Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study: Lindsey Rustad on Connecting Science and Community

In a recent episode of the 603Podcast, Lindsey Rustad, Scientist and Forest Service Team Lead at Hubbard Brook, sat down with Dan Egan to discuss a crucial topic: effectively sharing scientific research on environmental conservation. Lindsey's insights covered everything from the role of art and poetry in connecting people to environmental issues to the profound impact of acid rain and Hubbard Brook’s long-term ecosystem monitoring.

Hubbard Brook has been a cornerstone of environmental research since its designation in 1955. It’s here that the groundbreaking discovery of acid rain was made—a discovery that played a pivotal role in shaping the Clean Air Act of 1992. This legislation significantly improved air quality, showcasing the power of scientific research to drive policy change. As Lindsey puts it, "We can't make people care with science alone. We need people to translate the science." She emphasizes that when individuals understand what’s happening in their own backyards, they’re more likely to make small changes that lead to big impacts.

Lindsey passionately discusses the need for translating scientific findings into relatable terms. She highlights the work of Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring used poetic language to raise awareness about environmental issues, building a deep emotional connection with readers. Inspired by this, Lindsey launched the “Postcard for a Forest” project, encouraging kids to write postcards to the forest, expressing their appreciation and drawing their favorite trees. Such initiatives help foster a sense of connection and community, proving that art can be a powerful tool in environmental advocacy.

To start your journey with Hubbard Brook, visit the Hubbard Brook website and follow their social media channels for the latest updates on events, programs, and opportunities.

Mad River Coffee celebrates 20 years of roasting coffee, legendary egg sandwiches, meals to go, and live music right off Exit 28 in Campton NH.

For more information about the 603podcast visit 603podcast.com

Transcript

Dan Egan 

Lindsey Rustad

Dan Egan:  Lindsay, how are we doing today? 

Lindsey Rustad:

We're doing great. 

Dan Egan:

Thanks for joining us here in the 6 0 3. Uh, so this is amazing to be up here. You know, this is the sort of place I live in the neighborhood, and I've heard about it, and I've ridden my bike up here.

Lindsey Rustad: Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

 Dan Egan: But tell me what this research center is and what it does. 

Lindsey Rustad:

So, what, what a great question. And you are not alone. Um, it actually amazes me sometimes how few people in our community know who we are and what we do. In a nutshell, Hubbard Brook is one of the longest, continuously running, most comprehensive, and believe it or not, one of the most famous ecosystem study sites in the world. 

Dan Egan Wow. 

Lindsey Rustad: And it's right up here. It's in your backyard, and yet not that many people know about it. You know, where we're world-renowned in the scientific community. We are in textbooks, we're in college courses, we're in documentaries. Um, we're all over the place. But I'm super excited that you are here to help us tell our story to our, to our neighbors here in New Hampshire. 

Dan Egan: Yeah. So the Hubbard Brook, I mean, and it seems to me it's a wide breadth and scope of things that you're researching. Can you just kind of give us the, the groundwork of what all you're looking at up here? 

Lindsey Rustad:

Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of, I, I think of this at the 50,000 foot level is what we do is we are interested in how northern forest ecosystems like those right around us, respond to and recover from really big scale disturbances, right? Natural disturbances or human made disturbances like forest harvest, like global climate change, like air pollution, like extreme weather events. 

So we are trying to understand, kind of get the, the pulse of the forest ecosystem of how it's doing, um, and how it's responding to some of these, these disturbances.

Dan Egan: So Hubbard Brook is a, you know, when you, when you say you, you study ecosystems that's big, right? That's and, and natural events and manmade events. How do you choose, how do you know which, and is you've been here so long, is it just like over time things come in and things go out? How do you decide? 

Lindsey Rustad: So, again, a great question. So, so the perspective is we've been here since 1955. Wow. Okay. So that's more than, than 65 years. And we've kind of had an evolution of, of science themes that, that we've been doing here. So we were established in 1955, right? By the USDA Forest Service. And we were charged with understanding kind of the water cycle, you know, water in, in the northern forest. 

Lindsey Rustad: And believe it or not, back in the 1950s, they were particularly concerned about flooding. Right? We kind of come full circle. We've just had a really wet, um, a really wet, wet summer. So trying to understand the role of the forest right in, in flooding, um, as, as and so to, to do that, they set up this series of gauged watersheds, which are, are up in the forest. So we kind of understand all the water that's coming into a watershed. 

Lindsey Rustad:Um, and then we have these big concrete structures with these  notches, and we measure very, very, very carefully the water that's going out of the watershed. So you can see how much is coming in and how much is, is going out. So early history of studying water and, and how, how that was changing. But then earlier on in 1963, we had this kind of epiphany of, of a scientist, gene lichens and Herb Borman thinking about the people behind the people places. 

Lindsey Rustad

And, and things here had this epiphany that if you knew what the water was coming in, and then if you knew the chemistry of that water, right, how much nitrogen or phosphorus or calcium was in it, you could multiply those together and you could get a chemical budget for the watershed. And you would go, well, why is that important? But understanding how nutrients are cycling into, through and out of watersheds are just a huge issue. 

Lindsey Rustad

And so earlier on, they took that method and they applied it to forest harvest. So what if you cut a watershed, right? Or you strip cut a watershed, or you had some other kind of management, how would that affect the water and the nutrients going into, out of, and through the, the ecosystem? So that was an, an early kind of theme of, of research here. Well, what happened in the late 1960s, right? Acid rain was discovered. And where was acid rain discovered? 

Lindsey Rustad

Right here? Yeah. Right here at, at Hubbard Brook. Wow. And that was in part because we were studying the water and the chemistry and Dr. Jean Kins and Dr. Herb Borman were able to know that like, oh my gosh, you know, the pH of the precipitation in the stream water is very, very low. And began to make those connections between the stream water, the precipitation, and where this air pollution was coming from. 

Lindsey Rustad

So that started several decades of research on acid, rain, and air pollution. So how is, remember I said, how do forests respond to and recover from these large scale disturbances? So that was a big disturbance. We didn't know much about it. Right. In New Hampshire, in the country, globally. And we did a lot of research here, and a lot of this work was used by Congress and went into the Clean Air Act in its amendments in 1992. And guess what? They cleaned up the, the air pollution.  And they took the sulfur, a lot of the nitrogen, you know, out of the, the, the plumes that were coming out of the smoke stacks. And we now study the recovery from acid rain. So the work right here in New Hampshire in your backyard had major implications for the Clean Air Act and its amendments 

Dan Egan:

That, that's amazing. So has acid rain now gone away? Is there no more acid rain, or what happened to acid  rain?

Lindsey Rustad: You, you know, it's not a black and white, it's not an on or off. So, so basically it's the, the sulfur and nitrogen oxides are coming from the smoke stacks, from the burning of fossil fuel. And what happened with the Clean Air Act and it's amendments is they required to put in scrubbers. So I would say that we have reduced the sulfuric acid by 80%. So has it gone away? No, it's not completely gone away, but it's gone down by 80% in our precipitation here. Wow. So it's one of those, those success stories that we saw a problem. 

And because of the good solid science at sites like Hubbard Brook here in New Hampshire, we were able to understand the problem, communicate the problem, come up with a solution to the problem, and, and fix the problem. Another example is lead and gasoline. Right? Right. 

We did a lot of early work on lead, you know, in the soils and in the vegetation up here. And of course now kids know, you know, we have unleaded gasoline, and people say, well, why is it unleaded? Well, because there used to be lead in it. But we did the science, we did the research and passed the, the legislation. It's back in the day with Rachel Carson did that with DDT. Hmm. So we're part of this series, I think, of environmental success stories where we do the science, and often the science can take decades. 

Right. You don't do it overnight, you know, but you understand how these disturbances are affecting the forest, you know, and then we translate that and we, we share that. Does that make sense? 

Dan Egan:

Yeah. I mean, this is of course, with all the flooding that went on in Vermont Yeah. Uh, with the big rains in the spring and the summer, what they were saying is that we neglected floodplains and that outflow of water. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> plus the soil was saturated. Right. Is that true? Is that kind of what happened? That was a perfect storm, so to speak, of amount of water plus the amount of soil that was saturated. 

Lindsey Rustad:

Uh, yeah. So it was very similar to Irene back in 2011, and it's really a tale of multiple storms. And, and that's the sort of thing that we can see in our data is you, you, you know, soils are, are porous and they have soil particles in it, and then they have spaces that can fill up with water. Think about a teacup, right? And so if you have multiple storms, you're basically filling up that those soils. And so when you get that third or that fourth one, instead of going in and filling up that pore space, it just pours right out the top. 

And that's what happened in Irene. That was three storms. It was August. We had one, we had a second, and it was the third one. And it wasn't that the third one was that huge, but it came on top of the others. And that's exactly what happened. We had a very wet right June, in July, so those soils were saturated. There was nowhere for that water to go. 

Dan Egan:

So how big is the research forest here at Hover Brook? 

Lindsey Rustad:

So our forest is 8,000 acres, so we're roughly five miles long and, you know, two and a half miles, uh, wide. Um, we span an elevation from about 1000 to about 3000 feet. Um, the forest is covered by a beautiful combination of beach, birch, maple trees. You might know those, um, spruce and fur at higher elevations. We have a lot of hemlock at lower elevations. So really just kind of a, a classic New England forest. 

Dan Egan:

And is it, uh, are there trails you could, or these pods of research throughout that 8,000 acres? How's, what's the, what's it look like up back there? 

Lindsey Rustad: Yeah,  well, it looked kind of crazy. <laugh>. We have all kinds of, of science and instrumentation. So one of the things to, you know, to think about when I, I said it was one of the most comprehensive research study sites in the world, is we basically study everything from where the air hits the top of the trees, all the way deep down into the rooting zone, from the top of the trees to the bottom of, of the trees, and really everything in between. So we're studying the water, we're studying the air, the vegetation, the animals, the microbio to the soils, the geology. So there's a lot of instrumentation up there and a lot of cookie, uh, scientific. You might go up there and you might see, you know, a camera, you might see a sticky trap, you might see a weird, you might see a funnel collecting precipitation. 

You might see all kinds of computers. You might see a tower with all kinds of instruments. So it, it's really, um, I think of it as an outdoor laboratory. And, and one of the things as a forest ecologist, you know, I, I I like to, to share is, you know, think of forest, right? The big right. They're tall. It could be a hundred feet tall, and they live a long, long, long time. Right? An individual tree can live 200, 300, 4, 400 years. So you can't study a forest in a test tube in a day. 

Right? So how do you study forests? Yeah. You have to have outdoor laboratories. And Hubbard Brook is one of the premier outdoor laboratories to study forests in the US in the world. 

Dan Egan:

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. And there's just so much to unpack there, and all these questions I'm running through my head. But, um, you know, we've, over the last five years or so, there's been sort of like, uh, all the squirrels that, that, you know, that got run over on the, on the roads, there was a bunch of, uh, you know, I'm sorry, I check che hor, not hor chestnuts, but, uh, acorns, there was a bunch of acorns, right? 

 They, and then there was no acorns. And yeah, like all that cycle of, of the trees and the forest, is that also what you're studying? 

