College’s North Woods gets community boost

Skidmore, city working together to protect trails
By Tatiana Zarnowski, Gazette Reporter
(as originally published in the Daily Gazette)

If it weren’t for the rocks in Skidmore College’s North Woods, the city’s drinking water supply would start out a lot more acidic.

The carbonate soils and rocks such as dolostone and limestone help neutralize acid rain, which eventually flows into Loughberry Lake, said Kim Marsella, environmental studies program coordinator for the college.

“I think it’s probably not an angle that we think of that much,” said Marsella, a geoscientist whose students study the Loughberry Lake drainage basin. The small reservoir has a small watershed, which in areas that don’t have carbonate rocks often means acid rain packs a bigger punch.

“It’s good to have a pH that’s close to neutral. It does make it easier for them to treat the water,” Marsella said.

But in Loughberry Lake, acidity is not a problem, she said. “A lot of those carbonate rocks sit up here in the North Woods.”

The 250-acre forest north of the main campus is open to the public for walking. And for city resident and public official Ken Ivins, the North Woods is a nice place to walk his dog. 

He has noticed erosion of the trails over the years, and at a meeting last fall offered to help out.

Ivins promised the college he’d assemble a volunteer labor force from the community to clean up the woods if he was elected commissioner of finance in November.

“I’m a long-time outdoors person,” Ivins said. “The trails there have experienced a lot of use, and as a result a lot of erosion issues have come up.”

Ivins on Saturday helped place stepping stones, create channels for water runoff to prevent erosion and pick up trash — projects that Skidmore flagged as needed. Ivins also solicited donations of building materials from Allerdice Building Supply.

“We’re doing projects that will improve the trails for hiking and at the same time prevent erosion,” said Bob Kimmerle, Skidmore spokesman.

Boy Scouts and Jaycees from the community helped with the trail work, as well as students and faculty from the Sustainable Skidmore program and the college’s Environmental Studies program and Biology Department.

“Our goal is to keep it as pristine as we can and ask people to take good care of this resource,” Kimmerle said.

The college also gave guided educational tours of the North Woods on Saturday to discuss native wildlife. The woods are home to migrating songbirds, 33 types of ferns, and trees such as southern oak, hickory and northern hardwoods.

Kimmerle said the college regularly has such tours for the campus community on Family Weekend and alumni reunion days, but Saturday’s tours were solely for the general public.

“We saw this as an opportunity and great timing to bring the town together with our students.”