Teatown Lake Reservation - Science in A Living Laboratory

Science in A Living Laboratory

The Stewardship Program requires Teatown to conduct its own scientific studies of the Reservation’s habitats, plants, and animals. Teatown’s Stewardship Program depends on the work of many scientists for its general understanding of the physical world (e.g. geologists and hydrologists) and the biological world (e.g. biologists and ecologists). This Program is an example of interdisciplinary work of modern conservation ecology.

In recent years, sprawling development, climate change, invasive species, and other environmental threats in Westchester County and the Hudson Hills and Highlands region call for more proactive land management practices. These efforts include setting management priorities and deciding on specific responses to environmental challenges. Teatown’s science-based conservation efforts involve staff as well as students, collaborating scientists, partnering organizations, and volunteers.

One current scientific focus of Teatown’s Stewardship Program is to document, assess, and begin formal monitoring of the Reservation’s biodiversity and natural resources. The monitoring portion of these studies will be on-going, so that population trends of flora and fauna can be detected over time. For example, the Stewardship Program team will be focusing its long-term monitoring efforts on habitats and organisms shown to be particularly sensitive to environmental change. These include the lakes, vernal pools and fens, lakeside dragonflies and damselflies, forest-interior birds, stream salamanders, turtles, and rare wildflowers.