Lindsey Rustad:

We have people that study just about everything, but, but that part of the cycle of, we call it the masting, the producing of big seed crops like the acorns, you know, like the maples. And of course you produce that, and then you have all the animals that are like, wow, we've got a, a feast. And these things go in cycle. So, so we, we absolutely study that. You know, as I said, you know, vegetation, wildlife, um, part of that where my brain is going is one of the magic things about Hubbard Brook is that we have been here for more than 65 years. 

So even though we haven't been here for hundreds of years, we have been able to see cycles, you know, go through. And one of the thing, one of the way we study the forest is long-term monitoring. So we measure the same thing in the same place the same way, believe it or not, often with the same person over decades. 

And a lot of things that happen in forests happen very, very slowly. So you have a tree probably in, in your backyard, and you know, it's growing taller, but you probably can't see it grow taller, right. You know, this year or next year or the year after that. But over 65 years, we're measuring the same trees, the same soils, um, you know, the, the same streams. And so we can see those changes over time. And, and I like to think that we make those unseen changes seen Wow. 

In our long-term data. And that's why we've been able to do research on acid rain. We saw the evolution of that increase in acidity in the rain and the streams. That's why we can study climate change, right? So we've been here since 1955, and lots of old timers, myself included, say, gosh, I remember, you know, when we used to have more snow or when it used to be colder or, or this, that, or other thing. 

But we have the data here to show you that the winters were colder, there was more snow, they did last longer. And we can tell you by how many days and by how much. So we have one of the, like I said in the beginning, one of the longest continuous records of a changing climate pretty much anywhere in the world. And when I say that, it's because it's that meticulous record. It's not you grabbed a, you know, a temperature record here or a precip sample here. 

It's that very meticulous monitoring over time with high quality. 

Dan Egan:Yeah. That's, that's amazing. So, of course, all my history with the ski industry, um, you know, I, I don't know the exact number of days, but really between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there's been a loss of four or five snowmaking days. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is significant. Um, so the systems have to get more efficient, but you can actually track that. You can tell us the number of days that are not freezing at night anymore versus in any given time period. 

Lindsey Rustad:

Absolutely. Wow. Absolutely. And we actually have worked with the local ski industry Nice. And we have a paper out on, on the number of, of Snowmaking days, actually, I think Mark Green, who you met earlier Yeah. Was, was part of that. You know, we can show that we've lost about a quarter of the amount of depth of snow, about a quarter amount of the, the wa water content of the snow, about 21 days, of the number of days that snow is on the ground. So these kinds of, of measurements are, are very few and far between. 

And so, again, I keep emphasizing the long term continuous. We didn't start, we didn't stop. We have been here continuously since 1955. 

Dan Egan:

Yeah. I love that. 

Lindsey Rustad:Making these, these measurements bettor many of your listeners Yeah. Before they were born, before their parents were born. Right. You know, maybe when their grandparents were, were born. And, and it's hard, it's really hard to keep these studies going over the long term. You have to have the right folks, you know, providing the funding, you know, and, and making sure you have everything in place. This is a huge operation to run. 

Dan Egan:

Is it private or is it, is it public? 

Lindsey Rustad:

Oh, great question. It's public. This is, this is your USDA forest service at work. So the, the site is owned and operated by, by the, the USDA Forest Service. And the Forest Service provides really the, you know, the operation and a lot of the scientific capacity as well. But then we also partner, biggest partner is with the National Science Foundation. So they run what's called, it's a little bit of jargon, but it's a long term ecological research site. 

So the Forest Service, we are an experimental forest. We are one of 81 experimental forests in the US and  the National Science Foundation runs the LTER, long-term ecological research program. And we are one of 28 sites. So these two major funding agencies come together to, to provide the, the bulk of the, the funding here. Now, on top of that, we have lots of other research grants. So you have to understand, we have perhaps 200 scientists who are, are working at various times up here in the forest, lots of students. 

So they're all coming, you know, with different ideas, different agendas, diff different funding. But they all come together and we all meet and we all talk and we bounce ideas off of each other. So he said, well, how do these themes grow? Well, it grows somewhat organically by this, you know, community of scientists. That, that is again, right up here, we're kind of quiet, aren't We? 

Dan Egan: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's amazing. I love it. Yeah. So, you know, of course there's a lot going on and, and, uh, and, and the whole idea of the earth warming and global warming and all these sort of things, uh, you know, the ocean, uh, temperatures in, in Florida this summer have been near a hundred degrees. And they're saying in, in Key West, even hotter, um, is that too far outta your scope or are you, or are you manage, are you studying how that affects Northern New England? 

Lindsey Rustad:So they're, well, first of all, we're not studying those effects down in Florida, but they affect our weather. Right. So I, I'm not gonna comment on the, the places that are a hundred, 101, but, but as the, the Gulf is warming, um, think about that warm, moist air is just sweeping up the East coast. And so we are seeing a lot of that air coming this way. But one of the things you also find is we still have those polar express, those cold fronts that come down and <laugh>, 

That's great. Great background. Yeah. So, so those are coming in and colliding and, and causing some of the extreme weather that we have right now. We, um, we study one thing, the kind of a kind of signature extreme weather that we have, you may have experienced is ice storms. Yeah. So there's an example or big snow storms Yeah. Are examples where we have that warm air coming up, colliding with this cold air and creating some of these massive storms. So one of the things we do, I mentioned long-term monitoring. That's one way we study the forest. 

The other way we study the forest that we're really, really, really well known for here is doing big ambitious, large scale whole ecosystem experiments. And we started that with some of those harvest experiments I mentioned in the beginning, what happens if you cut a whole watershed? Well, guess what? The water comes out, the nutrients come out. But then we learn that the forests recover very rapidly, three, four years. So one of the things that will climate change, what happens if you warm a forest? So we have warming experiments. 

What if we have a big drought in a forest? So we had a big drought experiment. We put a roof over the forest. Wow. We took all the water away. What if you have a big 

Ice? 

Dan Egan: 

You did that here. 

Lindsey Rustad:

Yeah, We did. Did you? Right up in the forest. Right, right there. And, and ice storms. So, um, we're like, gosh, ice storms, we need to know more about them. We know from the, the, the, the climate scientists that we expect more frequent and severe ice storms, but what do we know about them? When you have an ice storm? I know about you, but I'm home. Yeah, right. Taking care of my, my family. Yeah. In my infrastructure. So we decided we needed to know more about them. So we created our own. So back in 20 16, 20 17, we created a suite of experimental ice storms. 

Wow. So, wow. A, a slight icing, kind of a mid icing and an extreme icing. So we created that out in the woods so that we can use the experimental method, right. To understand cause and effect in ice storm. So I was just out there yesterday, <laugh>, and we're still looking at the, the impact of that. So we do long-term monitoring. Right. And then we do these experiments. We've done forest harvest experiments, we've done climate change experiments. We've done acid rain experiments. But doing these on a big scale, not in a laboratory, not in a test tube, out in the forest for many, many, many years. 

Dan Egan: 

You know, when we, when we drive the roads of New Hampshire, we see trees and you do <laugh>. You know, trees are everywhere. My my friends who come from the west are like, wow, you live in the forest. Yes, we do. You know, and but I, I don't think a lot of people recall, of course, none of us were alive, but when we, we cut many of these forests, uh, and a lot of what we see today was clear cut. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, you know, for ship mass and farming and all those sorts of things. So have, have you studied that sort of what it was and what it is today? 

And does that come into effect when foresting forest, how much to take out and that sort of thing, and how to clear cut certain parts of the mountain?

 Lindsey Rustad: Yeah, So, so there were many parts, <laugh> to, to that question. Um, I, I think what you started by, by saying is, of course, New Hampshire is one of the most forested states Yeah. In, in the country. But at one time, most of the forests had been cut down. It's amazing for agriculture. It's hard to even imagine. And that forest has been regrowing, both in New Hampshire and across New England. And it's played a super important role as a sink for carbon. 

So it's been a buffer really, for, for the US and for the world as it's been a sponge for carbon, and has kind of protected us from even greater escalation of CO2. In, in the, in the, 

Dan Eagan: 

When you say protected us, protected the region. 

Lindsey Rustad:The globe. The globe. So there's a north temperate carbon sink, which is our growing forest. So we, we are acutely aware of the past of our forest. So most of Hubbard Brook was cut, you know, 80, 90, a hundred, a hundred years ago. So it's a great regrowing forest, which is representative of, you know, all the forests of, of New Hampshire and, and New England. And you can see evidence of it. You can see evidence of the, the 1938 hurricane. You can see evidence of the 1998 ice storm. 

So all of these leave their footprint, if you will, up, up in the forest the second. So we're acutely aware of the past and where we are is just part of the evolution of where this forest is, is going. The, the second part of it, you asked about management. And a lot of what we do here, people want a direct link. Right? You measure something in the forest and that has an impact on how you manage it. Tomorrow we are more of an indirect link. 

We provide what we call the best available science to support the management and the stewardship of the forests, if that makes sense. 

Dan Egan: 

Whether or not people follow it is another..

Lindsey Rustad: Absolutely. <laugh>. 

But, but so for example, in the, the clear cut experiments we did back in the, in the sixties and early seventies, one of the things we were able to show is if you clear cut a forest, or if you strip cut a forest, um, whole tree harvest, leave the branches in, take them out, there's a huge impact on the water. You might have a 10 50 fold increase in water, in nitrogen, in phosphorous. All of those things are coming out. And they're coming out 'cause they're not being taken up by the trees. 

Mm-hmm. Right. You move the trees. Yeah. And they're, they're not taking all of that up. So it has to go somewhere. But, but one of the things that we showed really clearly is how quickly the forest, we call it, kind of reorganizes and regains control over that water and nutrients. And so it's really a very rapid recovery. 

So again, I think it's one of those, those positive stories about how resilient our forests are to changes. Now, if you cut it every 10 years, you know, for, for 80 years, you're going to deplete, you know, nutrients. But, but, but with, again, responsible forest management, these forests are, are resilient, you know, and they will come back. Resiliency is, is, and I don't wanna go too much into jargon, but, but it's, it's, I think a really important concept. 

So you like sports? Mm. Right? So resiliency, if you're resistant Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right. I can push on you. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Oh, and I can't push you. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you're resistant. You don't move. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right. You can, you can disturb a forest and it doesn't move. Well, it's probably gonna move. You're gonna cut down trees, you're gonna blow things over. Resilient is, I push you Oh, and you fall back, but then you come back. Yeah. And, and a lot of what we do is trying to figure out how resistant or resilient forests are to things like harvest to things like climate things to things like air pollution, and how much of them come back and think about tipping points. 

What happens? We have that extreme ice storm, we have a hurricane, we have something,

Dan Egan: If they stack up?

Lindsey Rustad:

That we push the forest so far, you can't come back. And we wanna know what those tipping 

points are. 

Dan Egan: And have we seen that here in New England? 

No, we haven't. No. We're, it's a resilient forest. 

Lindsey Rustad:

It's a very resilient forest. But there are a lot of pressures on our forest. And, and you hit on something right there that it's not, it's not always just one thing. Yeah. It's this history of being hit by acid rain, and the residual effect of having stripped a lot of nutrients out of the soils. It's being hit by more extreme climates, hotter, drier, you know, per maybe more extreme storms. You know, it's hit by more pressure from development. 

