). Overall, Spa State Park is more developed than many others, but it also incorporates forested areas and a number of significant wetlands including an unusual Perched, Swamp White Oak, swamp.

The designation of ecological communities is based on both the landscape and the plant and animal communities that are present. The New York State Natural Heritage Program (run by the Department of Environmental Conservation) maintains a list of the community types found in New York State and where examples of those communities can be found. It's worth noting, however, that the classification of ecological communities is far from cut-and-dried. That's not a criticism, both the program and the website are well done and, for me at least, fascinating. But these designations are open to some interpretation and the communities change over time. It may be that new community types will have to be defined as natural systems adapt to changes resulting from human activity.

The potential for undesirable change is raised as a concern throughout the Park master plan which calls out the presence of invasive species -primarily plants and insects- as a significant threat to the natural heritage of the park. Several aggressive invasive wetland plants are present in the Hemlock Forest area (as they are throughout the park) and these plants pose a threat to native ecological communities. Two highly aggressive non-native plants -Oriental Bittersweet and Japanese Barberry- are now the dominant plant species in several areas of the Hemlock Forest. I plan to map these locations as part of surveying the state of the forest. Japanese Knotweed, another highly aggressive invasive species, is present near the parking area and that's worth watching. Once Knotweed gets going it is incredibly difficult to control.

Additional resources and information that you might find to be helpful.
Saratoga Spa State Park Master Plan
Saratoga Spa State Park Master Plan Map
Saratoga Spa State Park Master Plan Ecological Communities Map