Environmental Monitoring Facility for the Black Rock Forest

由14个纽约地区的学术机构组成的黑岩森林联盟将在其现场站点--占地1,500公顷的黑岩森林--安装环境监测设施。黑岩森林位于纽约市以北80公里处的哈德逊高地，拥有各种可供研究的陆地和水生栖息地。近一个世纪以来，这里精心保护和管理，以来一直被黑岩森林联合体利用。这片森林已经成为来自联盟机构的数千名教职员工和学生进行科学实地研究和教育的焦点。尽管许多自然特征使它成为科学野外工作的合乎逻辑的地点，但黑岩森林缺乏气象设施。利用空间站进行生物和环境科学研究的趋势越来越大，这就产生了对这种设施的需求。该设施将在森林内的两个地点连续记录一系列重要的气象变量，并将包括降水采样设备。数据将被下载并输入一个广泛可用的数据库，黑岩森林工作人员将每周定期维护设备。该设施将是哈德逊河沿岸330公里的区域监测站网络的一个组成部分。由此产生的数据将显著提高正在进行的植物生态学、水生生态学、树木年代学和生物地球化学研究的质量，并将刺激扩大对黑岩森林的科学和教育利用。

9412997 Schuster, W. The Black Rock Forest Consortium, a group of fourteen New York-area academic institutions, will install environmental monitoring facility at its field station, the 1500 hectare Black Rock Forest. The Black Rock Forest is located in the Hudson Highlands, 80 km north of New York City, and possesses a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic habitats for study. It has carefully protected and managed for nearly a century, and has been utilized by the Black Rock Forest Consortium since 1989. The forest has become a focal point for scientific field studies and education for thousands of faculty and students from Consortium institutions. Despite many natural features that make it a logical location for scientific field work, the Black Rock Forest lacks a meteorological facility. An increasing trend in use of the station for biological and environmental science studies that created a need for such a facility. The facility will continuously record a range of important meteorological variables at two locations within the Forest, and will include precipitation sampling equipment. Data will be downloaded, and entered into a widely-available database, and equipment will be maintained on a regular, weekly basis by Black Rock Forest staff. The facility will be one component of a regional network of monitoring stations spanning 330 km along the Hudson River. The resulting data will significantly improve the quality of ongoing studies in plant ecology, aquatic ecology, dendrochronology, and biogeochemistry, and will stimulate the expansion of scientific and educational use of the Black Rock Forest.