Conservation & Environment – Page 34

March 17, 2015October 18, 2020

Earth history: temporate forest ecosystems in North America

http://prism2.si.edu/Pages/SI-WideArchive.aspx
I attended a symposium on temperate forests ecosystem at Smithsonian. Much of it was about earth history, deep earth history. When you want to look forward, it is a good idea to look back. Almost everything you can reasonably expect could happen in the future has happened in the past. Earth has been much warmer and much cooler in that past than it is today.

Climate change will bring ecosystems with associations of plant and animal that nobody has seen before, but it has happened before. We call them “novel” ecosystems. We can get an idea of the novel ecosystems of a potentially warmer future by looking at what was around during similar periods in earth history.

Emergence of flowering plants
Angiosperms, flowering plants, the plants and trees we are used to seeing around us today, developed in the early Cretaceous period around 160 million years ago. (BTW – the famous movie should probably have been called “Cretaceous Park” instead of “Jurassic Park,” since the lead dinosaurs were from that period, but that is another story.) Flowering plants developed in the tropics and then moved into temperate regions, first along riverbeds and in disturbed areas. Today we might call them invasive species. By the middle Cretaceous, they were globally distributed and often dominant and by 70 million years ago, many of our now familiar families of trees were well established. The details and relationships among species were different, but these ancient forests would look broadly familiar to us. This was one of the golden ages of temperate forests.

Then we had the mass die offs at the end of the Mesozoic, the same one that killed the dinosaurs. Around 50% of all plant species went extinct. The fossil record cannot tell us exactly how long it took, but it was quick in terms of geological time. Forests quickly recovered their diversity as the world got warmer, with tropical rain forests spreading up to 40 degrees North, about where Colorado would be and it got even warmer still with a boreal-tropical forest, where today we have cold northern forests. There were forests north of 80 degrees and paleontologists found fossilized stumps that indicate dense forests of trees resembling metasequoia (dawn redwoods now common in Virginia gardens) on Ellesmere Island, a place of permafrost & tundra today where nothing grows more than a few feet high.

Sudden greenhouse warming
A sudden greenhouse event brought rapid warming of 4-8 degrees C about 56 million years ago. This warm period lasted around 200,000 years, a long time to us, but not very much in the great scheme of geological time. Tropical vegetation moved far into what are now temperate or even cold regions. South America had vast eucalyptus forests.

Followed by a slow cooling
Eucalyptus in South America died out in during subsequent cooling phase. They are back in South America today, but the new ones are from Australia. A slow cooling began about 44 million years ago and we are still in that colder age. About 6 million years ago, we started to see periodic ice ages, as the Greenland ice sheet formed and glaciers advanced in the Himalayan highlands. What exactly caused the cooling is a subject of speculation. The leading theory is that it had to do with movements of landmasses that isolated the Arctic Ocean and allowed ice to form, the movement of the Antarctic continent to the middle of the polar region, where it could freeze more or less solid and the up thrust of the Tibetan Plateau, which cooled of the heart of Eurasia.

Data from the past is hard to get; data from the future is impossible. Natural history provides a rich mine of information about how forests will respond to rapid climate change.
The next speaker talked about associations of plants and animals. In times past, distributions of tree and plant species was sometimes different from what we see today. For example, today the ranges of ash trees and spruce trees do not much overlap. But in the Ice Age their distributions overlapped to greater extent. There is no natural association like that today. Difference in climate was not the only cause.

Strange relationships
Many “strange” mixes occur when there is a disequilibrium caused by big changes. The change in climate was one such cause, but not the only one. In this time in the past, large mammals (woolly mammoth, American camels, stag-moose, woolly rhinos, giant ground sloths and horses.) largely disappeared, probably because of humans showing up and hunting them to extinction, but there were a variety of factors at work. Although there is some dispute about the exact cause, (some scientists refuse to blame humans), there was clearly a disequilibrium created and it happened rapidly, in the course of less than 1000 years. Large herbivores play important ecological roles in that they eat and trample lots of vegetation. They are important in keeping open forests or grasslands free of trees and brush. When they disappear, forests close. And there is another knock off effect – fire. Fire is an herbivore. If animals do not eat the brush, it accumulates and eventually catches on fire. Humans would have increased the incidence of fire. There have always been fires, but the intensity varies. So what you see is greater variation, since the fires were more destructive when they came, but less constant than the grazing or browsing of the large herbivores.

