Ecosystems of Exeter
By: Hannah Dirsa, Ashley Jiang, Minseo Kim and Andrew Yuan
In celebration of Earth Day, The Exonian collaborated with faculty members across campus engaged in ecological sciences and sustainability work to survey the vibrant, diverse environmental landscape of Exeter, and current institutional initiatives the Academy is undertaking to ensure a sustainable future.
Flora
Bright green leaves and newly bloomed flowers can be seen dotting the sky—a tell-tale sign of spring’s arrival. The sugar maple, acer saccharum, conspicuous with its dainty yellow-white flowers dangling from long stalks, is a keystone species native to the central New England phytogeographic area.
Its bark provides nourishment for creatures large and small. Its leaf litter will diversify and expand the earthworm population. Its roots, shallow and spread like protruding veins, deliver carbon to great colonies of mycorrhizae or fungus-roots.
In return, endomycorrhizal fungi, a prominent type of mycorrhizae, penetrate the cell walls of sugar maple roots and establish residence. Though seemingly puny, their role in each sugar maple’s bid for height is not to be underestimated. Every second of every day, endomycorrhizae are busy facilitating the continuous transfer of nutrients—water, phosphorus, nitrogen and amino acids–between a sugar maple and its surrounding soil.
Another tree species found in abundance on campus are white pines. As evergreens, their reddish branches lined with long and pointy, yet soft needles can be appreciated in full glory year round.
Its generic Christmas tree appearance may not be a head-turner, especially for Exonians rushing around from commitment to commitment. Nevertheless, the pinus strobus has an impressive past to boast.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, white pines, which at the time reached up to 50 meters, were favored as masts for the British Royal Navy. Because of their significance to the Crown of England, these trees also played a pivotal role leading up to the American Revolution.
The Mast Tree Riot took place here, in this very town of Exeter. British men, tasked with the marking of mast trees, were stopped and assaulted by proud New Hampshirites-to-be in 1734. This and a second similar event in 1772 perhaps fueled the Boston Tea Party, a monumental mark on American history.
Despite its previous exploitation, white pines continue to grow in number today. On the other hand, the sight of Eastern hemlocks is one to take advantage of, as the tsuga canadensis population dwindles into steady decline due to an invasive bug.
Eastern hemlocks are much shorter than both the pine and maple trees, though they rival these larger species with their long lifespan of 800 years. Rounded dark green needles, flat and smooth, provide a shelter for our state animal, the white-tailed deer during the relentless, snow-heavy winters which New Hampshire hosts.
Tannin, a polyphenol from hemlocks’ bark, was also previously in high demand for tanning animal hides into leather. On the street where Forrestal-Bowld Music Center and Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center stand, there even used to be a great tannery, Tan Lane’s namesake.
Fauna
As the ice and snow slowly starts to shift to the sun and rain of a New Hampshire spring, Exeter students are spending more and more time outside. The red chairs on the quads are no longer empty, and the grass is dry and warm enough for doing homework on the ground. With the arrival of spring, you may find yourself reconnecting with the natural world of Exeter.
In person classes have started, and walking along the paths to your next class, you may notice the abundance of gray squirrels that roam around campus grounds. The Sciurus carolinensis is a rodent found commonly in urban and suburban areas. What they primarily look for in habitats are trees that will produce enough nuts to sustain their population.
Gray squirrels especially need an abundance of food before the winter months. Squirrels will still scurry around in the snow around campus because unlike many other mammals, they do not hibernate. In order to survive the season, they build up their body mass by eating many nuts in the fall. They also bury nuts in storage units in order to have reliable sources of food. In doing this, Gray squirrels help the propagation of seeds in an ecosystem because they sometimes forget where their stashes are located, creating a convenient place for trees to grow.
