page_title: Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest / Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Gene Likens, American limnologist and ecologist, in the laboratory at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest.
context_page_description: Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest is an area of land in the towns of Woodstock and Thornton in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that functions as an outdoor laboratory for ecological studies. It was initially established in 1955 by the United States Forest Service for the study of the relationship between forest cover and water quality and supply.
context_section_description: The idea for using the small watershed approach being used at Hubbard Brook for studies of elemental budgets and cycles was born with Professor F. Herbert Bormann of Dartmouth College, who began taking his botany classes for field trips to this area of the White Mountain National Forest in the early 1950s, and Forest Service scientist Robert Pierce. Bormann proposed to Pierce that the area set aside by the Forest Service for watershed studies be used  for closed-system ecological studies.
  In 1960, soon after the establishment of HBEF, ecologist Gene Likens and geologist Noye Johnson, both from Dartmouth, joined the research team. In 1963, the group received a $60,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study "Hydrological-Mineral Cycle Interaction in a Small Watershed". This study evolved into the series of longitudinal studies now referred to as the "Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study", or HBES.  The early ecosystem monitoring was aimed at studying the effects of forest management practices on water flow and quality. These data have been helpful as baselines for the increasingly sophisticated areas of ongoing research in the forest.  HBES has spawned over 2000 scientific papers, perhaps most important a 1968 study that documented the widespread presence of "acid rain". HBRF was designated as a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in 1988 and has some of the longest on-going ecological datasets.
  Currently the study comprises researchers from multiple universities, including Dartmouth College, Yale University, Cornell University, Syracuse University, SUNY ESF, the University of New Hampshire, Keene State College and the University of Vermont.  The Hubbard Brook Research Foundation provides housing for research assistants at nearby Pleasant View Farm and recently completed the purchase of cottages for visiting and resident scientists around Mirror Lake, the point at which Hubbard Brook exits the experimental forest.
  Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest is the most recently added research forest under USFS jurisdiction for hydrologic studies in the eastern and southern United States.
caption: Gene Likens in the laboratory, 2015
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