Come join LSPA educators at the Center for Lake Studies to explore the natural world. Each Tuesday morning will be filled with hands on learning through sensory experiences, guided exploration, creative play, art, and music. LSPA’s story time is designed for young children and their caregivers. Come to one session or all - each program is organized around a different ecological theme. Come join the fun! This Tuesday morning we will be exploring the flowers that are blooming now and the critical role of the pollinators that they attract.

Come join LSPA educators at the Center for Lake Studies to explore the natural world. Each Tuesday morning will be filled with hands on learning through sensory experiences, guided exploration, creative play, art, and music. LSPA’s story time is designed for young children and their caregivers. Come to one session or all - each program is organized around a different ecological theme. Come join the fun! This Tuesday morning we will be exploring the many animals that live in our NH forests. We will investigate various animals that live in the forest ecotones and why the forest is such an important habitat.

Come join LSPA educators at the Center for Lake Studies to explore the natural world. Each Tuesday morning will be filled with hands on learning through sensory experiences, guided exploration, creative play, art, and music. LSPA’s story time is designed for young children and their caregivers. Come to one session or all - each program is organized around a different ecological theme. Come join the fun! This Tuesday morning we will be exploring the wonder of water and its amazing properties. We will be having fun with water activities and taking a walk along the Sugar River.

Join LSPA and ASLPT for a program that will be based on photos that participants submit, which Tom Wessels will interpret. Anything that a participant has encountered while in the woods that they find intriguing and would like to learn more about is appropriate. These could be unusually shaped trees, trees with above ground roots, unique stumps, stone wall construction, clear changes in forest composition or forest structure such as the density and sizes of trees, unusual tree bark, pretty much anything that strikes a participant's fancy.

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Dr. Kathleen (Kak) Weathers is a distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and (Volunteer) Research Director for the Lake Sunapee Protective Association. She has studied ecosystems around the world from foggy coasts, to air pollution-impacted mountains, to blue, green, and brown lakes asking questions about how and why and what impacts these ecosystems’ function. While Kak has “known” Lake Sunapee and the region since the age of 0, through spending time at the summer home of her grandmother, and then her parents’ primary home, she did not turn her lens as a scientist to the are until taking a sabbatical leave with the Lake Sunapee Protective Association in 2004-2005. Through serendipitous events, including community members’ discovery of surprising cyanobacterial blooms in northeastern lakes, and Weathers’ role in the grassroots Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), which she co-led from its infancy to adulthood, Lake Sunapee, became a famous, now famously studied, and favorite lake for researchers and community groups around the world. This talk will weave stories of serendipity and science that have led to Lake Sunapee’s global, regional and local fame.

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Please join us for our Annual Meeting to hear about LSPA's work and the current issues in our watershed. We will also elect new officers and directors and welcome new members.

This event is free and open to the public.

Love 'em or hate 'em: Beavers are in our watersheds. What role do they play? Denise Burchsted, PhD will describe the ecological role that beavers provide in river systems. Benefits for humans include removal of nutrients, habitat for desired fish and wildlife species, and protection from drought. This talk will also explore the balance between nuisance flooding by beavers versus the creation of increased flood resilience.

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Join us for a celebration of Lake Sunapee’s iconic lighthouses. Midge Eliassen will recount their history, including historic photos.  Midge and Frank Lemay will provide photos, explanations, and an up-to-the-minute update on the status of the current project to place the Herrick Cove and Burkehaven lighthouses on long-lasting stable platforms.

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Come and celebrate “Love Your Lake Day” with LSPA at The Center for Lake Studies. There will be exciting exhibits, face painting, games, crafts for the kids, and a live animals! Join us as we celebrate our love and appreciation for the incredible gifts Lake Sunapee shares with us all year long.

No registration is required.

Are you fascinated by mushrooms but have no idea how to get started with identifying what kinds they are? Join mushroom enthusiast, LSPA board member and Forest Society staffer Carrie Deegan for a fun beginner mushroom foray.  We’ll start inside with a presentation about basic mushroom biology, collection and identification tips, and then head out for a walk at Dewey Woods in Sunapee, collecting samples of different species as we go. Finally, we’ll bring our finds back to the trailhead and try to identify and sort them by family.

Click here to register.