So it's sometimes the, the multiple interactions of all these stresses that, that, that hit these forests. And think about it, if you're a tree or you're a forest and gets too hot or gets too dryer, there's an insect or a pass that's coming. You can't pick yourself up by the roots and march away. Right. You have to sit there and, and deal with it. And a lot of our forest have been, trees have been around for over a hundred years. They've seen a lot of extremes. But what we want to understand is, is how resilient they are. And are there tipping points that we should know about so we can, you know, provide solutions or fix them before we get to that point of no return. And we did that with Acid rain.

Dan Egan: Yeah, no, it's amazing. I love it. I love it. You did. That's amazing. The acid rain, 80% reduction. And what about this idea that the trees communicate to each other? Don't call me a lunatic, but how do they know that they're not overproducing acorns or under-producing? Do you think after all this time of this intimate relationship you have with the forest and the resilience of the forest, is there something else going on that we, we are just coming to understand or appreciate about our environment and its resiliency and our, their own ways of dealing? You must have seen this over the years that there, there's something.

Lindsey Rustad:

So, uh, it's a question I often get asked, and the short answer is we don't know. Um, the longer answer is there's a lot of interesting connections within a forest, and one of the ones I've thought a lot about is forest fungi. Right? Myy, these are fungi that are part of the root system, and it's a, what we call a symbiotic relationship where the, the trees are photosynthesizing and they're producing carbon and sugars, and they shunt those sugars down to their roots. 

And the roots share it with the fungi. And the fungi create all these hypy, you know, and all these, you know, fruiting bodies out in the soil and they gather up nitrogen in phosphorus and all these other, uh, nutrients and water. And then they share it with the roots and it goes back up to the tree. So it's this beautiful cycle 

Dan Egan: 

ebb and flow

Lindsey Rustad:

of sharing energy and, and nutrients and, and water. Now fungi are, are interesting. We're just learning more about them. They're actually the largest living organisms ever found in the world. So there's individual fungi out in Oregon, and, um, and I think it's Wisconsin, that over 80 acres, right. And they've been alive for as far as we can tell, for like 8,000 years. They're the biggest living organisms on earth. So you are about communication. If we have these below ground networks that are sharing energy and nutrients, and some of them in some places we know are a single organism, what do you think? Are they sentient? Like we are, you know, perhaps not, but are they sending signals back and forth? And because we're scientists, you know, there have been studies done with Carbon 14 where you can see the carbon, you know, coming, you know, into the system and places that are, are kind of carbon, you know, that need carbon. seems to get over there. So there's some signaling going on. There's some more work now with beginning to do electrical impulses, you know, and there's a lot more electrical impulses that, that are going on. So, as, as a scientist, do I know if they communicate? No, I don't know <laugh>. But it, but it's an, an interesting thing and, and in communication, this is kind of getting away from my, my science hat, but it doesn't have to be in the way that you and I Exactly. 

Dan Egan: 

Communicate. Exactly.

Lindsey Rustad: And, and this brings up another topic, which is other ways of knowing. So we pride ourselves and we take great pride in our science Yeah. And, and our body of, of knowledge. Hmm. But I think we're a little bit humble, I think speak for myself that we just have one lens, right. That we're looking at this ecosystem and there are lots of other ways to understand what's going on, on. 

And so we are increasingly, you know, working with indigenous communities and there's an indigenous way of knowing. You just met Leah Wilson, she's an artist for the last decade. We've had an integration of art and science program here, looking at the world through an artist's perspective. We learn different things. So, you know, again, going back to, you know, as a forest sentient, there's different ways of, of, of looking and understanding what's going on in the forest. 

Dan Egan:

No, I think that's so beautiful. Right? Yeah. Because it's true. We don't know the definition of communication. Yeah. Right. And how systems work. But to, to, to observe that is quite powerful. Yeah. And then, you know, like you say, over the course of time, there's so much going on is some of your land Native American land and some of the history here in New England with the native people. 

Lindsey Rustad:So, so that's a, that's a a really good question. So we, um, we are trying to, to address this question, and we actually have an acknowledgement on our website and in our papers that we are on seeding Abenaki land. So we are very sensitive to, to the history of the people who have come before us. Nice. Um, as well as we we're super interested in, you know, providing the, you know, the science best available science so that the forest will be here for the people that come after us. 

 Right. For the generations to, to come. So I, I think we're, we're very sensitive to that. We share this forest, um, through time with, with many people. And that comes back to their different ways of relating to, to the forest. Um, I, I think some of our commonalities are, you know, what we do as scientists is, is we, believe it or not, um, some people don't think this, um, we really have a deep connection to in relationship to the forest, if you come out to the woods with us.You would not believe, you know, the excitement and the energy, you know, and the connection that the scientists and the students have with what's going on in, in the forest. And I think it's that kind of connection between nature and people and even spirituality that, that we all share. And it's an area that is not directly in our purview of our scientific study, but we are, we have working groups. We,we are trying to understand that relationship better and, and bring in a,a broader perspective. 

Dan Egan:

Yeah. That, I don't know, that's kind of a far No, that's,

Huge. I mean, I think that's great. Yeah. You know, particularly with the  Abenaki  and, and everything and, and, and the recognition of that and, and their perspective is huge. Yeah. You know, of course here in the whites we have the lakes. Yeah. And, um, you know, whether it's, uh, newfound lake, squam, lake Winni, Psaki. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you mentioned it earlier, the pressure on development. Uh, people want their green lawns right up to the lake. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, uh, some of the lakes have different, uh, zoning at Squam you can't cut trees, but at others you can. Yeah. Um, what do you see with all this water and, and, and the, the lake quality? Are you tying into that as well? Um, I mean, it's a big part of the recreation. There's more boats. There's obviously gasoline on the lakes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, all those sorts of things. 

