The Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) is a 3,160 hectare reserve located in the White Mountain National Forest, near Woodstock, New Hampshire. The on-site research program is dedicated to the long-term study of forest and associated aquatic ecosystems.
The HBEF was established by the USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station in 1955 as a major center for hydrologic research in New England. In the early 1960's, Dr. F. Herbert Bormann and others proposed the use of small watersheds to study element cycling. In 1963, the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study (HBES) was initiated by Bormann and Drs. Gene E. Likens and Noye M. Johnson, then on the faculty of Dartmouth College, and Dr. Robert S. Pierce of the USDA Forest Service. They proposed to use the small watershed approach at Hubbard Brook to study linkages between hydrologic and nutrient flux and cycling in response to natural and human disturbances, such as air pollution, forest cutting, land-use changes, increases in insect populations and climatic factors.
The first grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to Bormann and Likens in 1963 to support the research of the HBES. Since that time there has been continuous support from the NSF and the USDA Forest Service. In 1988 the HBEF was designated as a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site by the NSF. On-going cooperative efforts among diverse educational institutions, private institutions, government agencies, foundations and corporations have resulted in one of the most extensive and longest continuous data bases on the hydrology, biology, geology and chemistry of natural ecosystems.