We are excited to announce that on Oct 12, 2017, the Mapping for Healthy Forests Vermont project received its 3000th observation.

Huge thanks to all contributors to the project, and special thanks to @seen_on_street_view for adding the 3000th observation.

Autumn is still a great time to go out and spot invasive plants: Japanese knotweed is turning burnt umber in color, dead stalks of wild parsnip stand tall and brown, some still clutching seeds, common and glossy buckthorn are still vibrant green, Asiatic bittersweet has started to fruit and its leaves are senescing, turning yellow...

Have a happy autumn everyone!

"Psithurism, (noun, considered obsolete) the sound of rustling leaves, or the wind in the trees"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/psithurism
http://www.yourdictionary.com/psithurism

Happy snowy spring everyone!
A lot has happened since things kicked off in 2014. What started as a student-forester collaboration project in Chittenden County, has now grown into a state-wide collaborative effort among naturalists and others alike! We've been so busy mapping, we haven't had much chance to update this online blog, but our hope is to regularly post throughout 2017.

To start, here are some of the stats for the project so far:
* 2439 observations
* 43 species
* 58 active observers
* 97 members
* 141 Vermont towns represented by the data collected
* The most observed species have been:
** Common buckthorn (362)
** Japanese knotweed (260)
** Wild parsnip (156)
** Common reed (130)
** Garlic mustard (111)

Amazing!

Thanks for your efforts, and soon we'll all be out looking for those first signs of spring!

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. "
-John Muir

With 35 miles of invasive plants mapped along roads in Jericho, Bolton and Richmond, I am feeling really proud of this project already. I am excited to get the observations in to a cleaned up map to tell some stories. Already there are a number of messages that can be quickly gleaned from the observations:

1. Honeysuckle and buckthorn are everywhere. We know these plants impact the forest. The way the mapping has been done will help shed light on the role that roads play in introducing invasive plants to otherwise intact forest. This can be helpful information when grappling with issues like fragmentation, subdivision and zoning policy, invasive plant management on parcel and community scales.
2. Some plants like barberry, glossy buckthorn, multiflora rose and bittersweet are much more isolated than honeysuckle and buckthorn. Folks who own land on the edges of infestations of these species will be able to play a role in slowing the spread of these plants, and prevent further establishment even if some of the the more widespread invasive plants are established.
3. A few seemingly isolated species were identified. Tree of Heaven and European spindle tree are a couple that come to mind. The detection of these species presents opportunities to learn about the threat they pose, communicate with landowners and pursue monitoring and control measures if appropriate.

For everybody that has contributed over the last few months, thank you. NR 206 folks, thank you for entering so many observations! We'll continue our good work on this. Charlie and Kyle, thank you for checking out these observations, giving feedback, and taking much of this work to research grade! In the past couple of weeks we've had a few other folks come on board, contributing past observations to this project. Welcome, and I hope that you keep contributing!

Hi everybody!
We've got about 20 miles done so far! I think it is really great and going to be very useful.

After downloading the observations from iNaturalist and mapping them in GIS it becomes pretty clear that we don't need the frequency of honeysuckle and buckthorn observations. I understand that it is slowing down the process and in the mapping it obscures the picture a little bit. The observation spacing for common buckthorn and honeysuckle ranged between 100 and 400' I think that 300' tells the story. Feel free to use this spacing for common buckthorn and honeysuckle.

For less common species that are growing densely but not as widespread please maintain the current spacing. It is clear that we've got pockets of barberry, multiflora rose, bittersweet, etc. Being able to recognize these localized infestations is going to be the coolest part of the mapping project.

Thanks again! I know folks were shooting for 50 miles of road mapped, which I think will be a stretch at this point, and that is okay. If we got 35 or 40 miles done, that would be a huge success. With the final mapping push lets try to connect the dots on some of these roads, this could include Snipe Island Road (south from Nashville Rd) and Snipe Ireland Road (north from Rt 2), Dugway Road (btwn Huntington Rd and Cochran Rd.).

Does anybody know a game plan for the mapping? Who's doing what roads? I was gonna go out on Wednesday and do a couple hours to add to the project, but don't want to map where somebody was planning to do it already. Let me know. - kt

Hi all,
again another great push of observations! Thank you.

I am noticing that folks are recording observations of Japanese stiltgrass. I am not sure how familiar folks are with this species or the other invasive grasses that may be found in the area (there are many). To my knowledge Japanese stiltgrass has not been identified in Vermont. Which means, any observation of Japanese stiltgrass that does turn out to be accurate is a big deal. Please be sure to take a photograph of the specific features you used to identify the grass as Japanese stiltgrass and not another densely growing grass like reed canary grass.

A few quick identifying features for Japanese stiltgrass (that I have never personally seen):

1. It often has a band of white/silvery hairs down the center of the leaf blade, along the midvein.
2. It is really easy to pull out.
3. The leaf blades are often asymmetrical with the distance from the midvein of the blade larger on one side to the other.

Here is the link to gobotany's account of Japanese stiltgrass: https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/species/microstegium/vimineum/

Here is the link for reed canary grass: https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/species/phalaris/arundinacea/

Holy moly. You guys are awesome. 348 observations so far and a lot of ground covered. That is great. Looks like we're finding a lot of scattered buckthorn and honeysuckle in these areas, but a couple species stand out as being kind of isolated: barberry, multiflora rose, and bittersweet. Already I feel like a useful picture is beginning to be developed.

I downloaded (but haven't mapped) the first set of data to see how it looks and see if the spacing between frequently observed species is more than is necessary or not. Jamie had asked if there was a way to speed up the process since the 100' feels tight and he could go a lot faster if he was documenting things less frequently. I'll check out how things are looking on the map and get back to you. It is a fine balance between going fast and producing a useful data set, but if wider spacing results in the same quality data (but more miles covered) that is a good thing.

Thank you so much for taking such great pictures now. It makes it very easy to verify the species, and frankly there were a few pictures that were actually quite beautiful.

Are folks making use of the guide for all of the species when you've had ID trouble? Is it useful? Did we even talk about it?

The guide is accessible and downloadable for use when there is no cell service. Click on Guides on the bottom tab and search for Chittenden County you'll come up with a guide Chittenden County, Vermont - Invasives. Without download it is available with cell service, but will only be useful if you download it if no cell service exists.

The guide has a list of all (most) of the invasive plants that threaten new england forests. Its got pictures (swipe the picture of the plant to see more), descriptions and things like that. It may be useful for some of the plants that have been misidentified like mile a minute weed, Japanese stilt grass and bittersweet. When you download the guide, all 49 species will be in one window, it can be hard to find the one you're looking for. If you swipe to the left you will see a breakout of the plants: grasses, shrubs, trees, etc. This might help to narrow down a search. Please email or message me with any questions!

Happy mapping!