The College Woods: A living laboratory and the crown jewel of our campus
The College Woods is one of the reasons that William & Mary’s campus is so special. If you walk into the Woods from one of the entrances on campus, you might see students running on the trails, tromping through streams looking for salamanders, inspecting leaves to identify a plant, lugging equipment to measure water quality, or just hanging out with friends by the lake. Not many schools have a 900+ acre woodland attached to their campus, and none has the history and biodiversity of our beloved College Woods.
A Brief History
The College Woods was originally part of Archer’s Hope Swamp and inhabited by the indigenous peoples of our area. In 1693, the land was included in the charter that founded William & Mary. About 25 years later, it was sold and part of the Woods was settled and farmed by colonists. Remnants of this land use can be seen in old plantings out on Squirrel Point and in pits that were once part of ice houses that dot the main walking trail. In order to support a gristmill, a creek was dammed creating the oldest manmade lake in all of Virginia. Lake Matoaka, which was named after the daughter of Chief Powhatan (Wahunsenacawh), also known as Pocahontas, is still around today. Eventually, farming ceased and the mill closed. In the 1920’s, the College re-acquired the land and lake, and in the 1930’s, the Civilian Conservation Corps created a trail system. Since that time, the Woods have been used for research and teaching.
The College Woods Today
Today, the College Woods contains a surprising variety of plant and animal communities, with the oldest trees over 160 years old. The unique topography and geology of the area create conditions for a diversity of habitats. In our coastal plain forest, there are deep ravines, perennial streams, embankments around the lake, and more. There are conditions that can create the calcareous dry forest community, which is ranked as critically imperiled at the regional and global levels— the highest rarity ranking possible next to extinction.
Three perennial streams drain into Lake Matoaka. Professor Randy Chambers, Director of the Keck Environmental Field Laboratories, explains, “Precipitation in the College Woods currently takes on average 12 years to migrate from the forest surface, into the soil, and through the groundwater before emerging in our streams, where that high-quality, mineral-rich, gin-clear groundwater ‘feeds’ the ravine systems of rare plants and animals.” And according to Associate Professor Martha Case, College Conservator of Botanical Collections, “the ecosystems in the Woods are delicate, particularly around the streams. Seemingly trivial alterations to waterflow can permanently transform communities.” However, because of preservation efforts, the Woods “punch above their weight”. Nearby woodlands that do not have the topography and geology of the College Woods do not have anywhere near the same amount of diversity. Sometimes, preservation efforts fail and precious ecosystems are lost, but we learn from these mistakes.
The College Woods: A living laboratory
So what are we doing with this crown jewel of the William & Mary campus? Each year, the Biology Department offers courses that incorporate the Woods into class activities, providing around 700 seats to students. Geology and Environmental & Sustainability also use the Woods and offer 300 seats in their own courses. That’s 1,000 opportunities for students to work in our living laboratory! Students are studying the dynamics of viruses in Lake Matoaka, isolating bacteria phages, learning how to identify plants and birds, testing water quality, investigating water flow through the watershed, understanding long-term forest dynamics in the era of human-influenced global change, and more. A recently developed class is isolating brewer’s yeast from the College Woods and testing the fermentation properties. Perhaps one day there will be a College Woods beer! In introductory biology, students are studying the effect of deer browsing, contributing to a 10-year study that is still going strong. According to Associate Teaching Professor Jenny Rahn, the first time some students really connect with nature is through these lab classes and it can be transformative. Teaching Professor Dorothy Ibes, Director of the Parks & Ecotherapy Research Lab, said of her course on ecotherapy, “I take my class into the Woods all the time. It is hard to find a quiet space on campus where you can’t hear construction, cars, and other noises associated with people. What would we do without the College Woods?”
The College Woods is also a hotbed of faculty and independent student research. Currently, there are research projects studying ambrosia beetles, seed dispersal, salamander and frog abundance, stream flow, water quality, and more. As far back as the 1920s, faculty have been studying the plant communities. These are documented by historical collections and intensive studies spanning 55 years. Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant to digitize herbarium specimens, our data are available for the world to study. In 1994, Stewart Ware, now an emeritus professor, set up permanent plots to be studied at 10-year intervals. This proved to prescient as it provided a way to study forest recovery after Hurricane Isabel, and has allowed on-going studies of the impact of deer browsing. Although Professor Ware is retired, the plots have been passed down to the next generation of faculty and students. During this time of unprecedented global changes to our ecosystems, long-term studies of one place are invaluable for the ecological knowledge they provide. Unfortunately, they are also rare.
Now, after about 100 years after rejoining William and Mary’s campus, the College Woods has become an integral and inextricable part of our mission. It has given us new knowledge, and transformed lives and career paths. Let’s celebrate our College Woods, its remaining pristine and undisturbed streams, all the flora and fauna that call it home, the students and faculty who have studied and loved it, and the Williamsburg community that has helped us preserve it!
If you would like to support the education and research in the College Woods please click on the link below.
College Woods Education Fund (#5497)
