Treesearch

West Virginia has often been described by botanists as “the most southern of the northern states, the most northern of the southern states, the most eastern of the western states, and the most western of the eastern states." Truly, West Virginia, "the Mountain State," is the cross roads for many species of trees and herbaceous vegetation, and even today we are often surprised by what we find surviving in remote and unique environments.

From 1932 to 2011, 4 distinct periods of tree planting characterized the history of state nurseries in the South. These periods were associated with 4 major programs: the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Soil Bank program, the Conservation Reserve Program, and the expanded Conservation Reserve Program. Throughout these programs, state nurseries fluctuated in numbers and seedling production. The later conservation reserve programs also had an impact on species diversity, including increasing hardwood seedling production.

The U.S. Forest Service manages 20 percent of the forest land in the United States. Both the Climate Change Performance Scorecard and the revised National Forest Management Act require the assessment of carbon stocks on these lands. We present circa 2010 estimates of carbon stocks for each national forest and recommendations to improve these estimates.

More than 600,000 ha (1.5 million ac) of mostly forested land in the Appalachian region were surface mined for coal under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Today, these lands are largely unmanaged and covered with persistent herbaceous species, such as fescue (Festuca spp.) and sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata [Dum. Cours.] G. Don,) and a mix of invasive and native woody species with little commercial or ecological value. Some landowners and surrounding residents would like to restore native forests on some of these lands for the valuable products and services they...

Reclamation through reforestation is becoming more common in Kentucky as studies uncover what treatments are most effective for successful tree establishment. “Success” is defined by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in terms of height and survival percentage of outplanted and naturally regenerated species. While this definition of success provides a measure of site occupancy, it does not produce an adequate method for characterizing the quality of the reforested mine land as compared to the natural landscape. In response to this, a method of site evaluation was developed for two high-value...

The U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program made a transition from state-by-state periodic forest inventories--with reporting standards largely tailored to regional requirements--to a nationally consistent, annual inventory tailored to large-scale strategic requirements. Lack of measurements on all forest land during the periodic inventory, along with access issues and misidentification of forest plots as nonforest, have resulted in plot-level data gaps spread in the FIA database. In this study, we examined several approaches that compensate for missing observations with...

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was a dominate hardwood tree in the eastern United States. Its historic range extended from Maine south to the northern parts of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and west to the Ohio River Valley. In 1904, an exotic Asian fungus responsible for the death of American chestnut trees was first identified at the Bronx Zoo (New York City, NY). By 1950, the fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica) had spread throughout the range of the chestnut and had functionally removed the chestnut as a canopy tree. The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) was established in...

This article gives a brief history of the importance of methyl bromide in the production of forest tree seedlings in the southern United States and the timeline for the Montreal Protocol and Clean Air Act to phase out ozone depleting compounds. In addition, the process, steps used, and current status under the Critical Use Exemption and Quarantine Pre-shipment articles within the treaty are discussed. A summary of the re-registration decisions proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency for the re-registration of all soil fumigants under the Food Quality Protection Act for the 2012...

Managing forest soil organic matter (SOM) stocks is a vital strategy for reducing the impact of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, the SOM pool is highly variable, and developing accurate estimates to guide management decisions has remained a difficult task. We present the results of a spatial model designed to map soil organic matter for all forested land in the Coastal Plain physiographic province of New Jersey. SOM stocks from 60 sampling locations, distributed across the region in a stratified random design based on vegetation type and drainage class, were used in a...

Since World War II, synthetic fertilizers have been used almost exclusively to grow forest and native plant nursery crops because they are quickly soluble and readily taken up by crops, producing the rapid growth rates that are necessary in nursery culture. In recent years, however, a wide variety of new organic fertilizers have become available. We divided these organics into three categories: 1) animal and plant wastes that are sustainable, and can further be separated into unprocessed and processed materials; 2) natural minerals that are unsustainable, with their use regulated in strict...