Stone Walls as Drylands: Viewing New England’s Landforms as Habitats with Robert Thorson

In early New England history, freshwater wetlands were considered miasma to be loathed, drained, and converted to more productive use. By the early 1970s, however, the values of freshwater wetlands in New England had been recognized and they began to be protected by state and federal regulations, even though the majority had either been created or altered by agroecology and hydropower development. Much the same can be said about New England’s gridwork of drystone walls estimated at 200,000 linear miles within an area of about 50,000 square miles. What has turned out to be the region’s signature landform resulted from the same human agencies at wetlands. But with respect to wildlife habitat, they are complementary drylands whose ecological functions as volumes, areas, and lines enrich habitat diversity in ways that are only just beginning to be investigated. This talk will be a status report on this emerging science.

Stone Wall Initiative – Information Website Stone by Stone – 2002 Book Stone Wall Science – Academic Minute Audio Manual for the Inventory and Description of Stone Walls – How to Do This Conserving the Historic Stone Walls of New England – Recommended Process K.M. Johnson and W. B. Ouimet – Physical Properties and spatial controls of stone walls Taxonomy and Nomenclature for the Stone Domain in New England – Scholarly Stone Pavilion Project – UConn’s forgotten resource. Colonial Impacts to Wetlands in Lebanon, Connecticut – Documents the Human Agency

Robert M. Thorson is a Midwestern native, turned Northwestern geologist, turned Northeastern academic. Currently, he’s a Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Connecticut with a research focus on the link between New England’s landscape, archaeology, history, ecology, and literature. His work as a journalist was recently featured by the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Smithsonian. His Thoreau scholarship was recently featured in a three-part Ken Burns-PBS-Ewers Brothers reframing of Henry David Thoreau aired nationwide on March 30-31, His most recent book, The Walden Experiments, is upcoming at Princeton University Press for September, 2026. Several others are in the works.

VENUE: Virtual presentation at the museum  (arranged by sponsor)