Current & Recent Projects

• Greenwood Street Landfill, Worcester: Partnered with Casella Construction and the City of Worcester to create habitat for threatened grasshopper sparrows at this 40-acre site. Designed a phasing plan that would ensure adequate nesting habitat over the multi-year period and designed and supervised restoration of grassland habitat in the newly capped areas, including specifying soil parameters, seed mix, and planting methods. 
• Rock Meadow, Belmont: Completed a detailed inventory and restoration plan and worked closely with a vegetation management company to remove invasive shrubs and restore the 40-acre meadow to its former open condition for the public to enjoy.
• Woodsom Farm, Amesbury: Designed a management plan for this recently protected, 200-acre farm, one of the most prolific Bobolink breeding sites in the state. We conducted bird surveys and gathered input from various user groups to create a plan that balanced the needs of breeding birds with the need to maintain the grassland by mowing. 

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• Lynnfield Marsh & Charles River Marshes, Lynnfield/Wakefield/Medford: Conducted intensive surveys for marsh-nesting birds in these extensive wetlands. Pre-dawn starts required navigating through dense cattails and paddling open water sections to conduct audio-response surveys at multiple points throughout each marsh. 
• Berkshire East Wind Turbine, Charlemont: Monitoring the impact of a newly installed wind turbine on birds and bats. Early morning surveys focus on searching for injured animals while seasonal audio surveys help us describe how the turbine is affecting birds’ use of the site.

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• MassWildlife & DCR, Statewide: Completed over 60 baseline documentation reports for conservation restrictions (CRs) held by state agencies. Reports have covered privately-held, town-owned, and federally-owned properties in all counties of the state, ranging up to 3,000 acres in size.  
• Newton Conservators, Newton: Completed baseline reports for seven properties protected by the Conservators, including very small lots and a public golf course and will complete annual monitoring visits and reports.
• Town of Concord: Completed reports for 10 properties including some CRs established over 40 years ago.

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• Nahanton Park, Newton: Working with the City of Newton to inventory natural resources and public use of this popular 60-acre park along the Charles River. Athletic fields, community gardens, a nature center, canoe rentals, walking trails, and excellent wildlife habitat draw a wide variety of users. We will review proposed new uses and make recommendations for accommodating public use while maintaining wildlife habitat.
• Fruitlands Museum, Harvard: Following up on an inventory and management plan we prepared in 2001 for this historic, 200-acre property and gauge the success of habitat recommendations they put in place.
• Emery House, West Newbury: Completing a four-season inventory of this 200-acre retreat center. Information on natural communities, amphibians, birds, and invertebrates will be incorporated into a set of recommendations for maximizing habitat value while continuing agricultural use.

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• Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Stow/ Maynard/Sudbury/Hudson: Completed an intensive inventory of invasive species and a comprehensive management plan for this 2,200-acre refuge. The survey employed mobile GIS to record percent cover of 25 target species in over 4,000 survey blocks. The resulting maps have directly informed control actions on the property.
• Westover Air Reserve Base, Chicopee: Applied the same intensive survey method as with the Assabet River refuge to this 2,400-acre property. Results led directly to control activities focusing on protection of habitat for grassland nesting birds.
• Mass Audubon Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary, Lincoln: Worked closely with Mass Audubon education staff to develop mobile GIS tools to map invasive species on this wildlife sanctuary. The team is working with high school students to identify invasive species, survey target areas, and upload data to a web map.
• Sudbury/Assabet/Concord River Watershed: Working with our partners in the Sudbury-Assabet-Concord Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA) to develop widely-available tools for mapping invasive species in the watershed. With support from the Sudbury Foundation, we’re expanding the mobile GIS tools developed for Drumlin Farm so that invasive species distribution data can be captured by CISMA partners to develop watershed-wide priorities for invasives management.

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• webLIS: Worked closely with the Mass Audubon Land Protection and Stewardship staff as well as specialists in the Mass Audubon Information Technology Department to develop webLIS a powerful online tool for storing and accessing information and documents about our protected lands.
  
  Until recently, a question about the specific terms of a land agreement would require hours of research in archives of our paper records. webLIS uses a map-driven database to put digitized documents and data only a few mouse-clicks away. The password-protected database is available to any authorized user with an internet connection, even on mobile devices.

webLIS map of all Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary parcels
with database information and links for one parcel

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Conservation Planning

• State of the Birds: Working with Mass Audubon’s Bird Conservation staff to complete a rigorous statistical analysis of range and abundance data for all Massachusetts birds. This publication will document the state of bird populations in the Commonwealth and will inform bird conservation efforts for years to come.
• Losing Ground, 4th Edition: EES partnered with Mass Audubon’s Advocacy staff to complete the 4th edition of Losing Ground, our periodic look at the pace of development in Massachusetts.
  
  We completed an intensive GIS spatial analysis to identify parts of our Commonwealth most threatened by development and created a website with interactive maps and data for use at the town, watershed, or county scale.
  
  
  
• BioMap2: Partnered with the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program and The Nature Conservancy to coordinate the creation of BioMap2, the state’s second effort to identify the most important areas in the state for habitat protection. We integrated multiple datasets and expert input into a statewide conservation plan that updates the original BioMap created in 2001. The entire BioMap2 analysis rests on a foundation of spatial data that was managed by EES staff. 
• MassWildlife Forestry Program:  Provided GIS and data management support to the Forestry Program including: creation of a Property Management Geodatabase to track boundary accuracy, boundary marking efforts, and land management information; management of timber and wildlife resource data; and creation of a road inventory database and customized ArcPad application for field data collection.