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Trinity College
The Study of
Environmental Science
The Trinity College Field
Station in Ashford, CT
Among the activities at the field station are research in the
natural sciences, especially those related to the environment, and a wide range of
educational endeavors with an environmental emphasis, but not necessarily limited to
natural sciences. A number of different environmental science experiments have been
carried out at the field station.
The following feature article appeared in
the campus publication Mosaic in November, 2001.
A site rich with history and
promise for future academic pursuits
 Even while garnering praise for its efforts
to invigorate the immediate Hartford area surrounding the campus, Trinity
College has embarked on another precedent-setting effort in Ashford,
Connecticut to preserve and renovate a historical site that has become
home to the Trinity College Field Station (TCFS).
“This is really the first time in the
College’s 178-year history that we’ve had a resource such as this,”
says Scott Smedley, assistant professor of biology and one of the forces
behind the TCFS. “This is a site that can function as a
natural laboratory for classes, faculty members, and research students
with environmental leanings.”
The TCFS was established in late 1999 when
Joseph and Dorothy Zaring donated portions of their historic property to
the College. The Zarings, who had no prior connections to Trinity, were
approached by the College in 1999 about their intent to donate the land,
following their exhaustive search for an institution that they felt would
preserve the property, while taking full advantage of the site’s
educational potential.
The site, a family home of Dorothy Zaring’s family, the Churches, includes
a historic home that dates as far back as the 1700s and a barn that was
built in 1895. The barn will be preserved without renovations and will
serve as an important marker of the site’s land use history. Both
structures are on the National Historic Registry. The field station
comprises 256 acres, 152 of which are held by the College. The remaining
104 acres are held by the Joshua’s Trust, a land trust dedicated to the
preservation of open space in northeastern Connecticut. The Joshua’s
Trust has made its holdings available for the College’s use.
“I’m not aware of such a relationship
between a land trust and a liberal arts college,” Smedley says.
“We’re looking forward to exploring creative ways to meet our mutual
goals in that area and using the land for scientific and educational
purposes.”
The TCFS is a rural remnant in the
Boston-to-Washington corridor, located in an area referred to by pilots as
“the last dark valley,” for its atypical darkness at night and minimal
development.
“Within a 10-mile radius of the field
station there are just over 50,000 acres that are either publicly or
privately preserved or large tracts—greater than five acres—of active
farm land,” Smedley says. “That rural setting surrounds us with a
beautiful area that we can study.”
The three-fold mission of the field
station, as outlined in the station’s annual report for the year 2000,
is to promote the land’s use for 1) research in the natural sciences,
especially those related to the environment; 2) a wide range of
educational endeavors with an environmental emphasis, but not necessarily
limited to natural sciences; and 3) conservation of open space.
A site ripe with
scholarship
During
the site’s first full year of operation in 2000, the TCFS at Church Farm
hosted six Trinity science courses and two secondary school-level courses
from The Greater Hartford Academy of Math and Science in the Learning
Corridor. That same year, eight faculty research projects were launched at
the site with teams of faculty members and their students.
 Craig
Schneider, Charles A. Dana Professor of Biology, initiated two of those
projects: “Survey of the Filamentous Benthic Algae of the Church Farm”
and “Passage of Vaucheria propagules through Earthworm Guts.”
“I had a research student last year,
Rebecca Thibault ’01, begin a survey of the filamentous algae at five
sites on Church Farm and the Joshua’s Trust. Among other things, she
found a few species not yet known from Connecticut!” Schneider says.
Schneider also submitted a research paper
with his honors research student Daniel McDevit ’01 entitled, “Are
Earthworms a Possible Mechanism in the Long-Distance Dispersal of the Alga
Vaucheria?” In this paper, Schneider and McDevit show that the resting
stages of four species of the freshwater algal genus Vaucheria survive
passage through the digestive tract of an earthworm. In that Charles
Darwin showed that earthworm castings are a mechanism for the movement of
soils, the team postulates that they can also be the source of
dispersal of Vaucheria propagules which,
when wafted into the atmosphere as dust from castings, could disperse to
distant locations.
