Academic literature on the topic 'Massachusetts – Walden Woods'

Few American writers have been so rooted in a single place as Henry David Thoreau. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, sixteen miles west of Boston, Thoreau spent nearly all his short life, some forty-four years, in the vicinity of his native town – “the most estimable place in all the world” he deemed it – with only brief sojourns beyond New England. Like many of his contemporaries, he did try out the big city, living close to Manhattan in 1843, an aspiring writer, age twenty-six, with hopes of a literary career. But he quickly recoiled from the urban scene. “I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse,” he wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meaner than I could have imagined. … The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.” Homesick, he was back in Concord within six months. Only once did he stray outside the United States, for a week-long excursion to Montreal and Quebec. To this “Yankee in Canada,” it was a disappointing jaunt. “What I got by going to Canada was a cold.” Thoreau was simply happiest in his hometown, where he “traveled a good deal,” exploring the ponds, woods, and fields, observing and provoking the neighbors, and transforming his chosen ground, in Walden and in his journals, into a sacred site on the American literary landscape. Concord, he declared, is “my Rome, and its people … my Romans.”

Walden Pond and Woods, Massachusetts, U.S is an iconic destination, best known for Henry David Thoreau’s book-Walden (1854). Thoreau’s philosophy and the literal value of the book as well as the natural landscape of Walden inspired worldwide literature readers and numerous modern environmentalists. This unique cultural and historical landscape has a long history of conservation effort in various forms started as far back as 1800’s. As a result, now, 80 percent of Walden Woods is permanently preserved. This study focuses on the changing socio-cultural environments and corresponding activities by various stake holders. To clarify the factors that led to its success of today, primary source survey and hearings to the stakeholders were taken place. The study period from 1845 to 2016 is divided in 4phases by characteristic socio-cultural environments. In each phase, corresponding conservation activities were researched and clarified: Phase1 (1845 ~1921): Industrialization and population increase vs. individual activities; Phase2 (1922~1972): Economic growth and Middlesex County’s management policy vs. citizen group’s movement; Phase3 (1972~1987): Rise of environmental awareness vs. involvement of public agencies, policy and plan makings and public input; Phase4 (1988~2016): Suburbanization vs. WWP and continuous implementation of conservation plan. The clarified factors that lead to the success are 1) Common value of the place to empathy with 2) Diversity in stakeholders 3) Longterm and systematic conservation plan with both government and citizen’s participation

I feel as though my graduate student experiences “preadapted” me to become involved in long-term ecological research. I already enjoyed collaborative research and instantly felt comfortable in the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program when I first had the opportunity to work in it. Working on large, collaborative projects offers a great number of opportunities for students and postdoctoral fellows, but their mentors need to ensure that they develop intellectually independent ideas. Giving students and postdoctoral fellows the long-term collaborative view of science while having them develop as fully independent scientists is a balancing act that I try to always keep in mind. The LTER program has led me into an increased level of communication with the public, students, and local and regional level managers and policy-makers. I have found that at every level people are hungry for scientific information, and my interactions with all of them have been extremely rewarding—although challenging. It has forced me to expand my communication skills and work with others who have the gift of science translation. There are costs and benefits to scientific collaboration that change with the size of the project and with one’s level of involvement in the project. Entraining young scientists is a challenge for large-sized projects, such as those in the LTER program. It was 1975 when I and several other beginning graduate students first walked down a short path through the woods to the Great Sippewissett Marsh in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Ahead of me marched my major professor, Ivan Valiela. As we explored the marsh, Ivan pointed out numerous circular plots staked in the grass. These, it turned out, defined the bounds of his fertilization experiments. The grass within some of the plots was distinctly greener and taller compared to others. Ivan began explaining the marsh fertilization experiment that he had begun 5 years earlier with John Teal. He described how the responses of the marsh seemed to differ with the amount of added fertilizer. The community composition of the vegetation had been changing over time.