He began his career as an assistant entomologist at Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, where he worked from 1896 to 1898.
He became an assistant professor of forest zoology at the History of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University in 1914 and was subsequently appointed to a full professorship in 1916.
In 1919, Adams became the first director of the Roosevelt Wild Life Forest Experiment Station in the Adirondacks, managed by the New York State College of Forestry.
In 1926, Adams left the Roosevelt Station to become the director of the New York State Museum,[2] a position he held until his retirement in 1943.
Besides numerous papers on animal ecology, he published: In addition to these works, he was also involved in the publication of "A Guide to the Winter Birds of the North Carolina Sandhills" (1928), by Milton Philo Skinner.