Tag: Arkansas

Arkansas Research Forester Receives International and Regional Honors

by Teresa Jackson, SRS Public Affairs  • 
Silvicultural histories are recognized by forestry professionals from the United Kingdom to Arkansas. The Editorial Board of Forestry, an international journal of forest research, recently awarded USDA Forest Service research forester Don Bragg the 2017 Percy Stubbs, John Bolton King and Edward Garfitt Prize for Silviculture for advancing silviculture research. Bragg received this prestigious award…  More 

Why Native Plants Are Best

by Virginia McDaniel, forestry technician  • 
This article was written to celebrate Native Plant Month in Arkansas. It was originally published in Our Ozarks. In 1733, Peter Collinson, a botanist and cloth merchant, walked with great excitement to the ship docks in London. He picked up two boxes of seeds from an American farmer named John Bartram. With these exotic seeds,…  More 

Post-Fire Mortality for Southern Hardwoods

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
Drive down Highway 7 in northern Arkansas, winding through the Ozark National Forest, and you may glimpse evidence of recent fire: scorched grass, darkened tree bark, maybe even a lingering wisp of smoke. Traces of prescribed burning can be seen throughout the South. Prescribed fire is a critical tool for forest restoration. A new study…  More 

Adaptations Help Illustrate Importance of Biodiversity

by Bill Holimon, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission  • 
Protection and restoration of open pine ecosystems — woodlands dominated by large pine trees spaced about 50 feet apart with sparse mid-story and shrub layers and a rich herbaceous layer — in the Coastal Plain of southern Arkansas has been a high priority of the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and partners for over two decades.…  More 

Forestry’s Early Entrepreneurs

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Before the Crossett Experimental Forest existed, two engineers-turned-lumbermen began rehabilitating the cutover ‘pineywoods.’ “In 1925, Leslie Pomeroy and Eugene Connor bought the Ozark Badger Lumber Company,” says U.S. Forest Service scientist Don Bragg. “The company was small and nearly defunct, and Pomeroy and Connor turned it into a profitable, long-term example of uneven-aged silviculture.” Bragg…  More 

Prescribed Fire and Snags in Shortleaf Pine Woodlands

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
“I’ve spent years working in these shortleaf pine woodlands and always wondered about the availability of snags, especially given their importance to bats,” says U.S. Forest Service research wildlife biologist Roger W. Perry. Perry is talking about 250,000 acres on the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Efforts to restore shortleaf pine woodlands have…  More 

Mississippi Alluvial Valley Forests

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The Southern Forest Futures Project (SFFP) started as an effort to study and understand the various forces reshaping the forests across the 13 states of the Southeast. Chartered by the U.S. Forest Service Southern Region and Southern Research Station (SRS) along with the Southern Group of State Foresters, the project examined a variety of possible…  More 

How Much Smoke Will a Prescribed Fire Produce?

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Prescribed fire is an important and widely used management tool, but the smoke produced can cause air quality issues and health problems. Before conducting prescribed fires, managers typically model the amount of smoke a fire will produce, which is directly related to the amount of fuel available. “Most fire-effects models were developed in the western…  More 

Shortleaf Pine: What’s in the Genes?

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Despite shortleaf pine’s importance, relatively little is known about its genetics. “The lack of knowledge is especially apparent in this era of molecular genetics and genomics,” says U.S. Forest Service research geneticist Dana Nelson. Nelson and his colleagues recently reviewed shortleaf pine genetics, and their implications for restoration and management. The research team included Oklahoma…  More 

The Koen Experimental Forest

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
  Established in 1951 in northern Arkansas, the Henry R. Koen Experimental Forest (Koen) is covered mostly in oak-hickory upland hardwood forest and oak-pine stands. Named for Henry R. Koen, forest supervisor of the Ozark National Forest during the first half of the 20th century, the experimental forest was set aside to develop scientific principles for forest…  More