The forests of 14,000 – 12,000 years ago were different from those of today for both climate and other land use reasons mentioned above. During the Ice Age there was greater seasonal variation than today with relatively hotter summers and significantly colder winters. For plants and animals in the environment, what matters is not the average, but the extremes. Something can be perfectly adapted 360 days of the year, but if the extreme weather of those last five days kills it, it will disappear. When you get extremes, then, it simplifies the environment, i.e. fewer species can find niches and so the forests are dominated by only a few species. You see that today in the difference between tropical forests, with thousands of species on every acre and boreal forests with only a few types of trees dominating vast swaths of land.

End of the last ice age, still changing
The Ice Age ended and the world warmed rapidly. Forests in North America again spread north to about where they are now. Our last speaker, Jonathon Thompson from Harvard Forest talked about more recent history.

The last 400 years has been a story of disturbance and recovery in the forests in Eastern North America. In Massachusetts, for example, deforestation peaked about 1850 and forests recovered rapidly until the 1970s, when urbanization started to equal or slightly exceed the rate of forest regrowth. The regenerated forests are similar to the old ones, but different in details such as age and precise composition. Newer forests, for example, are younger and earlier on the stage of succession. This is no big surprise. They just are not that old and more likely to be recently disturbed.

The composition is different
Researchers tried to get an idea of the former forest composition by looking at “witness tree” records. Witness trees were those used to mark property lines. They are described in some detail in old deeds. Usually, they would set down a marker and then describe the trees in all directions, in order to discourage someone moving it. Using these trees introduces some bias, since witness trees would more likely to be big and easy to spot, not a random distribution, but it gives some idea.

In the last centuries, there have been changes. Chestnuts are gone entirely. The chestnut blight explains this. Beech declined significantly, by around 15%. This is maybe explained by the age of the forest. Beech trees are late succession species, i.e. they are shade tolerant and start to come in when the forest is well established. Maples are more common now. The researchers went only to genus, and not to the species level, but they think there has been a big change among maples, with red maples displacing sugar maples to some extent. Oaks have declined, but not by that much and the same goes for hemlock, when not affected by the woolly adelgid. Hemlocks have been declining for 5000 years, however. They were once more common and evidently got some kind of stress thousands of years ago. The decline of the oaks may be an artifact of the study. Oaks are large and long-lived trees. They would be natural candidates as witness trees, so maybe they were just chosen more often.

Anyway, I learned some things I did not know and remembered other things that I had forgotten. Being able to attend such symposiums is one of the big advantages to working at Smithsonian.

January 26, 2015October 18, 2020

A Sustained past and a sustainable future

My tree farm article for Virginia Forests Magazine.

The American Tree Farm System was founded a few years before Aldo Leopold published his “Land Ethic,” so central to modern conservation and influential to development of tree farming. Leopold wrote, “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.” Today we recognize this as a commitment to diversity and sustainability. What seems obvious now was hardly common when tree-farming ideas were developing back in the 1940s and 1950s.

I mention Aldo Leopold because his well-known work provides a convenient marker. Of course, there are many more. We depend on contributions by thousands of individuals. Our conservation ethic was build the old fashioned way, though hard work and practical experience on the land, putting theories into practice and putting practices into theories. We have so much more in terms of technologies, techniques and scientific research. We can manage our land better than they did, but we know that we can see farther because we stand on their shoulders. We never will reach a final destination. We are always becoming, never finished. Our challenges are different from those of the first tree farmers but no less difficult.

Among the challenges most urgent are climate change and invasive species. Tree farmers think in terms of decades and we base on plans on the assumption that conditions as our trees grow and mature will be broadly predicable based on current conditions. This assumption may be becoming less valid. We are can foresee changes that the growing forests themselves will create. Watching these changes unfold is one of the great joys of a naturalist. We know that the maturing trees will change the amount of water that runs into our streams. We plan for it. We understand the effects of canopy closure on wildlife and vegetation. We expect to see more turkeys and fewer quail, for example, as the trees grow. We plan for that too. We anticipate a succession of biological communities as the forest matures. All this we know from experience. But what if past performance does not predict future behavior. What about changing rain or temperature patterns or the impact of invasive species? What about a combination of things, where changing climate patterns turn a previously benign species into a threat? Let us specify that we need not even be talking here about global climate change. A new subdivision with its roads and activity may influence local conditions enough to change the dynamic on our land. Nature is always in a state of dynamic change, but humans have accelerated the rate of change, requiring more of us. We got ourselves into trouble and we have to get ourselves out of it.

Aldo Leopold wrote, “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land.” We have responsibility to adapt to changes and anticipate them. Diversity and flexibility are among the best ways to “plan.” When uncertain, seek more options. Elsewhere in this magazine are articles about longleaf pine restoration in Virginia, examples of how we can diversify our forestry. We cannot be sure of conditions when these longleaf pines mature, but we can do all possible to do the sustainable thing today.

