There are moments in time that never leave us. For the Temple Ambler community and our regional neighbors, there will always be “before the September 1, 2021, tornado” and “after the September 1, 2021, tornado.”
“When I think back to September 1, of course I think about the tornado and the destruction, but I also think about what happened immediately afterward. People came together in an extraordinary way. There was this incredible sense of community, creativity, collaboration and resilience in responding to something none of us could have expected,” said Dr. Mariana Bonfim, Managing Director of the Temple Ambler Field Station. “The tornado is part of our history. But the way we responded to it, and what we continue to build from that response, is what makes us who we are.”
Five years after a Category 2 tornado spawned from the ferocity of Hurricane Ida cut through the Ambler Campus and the surrounding communities, the Temple community, neighbors and friends gathered together not only to remember, but to also recognize what has been accomplished since. “Come Back Stronger” wasn’t just a rallying cry, it was a concrete plan, put into action from day one after the storm and acted upon ever since.
From Disturbance to Discovery: A Living Landscape Five Years Later, presented by the Temple Ambler Field Station and the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, was a celebration of perseverance, exploring the work that so many have put into essential recovery tasks while also discovering unique and important opportunities following the storm.
“We were damaged in many of the same ways that much of the surrounding community was damaged. From 100 percent of our buildings sustaining damage to the loss of more than 500 trees, transforming a once shaded campus into a place of full sun,” said Ambler Arboretum Director Kathy Salisbury. “So how are we an Arboretum when we lost so many trees? Since the early 1900s and the start of the campus as the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women we have been a place of hands-on experiential learning; a place where the latest trends, best science and newest research was put into place by students and faculty.”
When it came to figuring out “how we could still be an arboretum when we lost so many trees, inspiration came from our past,” Salisbury said.
“We embrace our new form and we learn from it. We look to research and science to guide our decisions into the future. We kept some of our funny looking trees — visit Tuff Puff in the Woodland Garden — because if you eliminate all evidence of the storm, you lose the lessons in the logs and the stories in the stumps,” she said. “We have been growing and we have even more to share with our students and our community — more than 1,000 trees have been planted since the storm, greatly enhancing the diversity of our collection and adding plants with conservation status.”
The Arboretum, Salisbury said, has added eight horticulture displays “with the goals of highlighting climate resilience, mental health support, connecting with the natural world and supporting wildlife.”
“We have added five botanical collections; places where students can study in detail, and in close proximity, the differences between many similar plants. An Arboretum is a public botanical garden with a focus on a tree collection — an Arboretum associated with a college or university is a special resource that less than 10 percent of the institutions in the nation have,” she said. “This 187-acre botanical garden, comprised of the entire campus, is a place of education, recreation, inspiration, investigation, conservation and contemplation. Though we were damaged in the storm, that did not make us less of any of these things. In fact, in some ways, it made us more.”
According to Dr. Vicki Lewis-McGarvey, Vice Provost for University College and Director of Temple University Ambler, the September 1 celebration, was “a showcase of how the campus has become a living laboratory for ecological research, student learning, restoration and community engagement.”
“Our surrounding communities have always been and will continue to be an essential part of what we accomplish here on campus. Every day, we remember our past while looking toward the future,” she said. “We work together to ensure that our campus will remain an invaluable resource for our neighbors and the region.”
Nearly 200 people attended the September 1 event, which brought together a broad diversity of the Temple community and its neighbors to share their stories of recovery and discovery in a variety of different ways.
Program participants included Upper Dublin Township Board of Commissioners Chair Ira S. Tackel. Jillian Harris, Nora Gibson and Danill Zakirzyanov of the Boyer College of Music and Dance provided an incredible interpretive dance presentation while local artist Rebecca Kamen shared her reflections on resilience.
The “Stories from the Forest” panel discussion included Dr. Amy Freestone, Former Director of the Temple Ambler Field Station; Joe Imszennik, Temple University Ambler Facilities Manager; Keri Kern, former Temple Ambler Field Station Research Assistant; Stephanie Bross, Ambler Arboretum Gardens Manager; Tim Schuck, Fire Marshal/Fire Services Administrator for the Township of Upper Dublin; Darren Nyce, Investigative Lieutenant for the Upper Dublin Police Department; Tammy Echevarria, Assistant Director of the Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation Department; and Derek Dureka, Director of Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation.
“The tornado didn't fundamentally change what the Field Station was here to do — we were already here to study this landscape, support long-term ecological research and create opportunities for students to learn by actually participating in science. What changed were some of the questions the landscape allowed us to ask,” said Bonfim. “Before September 1, we were already building long-term research at Temple Ambler, including the Temple Forest Observatory, so we had detailed information about this forest before the tornado. When the disturbance occurred (the Temple Forest Observatory lost nearly 600 trees), that existing research gave us a rare opportunity to follow what happened next in a way that wouldn't otherwise have been possible.”
According to Bonfim, since the Field Station began its research, it has supported 190 undergraduate student semester internships, 20 graduate student research projects, 200 student-led presentations, 25 field courses, outreach to thousands of participants and collaboration with five global research networks.
“Students aren't simply learning ecological concepts from a textbook. They're collecting data, watching ecological processes unfold, developing questions and contributing to our understanding of a landscape that is still changing,” she said. “Five years is an interesting moment because we're far enough away to look back and understand some of what changed, but we're still very much in the middle of the ecological and community story. Recovery doesn't have a clean endpoint; the forest is still changing, and our research is still evolving. There are processes happening in this landscape today whose outcomes we may not understand for another five, ten or twenty years. I think that's one of the things this experience has made very visible — there is enormous value in having a place where a university can commit to learning from a landscape over time.”