 Lindsey Rustad:

So part of the Hubbard Brook ecosystem study is studying mirror lake. Yeah. Which is right down the road from you. And that is probably one of the most intensely studied lakes in the world. Wow. Probably another thing that our local community might, might, might not know, but a lot of what we study, uh, study is the headwaters. Right. This is where the water, you know, for those lakes, for those streams is originating up in the forest. 

Lindsey Rustad:

So we're studying those processes, kind of, that are at the headwaters as well as, as, as the, the lakes. The one thing, it's not directly related, but I'm gonna bring it up anyway. Nice. Um, as a climate scientist, I'm acutely aware of not only what's going on here in New Hampshire and here in New England, but what's thunder there? Thunder applause. Amazing. But what, what's going on, you know, across the world and across the country, and I'm sure you've been aware of the mega drought out west and the extreme heat in the southwest and the fires all around. 

There are parts of our country that are becoming uninhabitable, you know, at least for stretches of time. And there certainly have scarcities of water. So if you are in one of those places and you look at a map, where are you gonna go to Exactly. You're gonna come to the northeast. 

Dan Egan:

I agree. Right? Yeah. 

Lindsey Rustad:

You know, we don't have, we're not in tornado alley, you know, we have plenty of water. We have beautiful seasons, we have lots of land. So I would just like to suggest, and this is Lindsey not, you know, Hubbard Brooks speaking, but that there is going to be a lot more pressure, you know, on the resources here in the Northeast. 

And our forests are already loved to death. They're going to be loved even more because people are gonna want to come, you know, have communities, have first homes, second homes have those recreation opportunities. So I think it really behooves us to really understand, you know, the forest, the processes, the organisms so that we can manage that development, which is coming. 

Dan Egan: 

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's real. And of course, you know, so the Colorado River, of course, it's a major story. Uh, it's going right through the Grand Canyon. I don't know the last thing I saw, it's 80 to a hundred feet  down. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, all these sorts of things. And you know, my simplistic mind is, well, we need to pour more water at the top <laugh> Yeah. To let it run down. Right. How do we get more water at the headwaters to do it? But then there's so much demand. And here, like you just talked on, we're in the land of plenty. 

We have so much water. Yeah. Are we going to be exporting water? Is water gonna become that sort of resource, uh, for New England? Is that part of the study? 

Lindsey Rustad:

It, it, it's an interesting question. I I don't know the answer to that. Um, I can say over our long-term record, believe it or not, since we started measuring rain precipitation, we now have a whole foot more precipitation now than we did before. Before our 50 years. A hundred years, 65 years. We, Since we started, we have a foot more water today than we did. Wow. Before. That's a lot. 

Dan Egan: That's a lot of water. 

Lindsey Rustad: So in scientific jargon, we are in a pluvial period. So we are in a wet period. However, it's not that simple. We are seeing more of our water coming in these big storm events. And again, we can document that here. We're having more of the water in these big events, and we have more of the water in the big events. Guess what happens? There's longer periods of drought in between. So we're actually having, I often think of it is, um, drier soils in a wetter world. And so the consequences of that, of drought on our trees and our vegetation, our fish populations, even though we're in a wetter world, is something that we're concerned about. We're highly concerned about, about fire. Right. We don't have the kind of fire regimes that they have out west. But as we have more of these droughts, more of these hot spells, just like up in Canada right now, that might be more of a concern for us going forward. 

Dan Egan:

I mean, when I hear that, I, I'm always like, we're never gonna have a force fire. But tell me about that. Because I think the mindset is that can't happen here. 

Lindsey Rustad:

And, and, and I think everything points to Yes, it can. A lot of what we do at Hubbard Brook here is we try to get ahead of the curb. So I started doing a forest ecosystem drought study, you know, 10 years ago before we had the droughts. And then we had, the last couple of years we've had these very dry droughts. You know, we've done, you know, the acid rain, you know, studies, you know, kind of before it got really bad. 

So we're doing the ice storm study, we're trying to be ahead of the curve so we know how our forests are going to respond, and we can be better prepared, you know, to manage or, or recover from them. I don't know if that makes sense. 

Dan Egan: 

Yeah, no

Lindsey Rustad:

It’'s, so it comes back to the story of fire. Yeah. So fire is something, um, I was at a meeting of graduate students in this very room two nights ago, and two of the six talks were about fire. I've never seen a talk here about fire. Mm-Hmm. Right. But we're getting ahead of the curve and we're thinking of, you know, what if the future forest includes more fire? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we are often trying to study the forest of tomorrow, today, whether that's a drier forest, a wetter forest, a hotter forest, more fire prone forest, you know, so we can be more prepared. And that goes back to Right. You didn't ask me this question, but I'm gonna say it anyway, why do people care that we're here? Yeah. Right. 

Yeah. Why does someone in, you know, Hannaford or at the mobile station, down the road care that we're here? And, and I think part of that is, is that just to know, first of all, I hope to have some pride Yes. That we're one of the premier ecosystem studies in the world, but also to know that we're up here, I think of ourselves sometimes as like the sleeping giant up in the forest, slowly, meticulously, carefully, kind of keeping an eye on the forest. And the forest is what so many people depend on here, right. The economy, recreation, um, tourism, just aesthetics, spirituality. Everybody loves the forest here. And we are here kind of providing, you know, that science to help protect the forest that, that they love. Trying to think about what future forest threats are going to be so we can, you know, avert them, you know, before they're here. Does that make sense? It, it's A little crazy. 

Dan Egan:

No, it's really beautiful. Yeah. It's really beautiful. I mean, of course in the white mountains in New Hampshire, the forest is important and loved. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and people to come from all over the world to be here. And we've talked a little bit about development and the pressure on the forest. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and people's perception of the trees vary. You know, some might call 'em, uh, weeds, they just keep growing, you know what I mean? 

