Ecological Preserve

If you’ve been out bushwhacking on the EcoPreserve, you might have come across a “trail camera” attached to a tree. The Ecopreserve is participating in Snapshot USA, a project coordinated by the Smithsonian Institution to get at least one location in all 50 states to monitor their wildlife populations through a network of motion detector “trail cameras” during the months of September and October, 2019. The EcoPreserve in NJ’s sole location. Students for the Principles of Natural Resource Management class…

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Horse Patrols in the EcoPreserve If you’ve been seeing the horse hoofprints along the trails of the EcoPreserve you’ve not been mistaken. The Rutgers Horse Patrol has started to include the trails of the EcoPreserve as part of their regular patrol of the Livingston Campus. Bikers please yield to the horses as they pass by.

For the first time in Rutgers history, a formal survey of the bats inhabiting the Rutgers EcoPreserve is being conducted. On a weekly basis, members of the Maslo Lab (https://sites.rutgers.edu/brooke-maslo/)  trek into the Preserve after dark to catch and catalog bat species. Bats are caught using mist nets, which are fine mesh nets mounted to metal poles extending up to 30 feet in the air and suspended across trails or streams (think backyard badminton!). Captured bats are removed from the…

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Dr. KJ MIN, postodoctoral researcher from Clemson University, is studying how plant invasion influences biogeochemical cycles in soil (e.g., soil carbon chemistry, microbial decomposition of soil organic matter).  His target species is the Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) which is a woody vine with oak-shaped leaves that can cover the ground in a dense mat and climb up shrubs and trees. The RU EcoPreserve is one of his study sites where he is taking soil samples and measuring the soil chemistry…

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