Where Science and Art Meet
—Gillian Graham, Inquiry Editor (Edited by Karen Finogle)
University of New Hampshire graduate Mary Dellenbaugh was not your typical forestry student. When most people think of forestry, they probably conjure images of bearded, flannel-clad men using heavy machinery to clear and manage forests for human use. Mary challenged these stereotypes. A petite, energetic UNH honors student, she would dress in a simple black shirt and jeans, with silver earrings and her short reddish hair pulled back from her face. She played in a heavy metal band called “Shroud of Bereavement;” she loved the arts, and despite the fact that she disagrees with the way forestry is practiced in the United States, she was recently named 2005 Forestry Student of the Year for New Hampshire by the Society of American Foresters.
Mary believes that managing our forest resources should be about bringing a balance between an artistic, aesthetic approach and a scientific, fieldwork approach, not about a single forester utilizing great tracts of land strictly for human use. “I am a very artistic person, very balanced between the arts and the sciences, and I believe that in forestry, we need to find a balance between a creative force and a custodial force,” she said.
Mary and a GIS map
Perhaps Mary's unique perspective comes from her varied interests and diverse academic history. She didn't come to UNH as a forestry major, but declared herself a classics major before discovering her passion for the outdoors. She had taken an advanced placement environmental science class in high school and enjoyed it, so she knew that a certain affinity existed for an environmental vocation. A summer spent on Squam Lake in New Jersey as a caretaker for her parents' land revealed to her a love of the outdoors that she decided to turn into a career. “I wanted to learn more about the land,” she explained. She took a “Forest Health Monitoring” class at UNH with Professor Barry Rock and she knew she had found her calling: “I wanted something where I wouldn't just study it, but where I could actually go out and fix it.”
Mary's passion for forestry extended to her recent Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) project studying the local Lamprey River watershed. She analyzed how urbanization is influencing water quality in the watershed and focused on the way impervious surfaces such as roads and parking lots affect the chemical makeup of the water. Mary wanted to understand how we as humans are impacting this important resource, what can be done to remediate existing problems, and how to prevent future difficulties. “We all need water, and there is a definite freshwater crisis going on now, in terms of pollution and wastefulness,” she explained. She designed her project so that towns drawing on the watershed will be able to understand what problems need to be prevented and how to prevent them. “Prevention is not only much healthier, it's also a lot cheaper,” she added.
While most people might imagine this project would involve many hours outside testing and sampling, observing and recording, fieldwork is not always necessary in forestry today. Although she studied a very real ecosystem nearby, Mary spent most of her time inside at a computer using specialized software to assess the way that urbanization is affecting the local watershed. “Technology is a very important part of my life,” she said. She even did computer repair in her limited spare time between researching, band practice, and completing her degree at UNH.
Mary was attracted to her SURF research project, conducted under the guidance of her advisor, Dr. Mark Ducey, for a number of reasons. She explained that most of the fieldwork had already been done, such as the general mapping of roads, terrain, and physical attributes. The real work began when she put these elements together to see how they functioned and related to each other. She was drawn to the project for its remediation value as well. “I learned so much about restoration techniques,” she said. “It wasn't just about studying the problem. I was trying to present some real options for fixing the problem as well.” This passion for application led Mary toward her graduate plans as a landscape architecture student in Germany: “I thought my SURF project would form a bridge between my undergraduate work in forestry and landscape architecture.”
She began with the hypothesis that urbanization can have a negative effect on water quality in the Lamprey watershed. With the help of Dr. Ducey, Mary used data previously gathered from different sub-watersheds found within the Lamprey's. She compared this data on the computer using a Geographic Information System (GIS), a type of digital map that allowed her to layer different sets of data so she could see a broad view of the issues at hand. She could add and subtract layers of her digital map to compare flow lines of streams and rivers; to observe different land cover types such as shrubs, coniferous forest, or deciduous forest; and to evaluate data concerning human use and urbanization, such as impervious surfaces like paved roads and parking lots, and population density. She then compared this map with water samples taken at each site to uncover why water quality differed at test sites. Problems relating to water runoff from highways, fragmentation of landscape, population density, and general water chemistry were all taken into consideration in her study. For instance, Mary explained, when roads and highways are salted for winter use, runoff affects not only the quality of the water we use but also the lives of plants and animals. Thus the entire watershed is affected.
The impact of Mary's work is far-reaching, and her proposed solutions could be valuable to a number of towns and individuals. The Lamprey watershed spans much of southern New Hampshire, running from Candia all the way to Portsmouth. “There are many small towns feeding off this resource, so this research can conceivably affect a lot of people,” she said. Mary was hopeful that her research findings would help policy makers understand the environmental significance of their decisions and take these issues into consideration. “Understanding even the basic impacts of urbanization could really help remediate some of the problems we see in our water quality,” she said. For example, she discovered that leaving forests intact by the water's edge does a great deal in filtering harmful materials out of the water. When runoff passes through the intricate root system of the trees, the chemicals are strained from the water, leaving it clean and clear. “Even leaving a few trees right along the edge would make a big difference,” she added.
Mary's research yielded her honors thesis, the completion of her SURF project, and a logical bridge between her undergraduate work and graduate school plans. She is the first American to be accepted to the Anhalt University of Applied Science in the Master of Landscape Architecture program in Germany. Landscape architecture, she explained, works with the land in a healthy way that stresses stewardship and prevention using creative, aesthetic solutions. A landscape architect strikes a balance between humans and the environment, which is so important to Mary. Projects range from managing parks in metropolitan areas and installing rooftop gardens on skyscrapers to planting therapeutic gardens and performing historic preservation and restoration of public and private land. “With landscape architecture, I’ll be able to bring a real aesthetic into the work, which has always been important to me,” she said.
Mary also discussed how the European view of the environment differs from that in the United States, and how she believes that landscape architecture is becoming more and more relevant in our society. “Forestry in Germany is so sophisticated, it's really a labor of love over there. Here the environment is short-changed; people think it will always be there, and it's that passive approach that destroys the environment. We need to study solutions before prevention is no longer an option,” she concluded.
Mary is currently busy studying German before she and her fiancé move to Bernburg, Germany in July.
