The Susquehanna Chapter meets once a month on the third Wednesday in the evening. Most meetings are held at the Elm Park United Methodist Church rooms at 401 Chestnut Street in Oneonta starting at 6 P.M. with a covered dish supper. In the warmer weather, our meeting are generally held outside at a location announced for the month. June for example is our Brooks Chicken picnic at Gilbert Lake annually. For those not attending the supper, the program starts at 7 P.M. And it is followed by the business meeting. All interested persons may attend a meeting, both members and non-members. Your executive committee, wishing to reduce our carbon footprint, encourages members from outside Oneonta to carpool to meetings and activities.
March 15 – Sarah Coney of Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership (CRISP) presented “The American Eel”. The American eel (Anguilla rostrata) has the longest migratory journey of any fish and was once an integral part of the Susquehanna ecosystem. However, American eels have been largely missing over the last century due to the building of dams along the Susquehanna River, cutting them off from their spawning grounds in the Atlantic Ocean. Since their extirpation, effects on native freshwater pearly mussels, crayfish, and other species have become apparent. In partnership with multiple organizations (NYSDEC, USFWS, USGS, etc.), SUNY Oneonta has been working to reintroduce American eel back to the New York Susquehanna Watershed over the last 4 years and documenting the changes they’ve brought about.
April 19 – Dr. Pam Lea will present “The Other Continent ‘Down Under’: ANTARCTICA”. Dr. Lea is a local retired veterinarian who has had a lifelong passion for travel. In February 2022, she was able to visit her seventh continent with 58 fellow travelers on Overseas Adventure Travel’s first trip back to Antarctica since Covid. Join Dr. Lea, by way of a compilation of her photographs and those of her expedition leaders, to the spectacular South Shetland Islands by way of Buenos Aires (her birthplace), Ushuaia (“City at the End of the World”) and the Drake Passage. Iguassu Falls (wider and higher than Niagara Falls) rounded out the trip.
May 17 – Presentation by Dr. Sean Robinson on the history of the Adirondack Summit Steward Program and the work he has done in the Adirondack alpine zone.
Sean grew up in Queensbury, NY and started working for the Adirondack Mountain Club in 1992. After working at the Adirondack Loj and Johns Brook Lodge during the summers of 1997 and 1998, he worked as an Adirondack Summit Steward in 1999 and2000. He then went on to get his M.S. at SUNY-ESF and his Ph.D. at the University at Albany, specializing in bryology (the study of mosses, liverworts, and hornworts). In 2010, he joined the Biology Department at SUNY Oneonta in Oneonta, NY. He is the Curator of the Jewell and Arline Moss Settle Herbarium and teaches courses in Botany including Bryology, Vascular Plant Systematics, and Dendrology. Some of Sean’s research is focused on vegetation dynamics in alpine plant communities including the continuation of a long-term monitoring project started by Dr. Edwin Ketchledge in 1984.
Susquehanna Chapter 