From ‘Truffula trees’ to carbon storage, Temple’s Ambler campus offers new discoveries one year after Ida

The once-shady quad remains sun-drenched.

And it’s still hard to find some kinds of trees and plants once abundant on Temple University’s Ambler campus.

But almost a year after a tornado wreaked devastation, knocking down trees and light poles, ripping roofs off buildings, and leaving more than $10 million in damage, the 187-acre campus that doubles as an arboretum and research field station has begun to rebuild and convert a weather disaster into a learning opportunity.

» READ MORE: A tornado caused millions of dollars in damage to Temple’s Ambler campus. Recovery could take decades.

Nearly 150 new trees have been planted on the Montgomery County campus with an eye toward those that will thrive in a warming climate. Students have used lumber from felled trees to build animal habitats. The former library that saw 30% of its collection damaged has been relocated and its 8,000-square-foot space converted into a cross-disciplinary research and collaboration center for architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering students, something campus leaders had been contemplating but the tornado gave them the impetus.

Students studying a nearly 10-acre campus forest heavily damaged by the tornado are discovering changes in carbon storage and wildlife — there are far fewer white-tailed deer, for instance. Longtime Temple researchers have become wide-eyed students again, as they watched trees-turned-barren-poles begin to sprout little branches and leafy growth, making them appear, as Temple employees coined, “Truffula trees” from Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. Tree stumps have sprouted into bush lookalikes, another eyebrow-raiser.

It’s their “stress response” to damage, said arboretum director Kathy Salisbury. Dormant buds stored for that purpose were triggered.

“We’re educators, but for us, it’s been such a huge education ... ,” Salisbury said. “It has been really cool to learn all this and watch it and be surprised.”

Some students are citing the opportunity to study the tornado’s impact as a reason for applying, campus educators said. And while Temple is expected to be down about 1,500 undergraduates this year, the Ambler campus’ enrollment, now approaching 1,100, has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, possibly in part because of the tornado, said Vicki Lewis McGarvey, vice provost and campus director.

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“The additional research opportunities out here and hands-on learning opportunities are just bringing more classes out here,” she said.

The opportunities also have drawn researchers from other schools, including Rutgers and the University of Pittsburgh. While there are nearly 40 public gardens in the Philadelphia region, the Ambler campus is the only one that offers a look at major post-tornado impact, Salisbury said.

“We have a new niche now,” she said.

On Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the storm, the campus will hold a series of events to commemorate its recovery and mark its continued healing.

Backtrack a year ago, campus leaders were watching the forecast as remnants of Hurricane Ida would be passing through. The weather looked so grim that they canceled plans to launch a new outdoor research platform where they would study the effect of spotted lanternflies on trees, among other projects.

But they had no idea what would come next. The internet went out, then the power, as rain and hail pounded the campus. An EF2 tornado, it would later be confirmed, struck thousands of plants and trees, some more than 100 years old. One row of pecan and walnut trees was flattened. Walkways were impassable, a historic pavilion crushed.

It became clear that the campus, which for years had doubled as an outdoor learning laboratory for more than half of its students — those enrolled in horticulture, landscape architecture, and engineering classes — would take decades to fully restore. Staff and students were heartbroken.

“Everybody just burst into tears,” recalled Kate Wingert-Playdon, an associate dean and director of architecture and environmental design.

But the sadness turned to resolve as staff and students saw that much survived, including a state-champion Turkish filbert tree, a prodigious weeping beech, and a fountain in the shape of a girl pouring a water pitcher. The campus invited the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania to conduct a healing ceremony, attended by more than 100 people.

Professors and students were determined to view the damaged campus as a “disturbance” lab, yielding new research opportunities. With time-lapse cameras, light and motion sensors, drone images, and step-by-step tagging and data collection, students and staff began studying the changes. (The public can view camera images, too.)

“I would never wish this on anybody,” said Amy Freestone, director of Temple Ambler Field Station and an associate professor of biology. “That being said, it has given us an unexpected but I think really powerful opportunity for research.”

Assistant professor Mariana Bonfim last spring taught a course focused on research around the tornado’s impact on an area once known as the Old Growth Forest, which has never been cut or altered by the campus but was ripped apart by the storm. Her students learned that the carbon storage capacity of the forest had been greatly modified as a result of all the fallen trees. That’s important because trees can be helpful in mitigating climate change.

Her students also observed more small animals, such as chipmunks, groundhogs, squirrels, and raccoons, as well as more predators, such as coyotes, than before the storm. They are still studying why that might be, she said, surmising that the predators can see the smaller animals more readily because of less tree cover. The Old Forest had a complete tree canopy before the storm. Afterward, it looked like a field of matchsticks, with barren branches poking into the air.

Bird communities also were altered, with more blue jays and robins prevalent post-storm, compared with a nearby area that wasn’t damaged where northern cardinals, wood thrush, and white-breasted nuthatch were more abundant.

Researchers will monitor if the trend toward fewer white-tailed deer holds. There were 10 times fewer in April than a year earlier, before the storm. That could allow different plants that would have been eaten by the deer to thrive.

“A change in the plant community could further modify the habitat for other wildlife,” Freestone explained.

Chloe Gehret, 21, a senior ecology, evolution, and biodiversity major from Reading, said she loved the learning opportunities in the Old Growth Forest before the tornado, but even more so now.

“This just amped it up,” said Gehret, who along with senior Keri Kern, 21, of Bethlehem, recently presented research on the tornado’s impact at the Ecological Society of America conference.

She said she never doubted the school would “turn lemons into lemonade,” given the work it does.

“This is ecology,” she said. “That’s what it is. Adapting to new circumstances. Not everything is going to be perfect.”

The school received an outpouring of support in in-kind donations of trees and equipment and about $35,000, as well as 850 hours of volunteer time, campus officials said.

The campus is aiming to build back better. It lost 50 light poles in the storm. Instead of just replacing them, the school looked for fixtures that would reduce light pollution, which would be better for stargazing and wildlife, McGarvey said. It experimented with a bollard, a shorter pole that points light down or at an angle, and now plans to install more on campus, she said.

“They will light the walkways for safety but aren’t casting light broadly where it’s not needed,” she said.

Sugar maples are struggling with the warmer climate, so instead of planting too many of them, the campus is focusing on red maples, Salisbury said.

“They will tolerate our climate and they will tolerate the predicted climate,” she said.

New structures continue to go up. Students built a shaded villa from vines on a foundation for a nursery structure that had been heavily damaged. Teahouses in a garden that was a popular place for marriage ceremonies were being rebuilt last week.

The research platform with cages to study spotted lanternfly effects on trees that was delayed by the storm will officially open Thursday. A ropes course teaching communication skills, problem-solving, and teamwork, also delayed, is open, too.

But as far as the campus has come, its recovery likely will continue for a long time. McGarvey emerged from the Old Growth Forest last week carrying a piece of insulation, likely blown in from a roof or wall during the storm. She threw it in the trash.

“Always picking stuff up,” she said.