The Stockton Maple Project just got a more than quarter-million dollar boost.<\/p>\n
The program in its sixth year was awarded a $273,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture\u2019s Acer Access and Development program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A portion of that funding strengthens student research and involvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe program supports projects that strengthen the domestic maple syrup industry through research, education, natural resource sustainability, marketing and maple-sugaring activities,\u201d said Mariam Majd, Stockton associate professor of Economics, who explained that Acer is the Latin name for the maple tree genus.<\/p>\n
Majd said the project has supported dozens of students working in Stockton\u2019s maple grove Just off Vera King Farris Drive on campus to tap trees, collect sap, and help bottle and label the syrup. Students have also been hired through the grant to promote the project and help with educational and community engagement efforts. There are also several active student research projects that the grant helps fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe research components of our grants are especially important because they allow us not only to advance the maple industry but also to mentor Stockton students in the research process,\u201d Majd said.<\/p>\n
Senior Kayla Mathes has been fascinated with the Maple Project since her first year at Stockton, but she hasn\u2019t had an opportunity to take part in it until this year when she needed a senior project for her Environmental Studies major.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not from New Jersey and I knew nothing about the Jersey forests prior to all this,\u201d said the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, native. \u201cI didn\u2019t know that red maples were so abundant to where you could tap them in your own backyard. I love the sugar bush. I think everything about the Maple Project is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mathes approached Matthew Olson, a Stockton associate professor of Environmental Studies, to see if there were any research opportunities tied to the Maple Project. Olson was just about to begin a new study comparing tapped maple trees in Stockton\u2019s grove and trees outside the grove that aren\u2019t tapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to learn how tapping vs. not tapping affects tree growth,\u201d Mathes said.<\/p>\n
Mathes and Olson identified and marked 15 trees in the current Maple Grove, making sure they are of varying size, growing in similar topography and spaced out. Then they did the same thing in another part of the maple forest surrounding Stockton that has not been tapped for sap to create a control group.<\/p>\n
On a recent visit to the grove, Mathes measured the diameter of the marked trees using DBH, or diameter at breast height, tape and also plotted their locations using GPS equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trees in the grove have been on vacuum for six years now. Hopefully we can see what it did, if anything, to the growth of the trees,\u201d she said, explaining how the vacuum process draws the sap out of the tree so it can be collected in one place through a series of tubes.<\/p>\n
Later this spring, Olson and Mathes will take pencil-sized cores of each of the trees and compare the size of the rings. Olson said some grant money was used to upgrade and buy new equipment so the university can do full-fledged tree ring analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also want to get an estimate on how much sap individual trees are producing,\u201d Olson said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a lot of data on the sap yield of individual trees, and how much that varies based on their size and condition. We plan to track sap yields of at least 12 trees to understand year to year variation.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the future, Olson said he also would like to compare the difference in sap production between bucket collection and the vacuum system and how that affects the trees. He also wants to replicate the tree ring analysis on trees growing on some of the Maple Project\u2019s partners off campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Stockton Maple Project has served as a sweet platform for teaching and student research,\u201d Olson said. \u201cWe really are breaking new ground here because nobody\u2019s really studied this in a red maple swamp in New Jersey. Every little thing we do, every little discovery is kind of pushing the envelope and expanding our understanding of these systems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson also integrates some of this data into the classroom, adding that students in his statistics class work with several datasets collected from Stockton\u2019s Maple Grove.<\/p>\n
For Mathes, becoming part of the project has given her the opportunity to get college credit for an independent study that fits right in with her minor in Sustainability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really love the hands-on aspect of everything, so I just truly enjoy being a part of helping achieve that sustainability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That aspect of the project is what attracted junior Kiera Liu to the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s helped promote Stockton\u2019s maple syrup since before her first year and the latest grant has allowed the project to hire her as a social media coordinator. She\u2019s created several videos and posts on Instagram promoting the project and coordinated events for the community, such as the recent Maple Syrup Workshop and Tree Tapping.<\/p>\n
Future events include a Maple Boil Feb. 21 at Batsto Village in Hammonton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s something unique. It\u2019s so cool when people come here and have a taste of our syrup to see what we make right here at Stockton,\u201d said the Galloway resident and sustainability major with a concentration in policy. \u201cSustainability is that perfect combination of business and science. It isn\u2019t just about buying something green. It\u2019s about making something new from something that you already have a reality. That\u2019s what the Stockton Maple Project is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s new in 2026 with the Stockton Maple Project:<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Around 600 trees tapped.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0About 17,000 gallons of sap gathered over six years (so far).<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Nearly 230 gallons of syrup created over six years (so far).<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Hidden Sands Brewery in Egg Harbor Township uses Stockton Maple Syrup in its Stockton Red Maple Coffee Porter beer, which is now available for purchase.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Developing Stockton Mobile Museum, which is a trailer with maple artifacts to use for agrotourism events.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Making light and dark syrup blends with Vermont partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Creating bookstore display to sell syrup on campus.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Two new stainless steel collection tanks purchased (1,000 gallons and 350 gallons).<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Upgraded reverse osmosis system in boiler to be more efficient, use less firewood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Stockton Maple Project just got a more than quarter-million dollar boost. The program in its sixth year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-426536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}