Region Archives: US East

Antonino Malacrino

Over the past decades, fire seasons are getting longer and extreme wildfires have become more frequent, more intense and larger. …Fire leaves a dramatic and noticeable impact on the landscape — scorched trees, missing canopies and a forest floor devoid of plants and shrubs. But it has underground impact as well. “Within the context of fire ecology, we know a lot about plants and a lot about animals. We know a bit less about microbes,” said Antonino Malacrino, an assistant professor in the Clemson University Department of Biological Sciences. “Some studies show that if you have a severe wildfire, the soil microbiome is impacted. You can see the signature of that fire in the soil microbiome even after decades.” But very little information is known about what happens after a fire to the microbial community in terms of diversity, composition and the ecological processes that drive the assembly of the microbial community.

After days of tremendous firefighting effort, a team of tall-tree climbers finally extinguished the fire burning inside the historic Doerner Fir tree in the Southern Oregon Coast Range. The tree is estimated to be roughly 450 years old and was the tallest Douglas fir in the world at 327 feet before the blaze. Volunteer tree climbers Damien Carré and Logan Collier scaled the tree Thursday afternoon and used a hose to put out the last of the flames burning inside the tree. Then, they helped set up a sprinkler system to prevent the fire from reigniting. “I’m still kind of zinging from the whole thing,” said Carré, who is the owner/operator of Oregon Tree Service in Oregon City. “I feel it was very successful, and I’m very proud and honored to be able to do it.” …They have ruled out lightning as the cause based on weather data.

Once a month, researchers hike through the woods in the Baraboo Hills to check on small boxes strapped to tree trunks. The boxes hold microphones that are running 24 hours a day, capturing the soundscape of the forest. But for a research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they could be an important way to learn about the health of forests. The Soundscape Baselines Project is an effort to record a full year of audio in untouched forests all over the world. Bioacoustics enable researchers to get a fuller picture of the forest, the species that inhabit it and how they change over time, said Zuzana Burivalova, the project’s founder. …Burivalova’s team and their partners are recording in six locations around the world: Ecuador, Peru, Gabon, Germany, