Animal Sciences Commons^™

The March Ice Storm: Disaster And Opportunity, Paul Matthiae, Philip B. Whitford

Field Station Bulletins

The ice storm of March 1-5,1976, of perhaps once in a century severity, hit the UWM Field Station with ice loads up to 2 in. thick. The crowns of many trees, especially older beech and maple, were literally torn asunder by the sheer weight. In the swamp forest most tamaracks had their tops snapped off. The beech-maple forest of course was one of the Nature Conservancy's first major projects in Wisconsin, one of the jewels of the Scientific Areas System, and fortunately one of the most thoroughly studied tracts in the state. We had excellent pre-storm data on the forest …