Join us for an afternoon with Studio’s Ecologist David Baker on Friday, May 31st, from 3pm-6pm. David will discuss his journey of caring for the woods and his twenty-year knowledge of the bottomland, followed by a delicious barbecue at Tulane River and Coastal Center. The event is free, but registration is required below!

For twenty years, David has been removing Chinese Privet (Ligustrium sinense) and Chinese Tallow ( Triadica sebifera) to restore the Bottomland Hardwood Forest at A Studio in The Woods. From 2004 to 2024, approximately 25,000 shrubs were removed from the 7.66 acres of forest.

Simultaneously, 32 (10X10-meter) research plots were installed in 2004 to monitor the rate of invasive species removal and observe the rate of change over time. Since 2004, A Studio in The Woods has been impacted by eight hurricanes, two of them extremely destructive.

Following Hurricane Zeta in October 2020, (50X50-meter) plots were installed to begin monitoring forest changes at a much larger scale. The smaller plots were observed 20 years in a row, and the larger plots were surveyed for 4 years post-hurricane.

David will share data and stories from 20 years of deep observation of 1400 trees at A Studio in the Woods.