U.S. Forest Service,
North Central Forest Experiment Station
The Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Columbia, Missouri is one of eight field units of the Forest Service's North Central Forest Experiment Station, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota. In cooperation with the University of Missouri School of Natural Resources, the Laboratory carries out research in ecology, culture and management of trees and wildlife in central hardwood forests.
Mission
To develop knowledge needed to effectively regenerate and manage upland Central Hardwood Forests for a variety of objectives including producing forest products, maintaining species diversity and protecting neotropical migrant birds.
Justification and Problem Selection
The North Central Region encompasses three ecologically distinct sub-regions within the Central Hardwood Forest: the Ozark Plateau, the lower Ohio Valley and the southern Lake States. Across the North Central Region from southwest to northeast there is a gradual transition from original prairie to xeric hardwood forests to fertile, mesic forests. THe species composition of vegetation, even within a single forest type, also changes along this gradient, as do the problems associated with manipulating vegetation to meet management objectives.
Several current trends, both in the physical forest resource and in public perceptions of forest values, strongly influence the formulation of research priorities associated with the central Hardwood resource. These trends include:
- growing public demand for maintaining and preserving non-timber forest
values, including biodiversity, aesthetic qualities and rare or unique
forest features and communities.
- increased awareness of and decreased tolerance for anthropogenic (human-caused)
disturbance of forest communities including harvesting, mining and the
chronic effects of pesticides, pollution and global change.
- increasing involvement of public groups in the forest resource decision-making
process, often resulting in widespread application of cultural techniques
for which there is little supporting research (e.g., uneven-aged management
of oaks).
- an increasing total volume of merchantable timber across the region
coupled with a decrease in the number and average size of the highest
quality hardwood trees, a shift in species composition from oak-hickory
communities to maple-beech communities, most pronounced on the best
sites.
- long-standing difficulties in consistently ocntrolling the species
composition of forest communities regenerating after harvest or other
disturbance and, in particular, difficulties in consistently establishing
natural oak regeneration on good sites.
- an increasing need for quantitative information linking changes in
forest vegetation at the stand and the landscape levels with changes
in affected wildlife populations.
- a majority of forest land held in small tracts by owners who, as a group, invest little in forest management practices.
Every forest management decision, even the decision to do nothing, is predicated on assumptions about the impact of management alternatives on the future condition of the forest ecosystem. As stated in Research Priorities for Eastern Hardwoods (Hardwood Research Council 1987) "...it is not very meaningful to define objectives, develop management plans and invest in cultural practicies if present stand conditions cannot be projected into the future. One of the most valuable contributions research can make is to provide knowledge and technology that will reduce the uncertainty in almost everything a manager does." Although originally presented in the context of timber production, this statement applies equally well to management for any objective. Appropriate forest management decision cannot be made without knowledge of how alternatvie actions will affect the endemic plant and animal communities that society considers most important or at greatest risk. Consequently, much of the research outlined in this document is intended to result in qualitative or quantitative models that can be used to predict the outcomes of management practices.
Controlling the species composition of hardwood reproduction, in general, and establishing adequate oak reproduction, in particular, are problems of freat concern across the Central Hardwood region. The recent inventories of the forest resource in Indiana and Illinois show a shift in the last two decades of over 1 million acres from the oak-hickory forest type to other forest types, predominantly maple-beech. This trend has significantly reduced the value of many of the affected areas for wildlife habitat and timber production. Although in some ecosystems (e.g., the Missouri Ozarks) it is possible to determine if advance oak reproduction is adequate to restock a stand following harvest by clearcutting, it is not possible to make the predictions accurately for mesic sites in Illiinois and Indiana, nor for sites in the souther Lake States. Nor is is known how to consistently establish natural oak reproduction when it is not already present as advance reproduction prior to harvest. This uncertainty is compounded by increasing use of the selection and group selection reproduction methods in the Central Hardwood Forest. For these reproduction methods there is virtually no capacity to predict reproduction success of oaks. The causes of highly variable oak seed crops and impacts on natural oak reproduction have not been adequately quantified. Planting oaks can be a viable option for increasing the quantity of oak following harvest. To be cost-effective, planting prescriptions must ensure that planted oaks will have sufficiently rapid early height growth to compete successfully with other vegetation.
Managers cannot consistently predict and control the composition, structure
and development of oak and other woody plant reproduction in upland Central
Hardwood ecosystems.
North Central Forest Experiment Station
Forestry Sciences Laboratory
1-26 Agriculture Bldg.
Columbia, MO 65211
phone(573)
875-5341
fax(573)
882-1977
web site
www.ncfes.umn.edu/
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