Stewardship · Briarwood Falls

Hydrology

Continuous gauging at the Lower Weir Station; secondary measurement at the Middle Reach Station during the spring melt and the late-summer drawdown; tertiary measurement at the Whitford Open gauge through the growing season. Suspended solids, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and baseflow persistence are the principal indices. The full gauging record is reviewed each autumn by the senior hydrologist and abstracted, under her hand, for the Michaelmas number of the Quarterly Review.

The sediment-transport model, run under the standing research compact on a decadal cycle, is the working instrument for trustee concurrence on the staged removal of the three middle-reach check dams.

II.

Forestry and Riparian Margin

No commercial silviculture is practiced, nor contemplated under any reading of the covenant now or previously in force. The forestry program consists almost entirely of observation, of the removal of invasive taxa at a deliberate pace — chiefly Rhamnus cathartica at the mouth of the Pettit Draw and Berberis thunbergii along the old stock path — and of the maintenance of the narrow interior path used by the warden and by visiting researchers. The riparian margin is permitted its own recovery and is subject to particular protection; no mowing, no grazing, and no pedestrian use above the ordinary high-water line.

III.

The Long Inventory

A continuous, multi-year census of the parcel's flora and fauna, revised each autumn. The inventory is maintained in the archive and is the working document against which all observational claims in the Quarterly Review are checked. Graduate assistants, drawn from the sponsoring institutions, contribute to the Sugarloaf, Hemlock, and Pettit transect re-walks under the supervision of the resident botanist. The decadal audit, delivered in the tenth year of each working program, is the principal published product of the inventory.

IV.

Archive and Publication

The Trust's archive, held in the Brook House reading room, comprises the warden's logs since 14 April 1962, the minute book of the trustees in eleven bound volumes, the complete run of the Quarterly Review in its fifty-four numbers to date, and the field notebooks of some forty visiting researchers deposited under the standing compact. The archive is consulted by invitation only. The Review is the principal published product of the Trust and has been issued on its customary quarterly schedule without interruption since Michaelmas 1971.

The Calendar of the Working Year

Vernal · March–May

Ice-out. Spring melt gauging at LWS and MRS. The first understory walk of the Sugarloaf. Vernal number of the Review set in the final week of May; impression through the first week of June.

Midsummer · June–August

Continuous gauging; the August re-walk of the three transects; the visiting researchers' working period under the standing compact. Midsummer number set at the close of August.

Michaelmas · September–November

The late-summer drawdown gauging; the autumnal audit of the long inventory; the mowing of the Whitford Open on its twelve-year rotation by thirds. Michaelmas number, the principal issue, set at the close of November.

Candlemas · December–February

The trustees' concurrence meeting at Candlemas; the winter maintenance of the Brook House and the three gates; the setting of the Candlemas number, the shortest of the four, in the first week of February.

The Nine-Year Record, Abbreviated

11 mg/L

Present mean suspended solids at the Lower Weir Station, down from 46 mg/L at the commencement of the renewed program.

Native herbaceous species re-established along the Sugarloaf transect since the third year of the program.

7 of 9

Recent hydrological years in which late-summer baseflow persistence at LWS exceeded the program baseline.

Vessels permitted upon the cataract pool since the covenant amendment of 1968.

120

Copies of the Quarterly Review impressed at the Brook House press each season, hand-stitched, unsold.

Consecutive quarterly numbers of the Review issued since Michaelmas 1971, without interruption.

Early-twentieth-century check dams surviving in the middle reach, proposed for staged removal.

1,412

Acres held indivisibly in conservation tenancy, by the 1964 resurvey of the founding parcel.

On Association with the Trust

The Trust does not solicit new members, patrons, or correspondents. Membership is inherited or extended by unanimous vote of the standing trustees to individuals whose long association with the work has recommended them.

Researchers in the allied disciplines are occasionally invited, through the standing research compact, to undertake specific inquiries on the parcel. Such invitations are extended through existing institutional relationships and are not the subject of open application.

By appointment, by introduction. New engagements considered through existing relationships.

Four standing disciplines, practiced in concert, across the calendar of the year.