Kentucky forest report ready for review

Kentucky's Statewide Assessment of Forest Resources

The Kentucky Division of Forestry report, mandated by the 2008 Federal Farm Bill (the Food, Conservation And Energy Act Of 2008),  is ready for public review and comment. It will be submitted in June 2010. It focuses on five issues of greatest concern to Kentucky citizens that were identified in an earlier survey:

1. Forest health
2. Water quality and quantity
3. Forest loss and fragmentation
4. Forest management
5. Funding

Bur Oak Canyon of Hitchcock County, Nebraska

Remnant population of bur oaks in southwestern Nebraska

A deep, rugged canyon just 2 miles long, surrounded by vast expanses of prairie, is an unlikely outpost for the bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa). Nevertheless, the Bur Oak Canyon in southern Hitchcock County, Nebraska, has sheltered a remnant bur oak population for thousands of years.

The stand of oaks in Bur Oak Canyon is believed to date back 5,000 to 10,000 years. Of the 300 to 400 bur oaks in the canyon today, some individuals may be 200 years old. They are the only known native bur oaks within 200 miles.

Forester Tim Buchanan of Fort Collins, Colorado, explains that after the last ice age ended about10,000 years ago, the climate became favorable for oaks to spread across the prairies. Oaks advanced even into some parts of Canada. Then about 5000 years ago, the climate became hot and dry on the Great Plains -- and in the area of the Bur Oak Canyon. Oak trees on the surrounding prairies died from the stress of prolonged drought.

The microclimate and geology of the deep canyon helped the bur oaks survive. The bur oak's long taproot also gave the tree a survival advantage. A bur oak seedling sends its taproot deep into the ground before it begins to add height above ground. In the first growing season, it may develop a taproot over a yard in length. It also develops an extensive system of lateral and feeder roots. 

It is suspected that the bur oaks in the canyon carry some genes from hybridizing long ago with other oaks, probably with gambel oaks (Quercus gambelii) and post oaks (Quercus stellata). Gambel oaks are native to South Dakota, Colorado, and the American Southwest. Post oaks are native to most of the Eastern United States. Neither post oaks nor gambel oaks are native to Nebraska today -- presumably they died out in the great drought 5000 years ago, if they ever grew in the area.

Due to cattle grazing in the canyon (which is privately owned and part of a ranch) and a lack of squirrels to disperse the seed, seedlings have a hard time getting started.

The activities of the 2009 Bur Oak Symposium include planting seedlings and acorns, and protecting new and established seedlings. The goal is to reestablish and preserve the stand of oaks in Bur Oak Canyon for the future.

More about Bur Oak Canyon:
Bur Oak Symposium 2008
Bur Oak Symposium 2009
Bur Oak Canyon -- Flickr photoset
Bur Oak Canyon -- Flickriver photoset

Related
Bur Oaks Grown from Seed -- Flickriver photoset

Images in this post are from Wikipedia.

A free tree field guide you can download

Field guide to Tennessee trees is applicable to surrounding states as well

I happened upon a free pocket field guide to Tennessee trees, written by a State of Tennessee forester. It's in pdf format, so you can download and print it. It has helpful information and good photos.

Download: The All Season Pocket Guide To Identifying Common Tennessee Trees

Principles of good forestry from 1923

Increasing the productivity of woodlands

Visiting from Timberbuysell.com? Please read this.

The following forestry practices are recommended in a 1923 agriculture textbook. They still seem valid today, though I've added a few notes.

1. Only the ripe [mature] trees should be selected when cutting the crops.

2. Injury to small seedlings and saplings should be avoided.

3. Diseased and misshapen trees should be removed and used either for the market or at home. [NOTE: You should ask your state forester or county extension agent how best to remove a diseased tree. Felling the tree may puff disease organisms into the air and spread the problem.]

4. The inferior trees should be removed if the space is needed for better ones. [NOTE: Avoid monoculture.]

5. A few large trees should be left to reseed the woodland.

6. Pasturing with animals that will injure the young seedlings should not be permitted.

7. Fires should be excluded and notices calling attention to fire damage to forest growth should be posted. [NOTE: I really don't know what to say about this. Fire has a role in forest ecosystems, and foresters frequently do "controlled burns." On the other hand, do you really want to have a fire in your woodlot? If you do decide to introduce fire, get some advice!]

8. The stand should be thinned so as to secure the best growth, but heavy thinning is not desirable.

9. Sprouts from stumps form stands called coppice. These should also be thinned, leaving the best sprouts.

10. Trees damaged by storm should be removed before they are attacked by insects and disease, which would spread to others.

11. Brush and waste after all cuttings should be piled and burned. [NOTE: It would be a good idea to check local burn laws before lighting up the pile.]

Source: From the chapter titled "Woodland Projects" (p.322) in The New Agriculture for High Schools by Kary C. Davis, Ph.D. Published in 1923 by J.P. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

Related post: When logging, get some guidelines!

Technorati tags: forestry principles, woodlot management, managed woodlots, woodlands, harvesting forests

The urban forest : Diversity is essential

A mixture of species is best for street trees.

