PS 56-162
Dendro-history of Indian Springs, NY
Indian Springs is a forested area between Ithaca and Trumansburg in Upstate NY. The forest is the homeland of many historical events including the first airport in the Ithaca region, the first church to contribute to the civil right movement of the African Americans and a Speak Easy house yet little is known about its landscape and landscape use history. Within I test the hypothesis of two successive landscape changes associated with the establishment of the area for residence presented in two forms of vegetation. The first is Quercus palustris (cn: Pin Oak) and the second is Acer saccharonus(cn:sugar maple). I use dendrochronology to investigate the changes in the vegetation associated with land use.
Results/Conclusions
Two populations of trees are found with oak being the oldest averaging 60 years old and the second is sugar maple averaging 30 years. The two pulses of the growth are in concert with the ethnographic history of the area at which the main vegetation was Oak until new resident houses were established in 1943, at which the trees were cut and the landscape was utilized for farming, however few farmers decided to plant maple sugar for sap production.