Professional Practice
In the Field: Crow's Nest Natural Area Preserve & Crow's Nest Research Center, Stafford - Oct. 27
Date: 10/27/2022 - 10/27/2022
Description:
In this session we will study the plant communities of the Eastern Coastal Plain, the successional changes that affect them, and techniques for guiding those changes. At the Preserve we will observe succession in its mature stages by examining a Chestnut Oak Forest, Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest, Floodplain Forest, Tidal Hardwood Swamp, and the region’s most intact Freshwater Tidal Marsh.
The adjacent 132-acre site tells an entirely different story. Here, an upland forest was cleared for a development that was never built, leaving much of the land treeless and in an early successional stage with a mix of native and exotic species. The site is now home to the non-profit Crow’s Nest Research Center, who enlisted Larry Weaner Landscape Associates to develop a stewardship plan to guide the emerging process of succession. We will observe the results of that plan’s implementation as we traverse the panoramic native grasslands, wooded ravines, and coastal shrub thickets that exist there today.