Brigham Street in Salt Lake City, Utah, about 1900

Detroit Publishing Company photo at the Library of Congress

More information about this photo

American botanist Charles Sprague Sargent, writing in 1890 for his weekly magazine, Garden and Forest, expressed a strong opinion about street trees:

It is plain that trees of one variety only should be planted in a long, straight row parallel with the lines of buildings in a continuous street. Much of the desired effect will be lost if the trees vary in form or size, or expression, or rapidity of growth, or in the time of putting forth their leaves or shedding them.

An avenue of American Elms, with their lofty overarching tops, is always beautiful, because the charm of each tree is renewed in the next, and the effect of the whole is constantly intensified and multiplied by repetition. An avenue of stately Tuliptrees is equally beautiful, but in an entirely different way. The same might be said of a double row of Pin Oaks, where there is space for their drooping lower branches.

But if all these trees were intermingled, and Sugar Maples, Horse Chestnuts and others still were added, the result would be incongruous and contradictory. There would be no continuous lines extending through the entire vista to help the perspective and to give unity of character and expression and consistency of purpose to the whole.

And yet in our city street-planting it is the common practice to allow each lot owner to select the tree which suits his fancy. The immediate effect is bad enough, but it grows worse as years roll on and the individual trees become more and more unlike each other as their peculiar characteristics are more strongly marked with age.

(Professor C. S. Sargent, Garden and forest, Volume 3, Issue 108, March 19 1890, p.137.)

Professor Sargent was wrong!

Sargent was no stranger to trees and tree management; he was the director of Harvard University's Arnold arboretum from 1872 until his death in 1927.

Evidence of Professor Sargent's importance in the field of botany persists to this day. When you see the word Sargentii or the abbreviation Sarg. in the name of a tree or other plant, it refers to Charles Sprague Sargent.

But despite his well-deserved and long lasting fame, he was misguided in his advice that street tree plantings should be homogeneous.

When all the trees on a street are the same species, the neighborhood is at danger of a tree pest or disease wiping out every one of them, leaving the street bare and shadeless. Professor Sargent's ideas about desirable street tree plantings were conceived before the days of Dutch Elm disease, chestnut blight, and emerald ash borers. He had never seen a disease or insect sweep down a street, killing tree after tree.

Insuring diversity in street tree plantings

Today, urban foresters agree that street tree plantings should be as diverse as possible to help insure the health of the trees. Site variables, aesthetic considerations, and maintenance requirements will always limit the list of trees that may work in any particular urban location, but within those parameters, as much diversity as possible should be maintained.

A growing number of municipalities have ordinances that specify the minimum number of tree species that should be represented within a block or a development.

Due to the tree ordinance that [consulting urban forester Robert A.] Cool helped implement, new developments in Lansing [MI] are now required to have at least five different genera of trees planted on each block. No two adjacent trees can be the same genus.

"If you plant a block in one type of tree, in five years some will grow faster and others will grow slower. Some might die. So you've lost your uniform effect, anyway," says Cool. "If another epidemic like Dutch elm disease comes along, you've lost your whole block. Mixing your plantings is like hedging your bets."

(Helen M. Stone, "Municipal Arboriculture: Street Tree Smarts")

Is your urban forest diversified?

Does your town or city have guidelines for diversity in the planting of street trees? When you drive through your neighborhood or subdivision, do you observe a variety of species in the street trees, or are they all the same? The answers to questions of this sort may indicate the future health of the urban forest where you live.

Best practices for logging

Careful ways to harvest a woodlot

A neighbor is having some logging done and I've mentioned before that it is unpleasant to watch. I can understand the harvest of mature trees, but I'm aghast at the damage the loggers are doing to the young trees.

It is sickening to see that many good young trees that have been growing for 20 years or more have their tops snapped off and will surely die. Today I saw a stump they had left that must be 8 feet tall -- why?! This logging company is doing a careless, heartless piece of work. Plundering is a word that comes to mind.

When you go into your woodlands and take logs, there are careful ways to do it. The idea is to leave as light a footprint as possible, to avoid compacting the soil, to avoid injuring the trees that you aren't cutting, and to get the largest usable logs possible from the trees you do cut.

Here's a website that gives a quick, short list of General Harvesting Guidelines. A good quantity of information is available on the internet, and of course you also get free advice from your state forestry service and from your county extension agent.

Our neighbor's woods won't be ready to log again for a long, long time because of the damage done to the next generation of trees. Don't make this mistake in your woodlot.

For the sake of the young trees,
leave a light footprint in the woods.

Photograph credit: Going into the woods for another load. Logging camp near Effie, Minnesota. Photograph by Lee Russell for the Office of War Information, about 1944. From the Library of Congress. More information.

Logging Underway

A private landowner harvests some trees.

Logging underway in Christian County, KY

I don't like to watch the work of loggers. This photo doesn't clearly show all the small trees that the logging crew broke while cutting and hauling out the big trees. Many of the neighbors are aghast at the damage that this careless, sloppy logger is doing to these woods.

I suppose the big trees at the front of the photo are probably enjoying their last days. That's sad to me.

I do understand that if landowners can't have some occasional income from woodlands, they're going to think about bulldozing the trees and planting something more profitable. Every crop has its harvest time. Why do I hate to see the trees cut, but I don't think twice about a meadow that's cut three times in a single summer?