Yeah, yeah. You know, that's insulting, I imagine to you, right? Yeah. Uh, others like they're, they're ruining my view. Right? Yeah. Interesting. And I, and what do you say to, you know, I have a friend who, who whose neighbor clear cut. Yeah. You know, trees that were over 200 years old and they, they were big and beautiful and, and they, they, my friends upset. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> at the neighbor, but the neighbor had a reason. Right? Sure. The neighbor had a desire. But where do we meet there? 

How do we communicate, how do we appreciate trees? How do we say, do you know what you did? Do you care what you did? Yeah. How, how do you manage that piece of all this? 

Lindsey Rustad:

Oh, a again, such a, a great question. And part of that is, is education and understanding all the things that forests provide for us. So I was actually, last week I was at it Comic-Con Okay. In San Diego. Nice. Right. And I was there with the Forest Service, and I had a table, we were part of a steam fair science, technology, engineering, art. Okay. Um, and math. 

And I had a project that was called postcard to a forest. And what I was trying to chair, which is why I'm telling you this right now with the kids, 'cause it was a family event amidst all the craziness of, of, of Comic-Con, um, was all the wonderful things that forests do for us. So they help provide clean air, clean and plentiful water, food, fiber, um, habitats for animals, places for us to recreate spirituality, tourism, economy. 

I mean, I, I can go on and on all these things that maybe all the people in New Hampshire see one of them or the other, like your neighbor, you know, the treat as this, your other neighbor, the tree does that. But I think understanding and appreciating all these things that the forest does, forest almost makes you look at the forest in, in a different way. And so our project was sharing that with the kids, and then we had postcards so the kids could send a postcard to the forest to tell 'em how much they appreciated the forest, and then draw a picture of their favorite tree or forest. 

Nice. And so now we are sending these out to all the forests across the us but a lot of the, the kids didn't know, you know, and on the postcards, they say, now thank you for the oxygen. Thank you for the water I drink. Thank you for the animals. So again, a somewhat long 

eind..

Dan Egan: 

 But but isn't the, isn't the, you know, somewhere there's a neighbor sitting there going, well, there's another tree growing. Yeah. And this one made it 200 years that I don't need the, I don't need a monument of a 200 year old tree, in my view. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. What is that true? I mean, if I cut it down a 200 year tree, do I have to worry about it? Because, you know, New Hampshire was clear cutted a hundred years ago. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So do you see my point? Like, can, can I just rely on another tree growing for 200 years if I cut this one down? 

Lindsey Rustad:

Do You see the forest for the trees?

Dan Egan:

Yeah. <laugh>, right? 

Lindsey Rustad:

Isn't that the question? I think it's understanding the forest resource that we have, the forest as as a whole, it's, it's kinda like carbon credits <laugh>. Right, right. You know? Yeah. Carbon credits, I can pollute here. Right. If I preserve something over here, the fallacy with that is when you trying to preserve something over here, it might not actually be working. So your neighbor, you know, who cuts down that tree and says, there's plenty of trees over here, that's great. If we really are conserving and projecting and providing stewardship for the resources as a whole, if that makes, if that makes sense. One tree, you know, is that going to change, you know, the carbon dynamics or wildlife habitat or oxygen? No, but protecting and providing stewardship for our forest resource as a whole, and I think that's what the forest service, you know, is, is here to do in places like Hubbard Brook is here to do, is how do we do that? How do we conserve and protect and preserve this amazing resource that does all these things for us Right. In cities and, and across the country. Does that, I don't know if that helps your neighbor. 

Dan Egan: 

No, it's, well, it's an interesting conversation, right? Yeah. And, uh, you know, it's amazing. Sometimes I look up around my forest and I'm like, I hope that one doesn't fall in the house. <laugh> Yeah, sure. <laugh>. But I love how big it is. Yeah. The, um, you know, when 65 years quite a legacy of Hubbard Brook Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, uh, national and worldwide impact with the research. Um, and, and trying to be ahead of the curve in a day where the current culture is sort of, I would say, hypersensitive to global warming, right? 

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's finally in the forefront of people's minds for the majority, either pro one way or another, but it's in the forefront. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what, what is it that you wanna say? What, what, what's your message? What, what do we need to be thinking about out here in listener land about these sort of things? And, and sometimes I feel like recycling my can makes a difference, and sometimes I think it doesn't. So, Mm-Hmm. Do you, do you have anything to speak on on that? 

Lindsey Rustad: I, I just, and, and, and you have to understand, I've been doing climate science since the early 1990s. I did a, for one of the first ecosystem warming experiments up in Maine. So I really have watched the evolution of our knowledge and in public opinion on this. And I just have to say the scientific consensus, you know, that the earth is warming and it's warming due to human influences, burning of fossil fuels and changing landscapes is, is just undisputable. And it has been for a while. I, I think what's more concerning is we are coming up against some of these tipping points. You hear the 1.5, you know, two degree C and we are coming up to these points of no return. If you lose a glacier, you lose an ice sheet, you lose a species to extinction, you can't get those back ever, or certainly in our lifespan. 

So I, I think figuring out how we are going to adapt to these changes and how we're gonna mitigate them, that is help reverse help prevent this accumulation of greenhouse gases is one of the most important environmental issues of our day, if not all of humanity. And again, it's been slow, but these tipping points are coming, are, are coming up. The loss of corals, you know, is, is an example with, with the, the bleaching of the corals that's going on right now. 

Loss of species on fire. You burn these huge areas, welcome, come back. Not in your lifetime. Not in my lifetime. So I, I think being aware of that, two things relative to your plastic bottles is on one hand the law of the humongous. Right? So the law of the humongous is if every single person, uh, I love this, it was a, a book I write about about China. 

