Harvard Forest's response to CO2 reveals past and future for
the New England landscape
You might never know it, but the seemingly quiet Harvard
Forest in Massachusetts is actually hard at work. Like other forests, it's busy
doing some serious global housekeeping, which is being monitored by scientists
at Harvard University.
"There's this enormous sucking sound, metaphorically
speaking, that is happening across the New England landscape and the eastern
U.S. It's the carbon being brought down out of the atmosphere, into our
forests, which is reducing the amount that is up in the atmosphere," says
David Foster, who is director of the Harvard Forest, which stretches for 3,000
acres near Petersham, Mass., about 60 miles west of Boston.