In the fall of 1994 the Harvard Forest dedicated and officially opened the J.G. Torrey Laboratory. The Laboratory, named after the late Professor John Torrey (former Principal Investigator of the Harvard Forest LTER), has been extensively renovated to support research in soil and plant science. The building includes a new 1,300 square-foot nutrient analysis laboratory equipped with a LACHAT AE Ion Analyzer, FISONS NA 1500 CN Analyzer, autoclave, hood, block digester, water filtration system, and new laboratory furniture. Other building improvements include the addition of 1,100 square feet of offices, the renovation of the headhouse adjacent to attached greenhouses, and installation of a new climate control system.
A second laboratory has been renovated in Shaler Hall into research and office space for RICHARD 000NE paleoecological and land- use studies. The new lab includes a filtered clean area with hood for processing pollen samples, a microscopy area and a 2lOPb dating facility. The 2lOPb equipment includes an ORTEC alpha spectrometer for detecting the decay of polonium-210 in organic materials and provides a chronology for lake and wetland sediments over the past 250 years. The laboratory will be used extensively for local to regional studies of vegetation, lake and land-use history.
The Harvard Forest also has established a Soil and Plant Tissue Sample Archive and a large cold storage room. The Archive, still in development, has been created from an existing brick garage and will include storage capacity for over 32,000 samples. Samples will be bar coded, and data for the samples (collection information and physical and chemical properties) will be available from a PC in the Archive. The first samples stored in the Archive are soils collected from a recent extensive soil survey of the Harvard Forest Prospect Hill Tract. The cold storage facility, located in another renovated garage bay, includes three large (420 ft3) boxes for refrigeration and freezing.
Recent improvements in telecommunications include installation of telephone and data wiring to all offices and laboratories in all three Harvard Forest buildings. A new telephone system with voice mail is now in place, and a computer network connection to the main campus in Cambridge is planned for later this spring.
Future facilities activities will include creation of a larger space (800 ft2) for the Harvard Forest paper archives, establishment of two additional laboratories (800 ft2) for visiting scientists and summer research assistants, and a comprehensive space planning review coordinated with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard University. Funding for the recent and planned facilities improvements has been provided by the NSF Division of Instrumentation and Resources, FAS, and the Harvard Forest.