If everybody in China jumped at the same time, would the earth feel it? So if everybody conserved one light bulb or one plastic bottle, would it make a difference? Darn right. It would. So everything that you do makes a difference. But we also have to change the infrastructure , of our country and, and of the world. And I'm gonna stay away from policy because that's my, not my thing, I'm a scientist, but I do want to say the scientific evidence is indisputable that our climate is changing and there's a human imprint on it, and we are gonna be bumping up against some of these tipping points in our lifetime. 

Dan Egan:

I, I, I thank you for that. You know, and what I hear is such passion that has driven your career, uh, and I see that passion when you have kids sending postcards to the forest and you're sharing that, when did you strike upon this passion for yourself? What was it? Was it a teacher? Was it a time? What, what do you, what do you attribute your great passion to? 

Lindsey Rustad:

I, you know, I, that's, that's such a good question. I, I've just always loved being out in, in, in the forest. Um, I mean to, i, I mean, to tell you study actually, what, what did start my passion on, on trying to change what's going on? So I grew up outside of New York City, right? Long Island and right on Long Island sand. And when I was a little girl, when I was seven or eight, long Island sand was so polluted, right? If you walked in up to your knee, you couldn't see your toes. It was disgusting. It was terrible. And all the fish would, you know, would, would wash up and the horseshoe crabs would die. And I think that sparked my crazy concern about what was happening with the world. Now, that was another success story, because again, they've cleaned up Long Island sound, and now if I go back and I put my feet in the water, I can see my toes wiggling, you know, as, as I walk in the water. So I think I learned that, that we have a huge impact on the world, on the environment, but we can fix it. 

Dan Egan: 

I mean, I, I want to touch on that point. Yeah. Um, we have multiple successes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, when, when I hear the, the, the conversation that the sky is falling, I go, wait a minute. Yeah, yeah. Acid rain, we've cleaned up the Charles River, the Boston Harbor. Long Island. Long Island, you know? Yes. We're losing the coral. I get it. I I love the ocean. I, I recently sailed back from Bermuda and, and sailing. Anytime I sail through the Gulf Stream, it's an amazing event. And, you know, the water temperature at the clouds, and I see the climate move through the oceans, but we've had a lot of success. 

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we've cleaned up a lot of things. Do we ever celebrate that? Do we ever like say, wow, you know, we're we, we're not just blowing up the planet. Yeah. Isn't there room for this? 

Lindsey Rustad:

We, we don't enough. And I gotta say, I try and say that every time I talk to tour groups or I have youth engagement, or I'm talking to those kids with a postcard, and, and that's where I came from. The can do attitude is, oh my gosh, science is not the solution to everything. Right? We, we need, we communicate, we need, I always talk about we need a village, right? We need the artists, we need policy makers, we need students, we need people working, but we need scientists. But, but we can move the agenda. And we've done that. You have a solid scientific foundation. You understand a problem, you understand solutions, but you have to communicate it, and you have to make people care about it. We can't make people care with science alone. We need people to translate the science. Why do we have artists here? 

Why was Leah here this morning helping us communicate, helping us translate, helping getting people to care about the science so they'll make a difference. Acid rain. Do you know what the turning point of acid rain was? Wasn't the dead fish that were washing up? It wasn't the, the dying spruce tree. It was the melting tombstone. Huh? When people saw melting tombstones, because they're made of calcium carbonate, and the acid would dissolve the calcium carbonate in the tombstone, they were like, holy, shoot, if it can dissolve a tombstone, what's it doing to me? And people cared. I don't care what it is that makes people care, but that's a connection we, we need to make. And so you, you see with climate change, they tried the polar bear, right? They, they tried some of these iconic images, and we haven't quite gotten to that point of collective caring that we make the difference. Like we turn the point in, in acid rain, DDT Rachel Carson. Right? What was the turning point on DDT Silent Spring? It was Rachel Carson, not the science she did, it was a poetic writing that she did. Mm. That turned the point and started the, the modern day conservation movement. Mm. So we need everybody working together on this, not just the science. Does that make sense? 

Dan Egan:

Yeah. That's, that's, that's great. And, and you know, your career and being published and recognized for everything that you've done, uh, and all that you continue to do, uh, and I can just hear it in your voice. It's not gonna end anytime soon, thank goodness. Um, yeah. What, what are you most proud of? 

Lindsey Rustad:

Oh, that's, I, I, that's a great question. I, I, there's so many things, but, but I, I, I honestly think it's providing the leadership and the stewardship of this place we call Hubbard Brook, in this world of ecosystem science, of, of being the team leader for 15 years, for being a participating scientist, for helping keep not only Hubbard Brook, but the other Hubbard Brooks that are out there, um, going, communicating, producing science. 

So I believe in us as a collective whole. And being a part of that and a leadership role has been super important. The, the other thing that I take great pride in is, is mentoring the next generation. So not everybody will do this, but you know, those kids with the postcards so that the youth engagement is getting that your kids, my kids, I now have two grandkids, is, is getting them excited and giving them hope, sharing those positive success stories, and in helping prevent that, that existential angst that so many young people have. 

So those two things. I think providing leadership within the ecological community in Broad and then here at Hubbard Brook, and then helping provide hope to the next generation. 

Dan Egan:

I love that. Yeah. And how can people get involved to learn more about Hubbard Brook and all that's happening here? 

Lindsey Rustad:

We have a fabulous website. You can go check us out online. We have social media, you can follow us on social media. So there are all kinds of ways to, to, to get involved. But, you know, contact us. We'll be glad to connect you. 

Dan Egan:

I love it. Thanks so much Lindsay. And, uh, thanks for joining me and educating me and everybody on what you do here at Hubbard Brook. 

Lindsey Rustad:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.