On a humid, 81-degree Sunday morning in late June, Sally Willig and the students in her Regional Field Ecology course emerged from a wooded trail at Ringing Rocks County Park in upper Bucks County onto a sea of sunlit boulders.
Willig, a lecturer and academic advisor in the Master of Environmental Studies (MES) program who also teaches in the Master of Landscape Architecture program at Weitzman, provided an overview of the weathering and erosion that gave rise to the diabase—igneous rock—boulder field. With hammers and pliers, students then tapped the rocks and created a euphony of tones—some reverberant, some tinny, and some sounding like a locomotive bell.
It was an interlude in a walk where Willig pointed out myriad plants and showed students how to identify them: white oak, sour gum, spicebush, sugar maple, hog-peanut, Japanese barberry, musclewood, hop-hornbeam, autumn olive, chestnut oak, mugwort, wineberry, wild sarsaparilla, black snakeroot, moonseed, bitternut hickory, and rosebay rhododendron.
This trip to Ringing Rocks and Natural Lands’ Mariton Wildlife Sanctuary in Easton, Pennsylvania, was the fifth of six Sunday field trips for Regional Field Ecology, as the class moved along a transect from the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey to the first prominent ridge of the Appalachian Mountains. It provides hands-on, foundational knowledge for students, some of whom don’t have much prior experience in ecology.
“Our approach of moving along different gradients in each natural area to see the changing structure and species composition of the plant communities and associated wildlife allows students to recognize patterns and associated processes,” Willig says. The aims of the course are to introduce students to the varied environments and plants of the region and to get them thinking about connections between climate, geology, topography, hydrology, soils, vegetation, wildlife, and disturbances to the environments.
Whether examining how the 2022 Mullica River Fire impacted different tree species in the Pine Barrens or exploring how Hurricane Sandy severely eroded and breached parts of the primary dune at Island Beach State Park, students see the effects of disturbances to nature first-hand.
“Going with Sally, you have your own personal tour guide, and you can ask her anything,” says Sarah Luddy, an MES student with a dream of working in environmental education. Luddy says whereas she previously saw “a blend of green” in nature, now “things pop out more.”
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