Biogeochemical and Hydrological Research at the Huntington Forest
The 6,000 ha Huntington Forest (HF) is located
in the Town of Newcomb, western Essex County and in the Town of Long Lake,
eastern Hamilton County, New York, (latitude 44 00° N, longitude 74 13° W). The
HF has a mean annual temperature of 4.4°C and mean annual precipitation is 1010
mm (Shepard et al., 1989). The HF lies near the geographic center of the
Adirondack Park and is within the Hudson River drainage. The topography is
mountainous and elevations range from 457 m to 823 m. Vegetation consists of
northern hardwoods (72%), mixed hardwood-conifer (18%), and conifer (10%). The
property also contains five lakes: Catlin (area=217 ha; max. depth=17 m), Rich
(160 ha; 18 m), Wolf (58 ha; 14 m), Arbutus (49 ha; 8 m) and Deer (38 ha; 3 m).
The HF is part of the
Adirondack Ecological
Center (AEC). It is also a participant in the
Northeast Ecosystem Research
Cooperative (NERC).
The HF has participated in the
National Atmospheric Deposition Program
(NADP) and the National Trends
Network (NTN) since Oct. 31, 1978. The HF has also been part of the
Mercury Deposition Network (MDN)
since December 10, 1999. The HF has also been a site in various regional
biogeochemical studies including the Integrated Forest Study (IFS; Johnson and
Lindberg, 1992), the Adirondack Manipulation and Modeling Project (AMMP;
Mitchell et al., 1996) and the Adirondack Long-Term Monitoring (ALTM) Lake
Project (Driscoll et al., 1998). The Huntington Forest was also the site of a
soil warming experiment using buried heating cables (McHale et al., 1998) the
results of which have also been compared with other sites with similar
experiments (Rustad et al., 1999, 2000, 2001). Adjacent to the Arbutus Watershed
is a 38-m walk up tower equipped with meteorological instrumentation and filter
packs for sampling air chemistry that is monitored by NOAA as part of the
Atmospheric Integrated Research
Monitoring Network (AIRMoN) through 2001. Eddy correlation measurements of
O3 and SO2 have been made using this tower (Meyers and
Baldocchi, 1993). In May 2002, a
Clean
Air Status and Trends Netowrk (CASTNET) site was installed. CASTNET is
operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and provides
atmospheric data on the dry deposition component of total acidic deposition,
ground-level ozone and other forms of atmospheric pollution.
Arbutus Lake Watershed - Gauged with a V-notch weir\
The Arbutus Lake Watershed has been
gauged at the lake outlet since October 1991 with a V-notch weir. The
data logger at the weir is connected to a telephone line permitting real
time monitoring of water discharge from Arbutus Lake. The 130 ha Archer
Creek Catchment drains into Arbutus Lake. This catchment has been
monitored since 1994 using a H-flume equipped with automated discharge
logging and sample collection system. Water chemistry samples are taken
weekly except during storm events when more frequent sampling is done.
In addition, transects of piezometers, water table wells, soil tension
lysimeters, snow lysimeters and throughfall collectors, have been
installed for characterizing solute chemistry. Various plots and
subcatchments including both upland and wetland sites have been
intensively instrumented since 1994 and are described in detail
elsewhere (Bischoff et al., 1999; McHale et al., 1999; Ohrui et al.,
1999). In addition, a detailed Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
has been developed for the site that includes a Digital Elevation Model
(DEM) with 3-m resolution and other GIS information. Detailed stream
and wetland maps have been produced and sampling points located all of
which are part of the GIS. Arbutus Lake has been part of the
Adirondack Long Term
Monitoring Program since June 1982.