January 4, 2015October 18, 2020

CO2 and forests

CO2 helps plants grow faster, but it is complex in that there are often other limiting factors. As you eliminate some, others become more prominent. A limiting factor for trees is often water or a shortage of one or more of the big three fertilizers: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. Humans have added CO2 to the air, but also added Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, so much that they are sometimes pollutants. It might be that we have lucked onto something good out of potentially bad if increased CO2 levels allow faster growth to suck up some of that excess NPK. This is unlikely to apply as much to tropical forests as temperate ones, however.

Throughout earth’s history, CO2 levels in the air have fluctuated but have generally been dropping until recently. I mean, we are talking geological time. The drop has been happening for the last 200 million years, when CO2 levels were 4-5 times as high as they are today. At this time, earth was universally warm and great forests of giant ferns grew all the way to the arctic. I have always been interested in such things, but there is probably no practical use for this knowledge.
Reference

October 21, 2014October 18, 2020

Everything is free; you just have to go and get it

Chrissy wanted some rocks to shore up the side of her garden. The local garden shops sell rocks and they cost a lot. On the other hand, they are just kind of lying around on the farm. So I brought some back, saving hundreds of dollars.

The farms are looking good. The picture that I am taking with the truck as comparison is getting harder to do as the trees grow bigger. I have to get farther back. Above is my recent picture, below is 2009. We are getting to canopy close, a phase transition. The farm seems smaller now. You can’t see long distances. On the other hand, you can now see into the forest as the lower branches are brush as dying back.

I have to say that it was an act of faith. I am not sure I ever believed the trees would really grow. The picture below is near the same place in 2007. Didn’t have a truck back then, so you can see the boys for comparison.

Besides picking up rocks, I didn’t do much work. I chopped out some brush to protect my bald cypress. This is kind of my pet tree. I figure it will be magnificent someday as long as I keep down to competition, mostly box elders. I have nothing against box elders in general. They remind me of Milwaukee. Lots of them grew near the railroad tracks where we used to play. But they are weedy and will overwhelm my cypress. I also pulled out some vines climbing my pines. We have Japanese honeysuckle. These are beautiful vines with nice smelling flowers, but they are invasive and can cover trees in short order if left alone. I know that my efforts are only a piss in the ocean, but it gives me an excuse to do something with my trees. I cut brush and pulled weeds for more than six hours. It was enough exercise to make me very sore the next day.

October 8, 2014October 18, 2020

Clean Water: Pass it Along

My quarterly contribution to Virginia Forests magazine. They will make it better but the raw deal is below. I get to write the tree farmer of the year article, plus three more articles talking about tree farming in Virginia.

Clean Water: Pass it Along

About half of Virginia’s timberland lies in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and most of that forest land is privately owned and a significant part is managed for forestry. Since forests are essential to protecting the quality of water that flows into the Bay, forest landowners play a special role in keeping the Bay healthy. Forests absorb nutrient runoff that would otherwise harm the ecology of the Chesapeake. They slow and often incorporate sediment. Tree farmers are committed to sustainable land use and a big part of this is sustainable water resources.

You cannot understand the ecology of the Chesapeake area without considering how humans have modified the landscape. As the first area of English colonization, nowhere in the United States has been altered more or for a longer time. Most of the Chesapeake watershed was deforested centuries ago to grow food and cash crops like tobacco. Tobacco rapidly depletes the soil and our ancestors understood less than we do today about how to keep soils healthy and in place. As Virginia soils eroded and became poorer and as richer soils became available farther west, many Virginia farmers went west for better opportunities. Much of Virginia returned to forest.

It is a gift of nature that trees grow rapidly and well in Virginia and that has allowed our forestry industry to thrive, but it is also a tribute to the men and women who manage those forests in ways that keep them productive – and improving – year after year. The forest industry employs thousands of Virginians and pumps more than a billion dollars into the State’s economy each year. But the forests value does not stop there, not by a longshot.
Our well-managed Virginia forests produce a variety of “ecological services” things like carbon sequestration, flood control, wildlife habitat, and recreation. These things rarely turn up on balance sheets, but you clearly see their value if you don’t have them.

Protecting the Chesapeake is like that. Clean water is one of the most important products of a well-managed forest. Water is almost always better quality coming out of the woods than it was going in, as the forest ecosystem absorbs excess nutrients and allows silt to settle. As I wrote above, about half of Virginia lies in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, but we also contribute to water that runs into the Atlantic Ocean, much through Albemarle Sound, in North Carolina, the Mississippi that runs into the Gulf of Mexico and there is even a little that ends up flowing into the Atlantic Ocean via the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. We are part of something big and important and we can be proud of the part we play.