While squirrels are brave and friendly on the pathways of Exeter, a more silent mammal made an infamous appearance this year. Bats may be considered a nuisance due to their tendency to occupate houses and buildings for roosting or hibernating in suburban settings. If the temperature suddenly rises during the winter, bats may wake up briefly and change their place of hibernation. Big brown bats especially may find closed spaces such as attics to settle in again. As McConnell Hall rekindles its relationship with bats, it is important to note that they have significance in Exeter’s ecosystem.
Bats are nocturnal, and in the warmer seasons can be seen swooping down to eat insects around New Hampshire. In order to navigate, they use echolocation. Echolocation is the use of soundwaves produced by an organism and how they interact with the environment to orient itself. Big brown bats, for example, produce loud, high frequency calls, in order to find bugs like mosquitoes in the open night air. If it weren’t for our human ears, these calls would sound as loud as a fire alarm, around 110 decibels. Bats also hold the important role of regulating insect populations. According to New Hampshire Fish and Game, “A recent analysis of the value of pest control services provided by bats was at least $3.7 billion a year.”
In the nooks of your dorm room or on the plexiglass of your carrels, you may have noticed many small, brown bugs crawling around campus. While these insects look like stink bugs, you are most likely seeing Leptoglossus occidentalis, or the Western Conifer Seed Bug. They can be identified by their slimmer shape and the white zig zag pattern on their back. In the spring the bugs eat seeds and flowers in early development. They can do this because they have piercing and sucking mouthparts that can extract seed pulp. They are called Conifer Seed Bugs because they target mostly conifer seeds for food. An annual generation of these bugs appears every May to June. As the winter months approach, they find their ways into buildings to shield themselves from the cold, which is why you saw so many this winter term.
Beyond the immediate campus, students on the crew team interact with the Squamscott River, a river that runs inland from the Great Bay and allows a variety of fish to be seen in the waters of Exeter. One of the most notable fish, the alewife, even appears on the first official town seal of Exeter, published in the Exeter News-Letter in 1930. The alewife, or Alosa pseudoharengus, is a herring around ten inches long and mostly silver with a green-tinted top. With the arrival of spring, schools of adult alewives move down the Squamscott to spawn in the backwaters of Exeter River that are not affected by the tide. Exeter’s Great Dam was removed in 2016 and as a result, improved the spawning of many fish including alewives because they had access to more of the Exeter River. As the spawn of alewives become juveniles, they migrate back to the ocean at the end of summer and throughout the fall.
You may see more people fishing along Squamscott River this spring and summer. With the annual alewife migration comes predatory fish such as the striped bass. Striped bass, Morone saxatilis, grow to a length of 10 to 50 inches and are silver on the underside and have blackish-blue scales on their tops. Striped Bass mainly spawn in Chesapeake Bay and Hudson River from April to May. They have a migration pattern that leads them to the Great Bay in May to October. When the alewives move down Squamscott, some Striped Bass are found in the Squamscott as well.
As fish migrate and mammals wake up from hibernations, birds become more prevalent in Exeter as well. This spring term, BIO460: Ornithology, is a science elective for uppers and seniors who want to explore the bustling bird populations that surround Phillips Exeter Academy. Science Instructor Christopher Matlack teaches the course, and currently his students are studying common bird species found in the nearby forests. Some species that students have identified are Cardinals, Blue Jays, woodpeckers, and Redwing Blackbirds. The main thing to look at when identifying these birds is their plumage, which is their arrangement and color of feathers. Cardinals have notable red coats, black feathers around their eyes, and tuft of red feathers at their head. Redwing Blackbirds have a coat of black feathers, except for on their shoulders, where there is a flash of red and yellow. Blue Jays have blue feathers—well, not exactly. “There’s actually no blue color here. It’s blue light. Feathers in a Blue Jay are reflecting the light.” Matlack shared while showing a Blue Jay. “The reds tend to be a color. They get that from the berries and from the hemoglobin in their blood.”
