An Ongoing Undergraduate Research Program
Since 1998, students and faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences at Kean University have been conducting a biodiversity inventory of the grounds of the Liberty Hall Museum in Union, New Jersey. Liberty Hall, a National Historic Landmark, was built in 1772 as a country estate and farm for William Livingston, the first governor of New Jersey. The property was purchased by the Kean family in 1811 and was continuously occupied by its descendants until the mid-1990's. Today, the Liberty Hall Museum offers visitors a sweeping panorama of New Jersey social and political history.
In addition to its enormous value as a cultural resource, Liberty Hall provides exciting opportunities for environmental education in a metropolitan setting. The estate's 26-acre landscape includes woodland, fields, formal gardens, an apple orchard and a pond. As such, it offers an expansive green space within a highly urbanized area. We suspect that "green islands" such as Liberty Hall harbor an unexpected level of biological diversity and that the value of this will become more important as urban green space becomes increasingly fragmented. Our objective at Liberty Hall is to document the estate's faunal diversity and to study its interactions with the environment. To date, we have concentrated on insects, aquatic life and birds.
|
The Liberty Hall Biodiversity Project is energized by undergraduates! Contributors to date: | |
|
K. Adrian J. Barcia M. Chamberlin K. Chordia L. Fitzsimmons K. Karnas S. Kastner L. Montagnino S. Medlenov E. Paradise J. Parker |
J. Parker S. Patel J. Schwarz D. Shah M. Taha K. Teevan N. Riley A. Thompson M. Todd F. Wawra T. Wisinski |
|
of the Liberty Hall Museum for their continued support and interested cooperation. |
|
in the Star-Ledger! |
| Insects | Aquatic | Birds |
|---|
| Codella | James | Mahoney |
|---|
| Map | Liberty Hall Museum | Biology Department | Kean University |
|---|