Tag: Silviculture

American Chestnuts in the Field

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
By the 1950s, two non-native pathogens had killed almost all American chestnut trees. “There’s a lot of interest in breeding a chestnut that looks like American chestnut with the disease resistance of Chinese chestnut,” says U.S. Forest Service research forester Stacy Clark. “However, there hasn’t been much research on reintroducing disease-resistant trees to the forest.”…  More 

Where Are the Southern Pine Beetles?

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
Between 2005 and 2015, only 18 counties in the southern U.S. experienced southern pine beetle outbreaks–fewer than two outbreak counties per year on average. U.S. Forest Service entomologist Chris Asaro wanted to know why and worked with two other Forest Health Protection scientists, John Nowak and Anthony Elledge, on a new review paper published in Forest…  More 

Longleaf Pine Silviculture

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
By best estimate, longleaf pine forests once spanned over 90 million acres – an area more than twice the size of Georgia. “Today, 97 percent of these forests are gone,” says U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Dale Brockway. “However, the longleaf pine ecosystems that remain are home to a very diverse community of plants and…  More 

Creating Oak Woodlands

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Oak woodlands are typically made up of large, widely spaced trees. Flowering plants, grasses, and other herbaceous species flourish in the understory. “Many public lands managers want to create woodland habitats,” says U.S. Forest Service research forester Stacy Clark. “They provide numerous ecological benefits.” The historical extent of oak woodlands in southeastern forests is relatively…  More 

Diagnosing and Managing for Root Disease in Southern Pines

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
Southern Regional Extension Forestry (SREF) recently published a new technology bulletin on the biology, diagnosis, and management of Heterobasidion root disease in southern pines. U.S. Forest Service plant pathologists Tyler Dreaden, Southern Research Station (SRS), and Michelle Cram, Forest Health Protection, co-authored the publication with Jason Smith from the University of Florida and SREF’s David…  More 

Managing Forests to Conserve Bat Populations Affected by White-Nose Syndrome

by Anna Walker, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
In March 2016, scientists found bats infected with white-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungal disease that’s killed millions of North American bats across the eastern United States, in Washington state, over 1,000 miles from the nearest confirmed infection site in eastern Oklahoma. Because most bat species in the U.S. eat phenomenal numbers of insects, bats are important to agriculture and to forests and…  More 

Regenerating Shortleaf Pine in the Southern Appalachians

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
On June 14th, at the annual meeting of the Southern Group of State Foresters, Arkansas State Forester Joe Fox and U.S. Forest Service Southern Region Deputy Regional Forester Ken Arney announced the release of a long-awaited five-year plan developed by the Shortleaf Pine Initiative to stem the rapid decline of regional short­leaf pine forests. Shortleaf…  More 

Little Rock Hosts International Silviculture Workshop

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
On May 31st, over 50 researchers from the United States, China, Germany, Slovenia, Chile, Germany, Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium, and the United Kingdom descended upon Little Rock, Arkansas to discuss forestry management techniques from around the world at the 10th International Workshop on Uneven-aged Silviculture. Jim Guldin, project leader for both of…  More 

2016 Southern Pine Silviculture Training Held in Arkansas and Louisiana

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
For 10 straights days from 25 April through May 3, U.S. Forest Service personnel from the Southern Research Station, Region 8, and State and Private Forestry (S&PF) taught a short course on southern pine silviculture as part of the National Advanced Silviculture Program (NASP). The silviculture certification program for the Forest Service, NASP consists of…  More 

Creating Young Forests to Benefit Wildlife

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
There’s a tendency to think of the hardwood forests of the South as pristine, undisturbed, and unchanging. But forests are constantly changing, which is a good thing for disturbance-dependent species that require open structural conditions created immediately after forest disturbances or at some point early in the process of recovery. Historically and still today, windstorms,…  More