It’s important to observe the world around us. Phillips Exeter Academy has a unique ecosystem that creates the very place where we all learn, live, and thrive together. “If [the students] knew the names of plants, and trees and birds, they would be interested in keeping them and maintaining them,” Mr. Matlack said. “If you enjoy and listen to bird songs in the spring and understand them, and then you understand that you're not hearing them anymore, that's going to be a huge thing you want to talk about, right?”
Sustainability
Many Exonians interact with The Exonian itself across campus: some are reading Exonian papers in the music building before their lessons. Some are sitting under the trees with a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch to their mouth and a newspaper in their other hand. Some read the papers inside the dining halls, and others in from their common room sofa while filling in one of the crossword puzzles from the Humor Section. But after stacks of papers are printed weekly and dispersed, where do they go next?
In 2019, students from the Green Umbrella Learning Lab (GULL), who reach outside the school including the town of Exeter and Exeter High School, created a method to fully recycle and repurpose the Exonian newspapers to reduce paper waste.
Many student and faculty environmentalists have started and are currently working on initiatives to address sustainability at the Academy. Home to diverse biomes and ecosystems, the Academy is currently developing a Climate Action Plan (CAP) with its Environmental Stewardship Committee, a faculty committee that oversees climate commitment at Exeter.
The Academy has taken considerable actions over the past years at advocating for sustainability and biodiversity. Currently, the Academy leads its sustainability in architecture with five buildings qualified for LEED Gold standards, the most widely used green building rating system in the world. While constructing its 143 geothermal walls under Phillips Hall, Downer Fitness Center, the Goel Center for Theater and Dance and four faculty houses, the Academy has lowered its greenhouse emissions by more than half since 2005.
An underground pipe renovation in 2013 oversaw the elimination of number 6 fuel oil and lowered campus’s natural gas and fuel emissions by 44.7%. Electricity energy generated by 1,552 solar panels over the William Blake Thompson Field House now represents 6% of the total energy spent on campus. Following the success in scope 1 emission reduction, the Academy is further exploring the second stage of its emission reductions through energy retrofits, on-campus solar energy investment in cooperation with local solar companies and more solar power purchase agreements.
In addition to energy efficiency, the community is also continuing its long-term recycling progress. Visiting the dining hall, one would find themselves dazzling at the dining services’ commitment to waste management. While saving over 84 tons of food waste, the Academy kept 546 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere with approximately cost savings of $227,000.
Manager of Sustainability and Natural Resources Warren Biggins praised the sustainability choices taken up by Dining Services. “The Dining Services re-imagined their system where they're using reusable plates and cutlery. Because they knew the demand for those materials was going to be so high, they just kind of ordered a number of them in advance. They have compostable clamshells, they have compostable plates and bowls and napkins,” Biggins said.
“On the other hand, they do have a plastic cutlery and it's not just one, right? You're not just getting one knife or one fork. Right. You're getting a knife, a fork, a spoon and additional condiments,” continued Biggins. “I think we've done a good job in the terms of making composts, trash and recycling available everywhere you go, but we can improve when it comes to plastics.” Plastics are usually down-cycled, and much of the plastic and compostable wastes head over to Mr. Fox Composting situated in Maine, New York, to be screened and separated.
Recently, students and faculty have noticed tissues and plastics and other waste rolling across campus or being misplaced in the bins. Although Mr. Fox Composting screens through, the process is all done by hand. A large part of the sustainability culture is dependent on individual initiative and awareness, and that’s where we face some trouble. Turning off lights before heading to class. Placing waste into the right bins. Eating less meat. Reusing water bottles or utensils. Biggins explains various habits Exonians can try to incorporate into their daily routine. A little goes a long way.
Sustainability is a major tenet of the Academy’s long-term vision, aligned with its core value of non sibi. Students can adapt a greater appreciation for local New Hampshire ecosystems by developing their knowledge of the flora and fauna on the paths and in the trails. The Academy as an institution will continue to demonstrate environmental citizenship to the greater New Hampshire community with clean, non-wasteful practices. As the Academy looks forward, Exeter will strive to be the most sustainable it can be.