That same year, Smedley launched two
scientific research projects, “Analysis of Sodium Transport Proteins in
Moth Guts,” in which he was assisted by Albert White IDP ’02 and Loren
Edge IDP ’04, and “Caterpillar Secretory Hairs: A Determination of
their Function and Products,” in which he was assisted by Amy Aieta IDP
’03, Jose Arce IDP ’02, Katie Lafleur ’02, and then-Learning
Corridor high school senior Crystal Piper. Smedley also conducted an oral
history research project at the site called “Investigation of Church
Farm Land Use History,” with the help of Jennifer Carvalho ’01.
“In our land use history investigations,
we’re looking at how people have interacted with that landscape over the
past few centuries,” Smedley says. “There are records of that area
that go back to 1715. What we’re trying to do is to come up with as much
information as we can as to how land was used and how those different
activities have affected the environment and landscape that’s there
today.”
National grants
and programs
Smedley, along with Morrison, Schneider,
and Senior Lecturer and Biology Lab Coordinator Michael O’Donnell
recently prepared a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation
(NSF) to fund the
development of a site plan for the TCFS at
Church Farm. Based on this proposal, the NSF awarded a $25,000 planning
grant to the College in September. This seed money, Smedley says, will
fund the development of the station’s strategic plan through a series of
site visits to established field stations and three workshops to be held
at Trinity and the TCFS.
In her notification letter to Smedley,
Judith Skog, the NSF’s program director for biological field stations
and marine laboratories, remarked “competition for funding is extremely
intense these days, and the success of your proposal is a mark of high
esteem for your work by your peers in the scientific community.”
Smedley says the College’s success at
this early stage in the grant process may better position the College as
it competes for larger grant monies in the future. Miller Brown, dean of
faculty, credits Smedley for his work thus far on the TCFS and the grant
proposal. “He’s really been quite enterprising,” Brown says.
Brown says the College’s field station
at Church Farm boasts exceptional biodiversity compared to similar field
schools at other colleges. “It’s a gem,” he says. “It’s just an
exquisite example of biodiversity.” This biodiversity has allowed the
College to embark on two national monitoring programs at the site.
Joan Morrison, assistant professor of
biology, is leading Trinity’s participation in the Monitoring Avian
Productivity and Survival (MAPS) program—a cooperative effort among
public agencies, private organizations, and individual bird banders in
North America to operate a network of constant-effort mist netting and
banding stations during the summer breeding season. The MAPS program was
established in 1989 by the Institute for Bird Populations (IBP).
“MAPS data have been used in numerous
conservation and management planning documents,” Morrison says. “MAPS
also provides unique opportunities for students to participate in
meaningful conservation research, learn about issues of declining
biodiversity, and learn more about the birds themselves.” Morrison says
long-term data obtained via MAPS netting at TCFS will provide useful
information about the local area’s bird-life as well as how ongoing
management of habitats in the area may influence the dynamics of bird
populations there.
The second program is the North American
Butterfly Association (NABA) butterfly count. This past summer, Smedley
and students conducted inventory of various butterfly species to attain a
preliminary assessment of the species diversity at the site. The goal,
Smedley says, is to develop long-term databases to study these insect
populations over time.
Interdisciplinary
opportunities
In the coming months, the College will
explore the use of the Church Farm buildings to support programs in the
fine arts, which may include artist retreats and classroom meetings. Brown
says he has every expectation that the farmhouse may be home to important
artistic activities at the College. “We are committed to developing a
significant program in the arts there,” Brown says. This may include a
renovation of the Church house to accommodate the College’s activities
at the site.
Smedley says that once the comprehensive
strategic plan for the site is finished, the College will apply for a
$500,000 matching grant from the NSF. These funds would aid the
construction of an environmental teaching and research facility at the
TCFS. He hopes to see the TCFS become an even more integral component of
the College’s academic offerings, as well as a key asset to the proposed
addition of an environmental science major possibly as early as fall of
2002.
“This clearly will be a drawing card for
prospective students who have interests in the environmental realm,”
Smedley says.
–Michael Bradley
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