The American Tree Farm System was established in 1941 to guarantee that in the future family forests could supply forest products while sustaining water, wildlife, recreation and natural beauty. We are living in that future the founders envisioned. We can best thank them for what they gave us by making sure we pass it along to our future.

August 26, 2014October 18, 2020

Longleaf pine regeneration

Longleaf pine was much more common in Virginia and the South in 1607 than it is today. It is the classic southern pine and was a prime timber tree in the colonies and was important to the Royal Navy as a source of naval stores (pitch, tar, resin and turpentine). It is a big and beautiful tree.

But it can be harder to grow because it requires fire to keep a longleaf pine forest healthy. Fire in forests is less common today. We put them out when they get near our buildings and roads tend to limit the extent of fires. Before European settlement, Native Americans started fires all the time. They didn’t have the capacity to put them out when they got big and with no roads to stop them they burned large areas. The Native Americans also used fire to spook that animal in hunting and to keep down the population of bugs near their villages. America was a smokey place. European sailors commented that they could smell the smoke before they saw the coast.

Fire often kills broad leaf trees and brush but southern pine is adapted to it. The fires were common, but because they were common they tended not to get hot enough to be the disaster we often see today. Longleaf and other southern pine prospered. When fires were suppressed, the forests became denser, shadier and dominated by other species. In addition, foresters often prefer loblolly pine to longleaf because it is easier to grow and more developed genetically. For these many reasons, longleaf is rarer than it was.
There is no chance that longleaf will disappear. It is not in any way an endangered species. But it is still a good idea to encourage longleaf. It increases forest diversity and provides an interesting landscape that favors particular wildlife species.

The problem for any mortal individual, me included, is that trees take a long time to grow. When I plant longleaf today, I can be certain that I will not live to a mature forest. Of course, everybody is always in that position and if nobody planted trees that he could not personally see mature, nobody would plant any trees.

We put in longleaf on a five acres a couple years ago. (I plan to put in more longleaf on maybe 50 acres of one of our other farms in 2016, after we clear cut the mature lobolly that is now there.) My friends and neighbors prepared the land burning the land before planting, recreating the conditions the pines need. You can see from the pictures that some of the pines are doing okay. I will see in a few years how well they will do. They are pretty trees, even at the smaller stage. Loblolly have filled in by natural regeneration. We will be seeing a mixed loblolly-longleaf forest, much like you might have found in 1607. I will have to burn under the trees to make it right. I hope and believe I will live long enough to do that once or twice. After that, it belongs to the kids.

In my pictures you can see the little longleaf pines. It is hard to see some of them in the grass. I am not sure how to handle this. I read that a quick and cool fire will take care of this and it is part of longleaf management, but I want to ask actually fire practiti0ners. Things on the ground don’t always work the same way the books say they will.

August 26, 2014October 29, 2020

First tree farm

My first farm is still my favorite. I have had the pleasure of watching the progress. The plantation trees, about 110 acres, were planted in 2003. They were the loblolly super trees of 2003. New varieties have since been developed, but these are good. There were also some management benefits. We did pre-commercial thinning and applied biosolids back in 2008. I thought that this was good timing. There is enough fertility in the soil for the first five years because the young forest is living off the decaying brush from the cut. The biosolids gave the boost when needed in the fifth year. We can probably do the first thinning early.

2014 was a good year. It was an unusually cool and wet summer. I was surprised this morning when I went out and actually wanted to wear a light jacket in the early morning. This is August in Virginia. It is supposed to be hotter than this.

The trees have gone through a phase transition this year. They have now mostly closed the canopy, i.e. they are shading out the lower branches. You can see the difference now because you can see into the woods.

About a third of the land – 68 acres out of 178 – is contained in stream management zones or other non-commercial uses. This part changes less.

One thing I have noticed is that there is generally less water in the intermittent streams. I think this is because the pine trees have grown. Their branches are intercepting more of the rain and their roots are soaking more of it up. Nevertheless, it was been wet and you can see the evidence of lots of water. There is mud and sand pretty far up the hills and even on the little stream, you can see that the water flowed over and around the usual beds.

My top picture shows the trees from one of the food plots, now a bit overgrown. Right below is the plot when it was first established with clover in 2008. Below that is Genito Creek. It has a muddy-sand bottom and flows back and forth, undercutting each bank in turn and meandering across a fairly wide area. Next is my road. You can see the way the water made ripples with the pine needles. Below are the sycamores along the path. The path is now covered with vegetation. Finally, the bottom picture shows how the water ran out of the stream bed and over the bank. This little stream stays where it because the lower bed is solid stone. This is one of my favorite places. The water makes beautiful music.

