The 2014 Season of the South Mountain Speakers Series Kicks Off on March 27th with a look at the Forests of South Mountain
The fifth season of the South Mountain Speakers Series will begin Thursday, March 27, at Penn State Mont
Alto, with a talk on the history, diversity and current management of the
forest resource in the South Mountain region.
This event,
"The Rothrock Legacy: A Forum on the Past and Current Conditions of Penn’s
Woods,” will be held at 7 p.m. at the General Studies Auditorium at the Penn State
Mont Alto campus, Franklin County. It is free and open to the public.
“During the last 130
years the region’s cut and burned over forest landscape has been transformed into
a patchwork mosaic of fertile agricultural valleys and shady wooded ridges,” said Jon Peterson, an environmental planner with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the lead of the South Mountain Partnership. “The lecture will explore the past, present and future of
forestry in the South Mountain region.”
The forum will include
retired USDA Forest Service forester Joe Barnard, who will provide a summary of
how Joseph Rothrock’s passion led to the protection of thousands of acres
of Pennsylvania’s now productive hardwood forest, as well as the
establishment of Pennsylvania’s Forestry School at Mont Alto.
DCNR Assistant State
Forester Matt Keefer will detail today’s current condition of south central
Pennsylvania’s forests and outline the opportunities and threats to the current
day-to-day management of the region’s private and public forests.
Nancy Baker, a private forest
landowner, will provide a case history of 163-acre woodland she owns and
manages. The first timber harvest on this forest land was conducted by her
great grandfather in the 1860s. Baker’s forest is used today to demonstrate a
professionally developed and implemented Pennsylvania Forest Stewardship Plan
and it was the first Pennsylvania property accepted into the Chesapeake
Bay Watershed’s Forestry for the Bay Program.
A question-and-answer
session will follow the three presentations.
This lecture is supported by the Pennsylvania
Forestry Association and the Penn State Mont Alto Forestry Club.
The annual South Mountain Speakers Series is organized by the South Mountain Partnership and is envisioned as a revival of the talks given by Joseph Rothrock in the late 19th
century as part of his work to preserve and restore Pennsylvania’s forests and
natural landscape. The fifth season of the Speakers Series is sponsored by the
Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau.
The South Mountain Partnership was sparked by
DCNR’s effort to engage communities, local partners and state agencies and
identify funding opportunities to conserve high-quality natural and cultural
resources while enhancing the region’s economic viability. It is a
public-private partnership between DCNR and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy,
and has grown into a coalition of citizens, businesses, non-profit
organizations and government representatives in Adams, Cumberland, Franklin and
York counties, working together to protect and enhance the South Mountain
landscape.
South Mountain is at the northern end of the Blue
Ridge Mountains. Communities in the 400,000-acre region have thrived off
fertile limestone agricultural lands, the timber that fed iron furnaces,
plentiful game and wildlife, and abundant pure spring water that is captured by
the mountains’ permeable soils and released into the valleys.
