The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently received a grant from the International Paper Foundation to help publish the Northern Forest Atlas​, which will be released in a series of books, charts, digital applications, and posters documenting the habitats and ecosystems of the Northern Forest (forested areas located in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine).

Jerry Jenkins, WCS ecologist and Atlas project director, is consolidating the enormous body of his ecological research from the past 45 years into a natural history interpretive collection to be released over the next five years. The project is expected to include professionally-designed graphic representations of the natural world to complement existing environmental education programs in the region and be a resource for field studies.

“Our goals are to inspire conservation and inform environmental education for those who live in and study ​the region,” Jenkins said in statement announcing the project. He has conducted extensive ecological studies of the Adirondacks as well as botanical and ecological inventories and surveys on hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the Northeast.

​Jenkins is the author of several comprehensive books on the Adirondack region, including Climate Change in the Adirondacks: The Path to Sustainability and The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park, coauthored by Andy Keal and Bill McKibben, and published as a project of the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2004. The Atlas project is a joint effort between WCS and the Northern Forest Atlas Foundation​ (NFAF). ​

Photo: Blue Mountain Lake from Castle Rock (by Shannon Houlihan)