August 25, 2014October 17, 2020

Virginia tree farms

Coming up from North Carolina, we arrived today at the tree farms. It has been a cool and rainy year in Brunswick County and the trees have done very well. They are clearly bigger. The trees on the CP property have reached the stage where the canopy is closing. Above is the property now and below is the same view nine years ago.

The road is overgrown. I like it. The surface is still hard underneath and you can drive on it w/o any trouble, but the vegetation is holding the dirt down a little better. I expect that it will get worn down during hunting season, when the road gets more traffic from the hunters’ trucks.

Speaking of hunting, the local guys think it will be a good year for deer. And several members of the hunt club are going after bear. We saw bear tracks on the farm for the first time. They have seen a big bear near the farm and one of the guys in the club got a picture of four bears with his wildlife camera. Bears were gone for 100 years. They are making a big comeback. I am not fond of them. I don’t like anything in my woods that could beat me in a fair fight. They say that the bear is more afraid of me than I am of the bear. I don’t think that is true.

One of the hunt club guys killed a bear with a crossbow last year. It took five shots to finish it off and it was still trying the chase the guy up a tree after the fourth shot.
Chrissy insisted that we buy a can of bear spray when we were out west. We didn’t see any bear, but I still have the spray. Maybe I will start taking it with me.

The local forestry business is good. Markets are good for wood and wood products. A big help has been chips and pellets. We are exporting pellets through the Port of Chesapeake.
I talked to a woman whose father buys white oak for Jack Daniels to use in its whiskey barrels. I have white oak. I don’t think I can make too much money from it, but I think it would be really cool to know that my wood was used for making whiskey barrels. She gave me the contact and I will give him a call.

August 16, 2014

Badlands of South Dakota

Instead of sticking to I-90, we took the scenic-slower route through the badlands. The badlands are rough. They are pretty to look at, but must have been hell to cross on foot. Being in a car on a paved road changes your perspective. They often have snake warning signs like the one below. I have only seen a rattlesnake one time in all the years I have walked in places with signs like this. Maybe they just put them there to spice up the experience.

You can see from the picture below that they even made a boardwalk along the hill. Again, your perspective is different when you can walk in comfort. The poor pioneers having to live here would have seen it differently.

August 15, 2014

Gambling

You can’t even sit in a bar and get slowly drunk to the tones of a sad country song. The gambling machines are everywhere, even little monitors set into bars and tables. Who knew that Deadwood was a gambling mecca. All that I knew about it came from the Wild Bill Hickok legends and that series by the same name. I guess that it was a gambling center back then, but I assumed that it evolved.

Gambling, or now they like to call it gaming has become troublingly common. I don’t like it. It is not that I am puritanical. I think “vices” like drinking and card playing are okay. What I object to is the ubiquity and the inane variety.
Wild Bill played poker. Poker is a legitimate occupation. Those who are talented and develop their skill can win more than they lose. And we have to thank gamblers for the science of statistics. It was they (some at least) who cared enough to think through the mechanics of luck. Poker is also a social game. In the Old West it often had anti-social consequences, but at least you were playing with others.
Today’s gambling is mostly a lonely affair with a row of poor suckers growing soft in mind and body as they push a button on a flashing machines decked out in childish, sometimes even cartoon themes. It is a random process. You can never become good enough at pushing those buttons that you will routinely win more than you lose. You interact only with the machine, which has no memory or emotions but is programmed to let you win often enough that you feel you are making progress.
As I wrote above, I object not to gambling but to its ubiquity. And in quantity I think it is corrupting to individuals and society. I emphasize “in quantity” since I think a little is okay and useful fun. But when you get a lot of it, it gets bad. I don’t object so much to the fact that it parts some fools with their money, but rather that too much gambling instills a kind of fatalistic point of view where luck and superstition take on too much of a role in lives. It also fosters an over materialistic view. After all, the goal is the big win, n0t the satisfaction of a job well done to get y0u there.
I suppose my criticisms are those of an old curmudgeon. I just don’t like it and never really have. the hotel gave us $15 worth of credits to play. We lost that very rapidly and fled the frenetic scene.
I hope I have not too much insulted “gamers.” I know lots of people like it. I would just like less of it.
My picture up top shows Deadwood main street. The one below is a walking path. The ponderosa pines are the best part of the city. In the Black Hills, some of the pines are too dense and are being attacked by pine beetles. This is not new. The town of Deadwood got its name from a forest of dead wood that occupied the site way back in 1876. Pine beetles cannot be eradicated, but can be controlled by thinning and other silvicultural methods.