Hello! My name is Adrianna and I’m currently working on analyzing and comparing soil profiles in two areas of Squam forest. Zannie Duffy; another student participating in the Nantucket Semester, and I are working with Kelly Omand of the Nantucket Conservation Foundation to date Squams ‘big weird trees’ and comparing them to any clues we find in the soil profiles. The Squam Forest has a relatively rare assortment of trees for Nantucket. During the 1600s the trees were harvested for land and shipbuilding, and for growing crops. The deforestation of the island resulted in a depletion of nutrients from shallow soils. This raises the question of whether or not past land use has affected the abnormal growth of these trees. In studying the soil profiles; a vertical core sample of soil taken from the ground surface to the parent or original rock; the history of the abnormal growing trees will be revealed.