The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies:
Methods of Ecosystem Analysis Class
Site Description

Crooked Brook site of the Lake Gaillard Watershed
in North Branford, CT

Preface:  This report combines new (Spring 1998) observations with information from the 1992/93 Methods class site report.

Overview
Crooked Brook drains the watershed east of Totoket Mountain and feeds into Lake Gaillard in North Branford, CT. The reservoir and forest are owned and managed by the New Haven Regional Water Authority and managed primarily for watershed protection through the maintenance of a healthy and diverse forest. The site we are studying is a hemlock-mixed hardwood (oak, maple, hickory, beech) forest Totoket Mountain’s gentle southeast-facing slope. The abundant hemlocks on the site have been infested by the hemlock woolly adelgid for about ten years now, and are dying fast. This spring, salvage harvesting began on several large, heavily damaged hemlock stands. Totoket’s shallow, rocky soil overlies a basaltic till. In many areas, ridges of exposed bedrock are visible within our transect sites.

This is an easy site to walk around; the structure is that of a mature forest in the stem exclusion phase. The sparse understory is dominated by ironwood (a.k.a. blue beech, Carpinus caroliniana), hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana), witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), and flowering dogwood (Cornus florida). The forestfloor is well cushioned by the thick leaf litter and the only real obstacles are fallen trees (windthrow, age) and occasional bedrock shards and course till. Though our site study began in January, the warm, wet winter of 1998 has kept a few ephemeral streams flowing across the forest’s broad slope. Some depressions on the mountain were actually flooded enough to be impassable to our intrepid watershed delineation crew.

Human Uses
The local water company’s manages this forest primarily for watershed protection. Some small-scale logging operations do occur here; logging plots are accessible via a  network of dirt roads. As previously mentioned, foresters are harvesting some dead and unhealthy hemlock stands. Though generally seen as one of the less desirable forest products, hemlock boards are used for non-load bearing construction and other purposes. In addition to these salvage and other harvests, the water company allows local permitees to cut firewood for personal use on marked plots scattered throughout the forest.

Yale Forestry Research Plots
Our Methods of Ecosystem Analysis class, led by Professors Tom Sicamma and Dan Vogt, is researching this site to collect information on the forest’s biomass and productivity; the growth rates and growth patterns of different tree species; the forest’s nutrient cycle; and the water chemistry of the precipitation and forest streams. More information on the class projects research is available at the main class page.