Dr. Daniel Druckenbrod, professor of Environmental Sciences at Rider University, can predict the future. He also loves to take long walks in the woods.
“When I’m walking in the woods, I’m reading a story written in the forest. I notice the size of the trees, the species, and how those sizes and species are distributed. The structure of the forest tells me the story of how it started a century or more ago,” he says.
Dr. Druckenbrod, who did postdoctoral work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and left a tenured track position in Virginia to teach at Rider, can predict the future. He uses tree rings, computer models, historical documents, and geographic information systems (GIS) to study how forests and their environments change over decades to centuries.
“The understory (the lower layer of the forest) tells me the current conditions and the stressors on the forest that influence the future forest. The future forests of Lawrence are experiencing the same stressors that are a concern up and down the East Coast–invasive species, an overabundance of deer, urbanization. The saplings that survive tell me what the future of the forest will look like,” he says.
“Our environment has always gone through natural changes before, but not at the rate and extent that we are seeing now because of human impact,” says Dr. Druckenbrod, adding, “My primary responsibility as a professor is to give my students the skills and knowledge to be aware of nature, to be informed citizens who can become part of land management and sustainable ecology across the globe.”
One source Dr. Druckenbrod leans on is the work of Aldo Leopold.
“I incorporate Leopold into the curriculum to give students a historical and ecological connection to our community,” he says.
Aldo Leopold was an influential leader in environmental stewardship and the “Land Ethics” philosophy and lived in Lawrence Township while attending the Lawrenceville School from 1904 through 1905.
According to Dr. Steven Laubach, the Aldo Leopold Distinguished Teaching Chair and Director of Sustainability at the Lawrenceville School, “Leopold’s time in Lawrence Township was formative in developing his philosophy of land stewardship and wildlife management.”
A prolific writer, Leopold’s book A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, is still read and discussed today in high schools, such as the Lawrenceville School, and universities, such as Rider.
“Every student at the Lawrenceville School reads Leopold,” says Dr. Laubach.
A Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays, with the capstone essay “The Land Ethic,” expanding ethics to include soils, plants, animals, water, and humans.
Dr. Laubach explains, “This is a revolutionary shift in understanding the natural world, from a commodity to be exploited to an interconnected ecosystem where each part has inherent value on its own and each contributes to a sustainable ‘biotic’ whole…a community to which we belong.”
Leopold’s path to becoming a fundamental figure in American environmentalism started at an early age. To understand what inspired Leopold’s writing and conservation efforts, it helps to travel back to the time when his interests were formed.
Dr. Druckenbrod says, “We are lucky that the Leopold family archived all of his letters from when he was a student at Lawrenceville.”
There are 175 known letters he wrote to his family during this time. “His letters home are replete with observations of the ecological community, the plants he saw, the animals, and their interactions,” adds Dr. Druckenbrod.
The letters tell us how “Leopold would spend hours in the woods of Lawrence after class and on days off, including property on and just west of Rider University which Leopold called the Big Woods,” says Dr. Laubach.
The “Big Woods” is now preserved parkland that includes Lawrenceville’s Central Park, the Johnson Trolley Line, and the Loveless Nature Preserve. (Note: This preserve is named after the author’s family who once lived and farmed here and in the Big Woods.)
“In my class,” says Dr. Druckenbrod, “I match my readings of Leopold, whether it be from A Sand County Almanac or his family letters, with the season if not the month when students and I are in the same woods. We’ll soon read his letter where he recognizes the ephemeral Spring relationship between flies attracted to blooming skunk cabbages and the migrating phoebes that feed on those flies.”
“I’m from North Jersey,” says Rider University research assistant Therese Apuzzo, “I didn’t know who Aldo Leopold was until I got here. It’s incredible to me that I’m standing in the footsteps of such an important ecologist!”
Dr. Druckenbroad explains, “Leopold is clear in his later writings that one’s education should extend outside the classroom to the surrounding environment. This connection to the preserved historic and ecological community is motivation for the students of today to protect and restore the environment for the next century.”
“I like to think,” says Apuzzo, “that I’m continuing to monitor the forest for Leopold. I have technology that he didn’t have at the time, like a gas exchange instrument that can help to measure the health and functioning of the forest. If he was monitoring these woods now, I think he would be looking at climate change impacts just like I am.”
Around the turn of the century when Leopold was taking his tramps in the area, Mercer County was mostly agricultural land. According to an 1899 Report on Forests, only 11% of the county was forested, already illustrating the impact humans had on the “biota” with deforestation and soil tillage.
Today agricultural land is largely replaced by urban development.
“We sometimes overlook the services forests provide us for free, especially as we confront climate change, such as storing carbon and protecting biodiversity and the species that are adapted to inhabit these forests,” says Dr. Druckenbrod. He adds, “These older forests are particularly important because they can’t easily be replaced. There’s research saying these forests are more resilient.”
“I’m a big hiker, I’m no stranger to forests,” says Apuzzo, “but spending all this time in this forest, monitoring what’s happening like Leopold did before me, it’s different now. I feel more deeply connected to any forest that I’m in.”
This article was produced as part of MCCC’s Community Reporting “J Lab” certificate program made possible by grant funding from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and The New School: Journalism + Design. To learn more about the J Lab program, contact Prof. Holly Johnson at johnsonh@mccc.edu.
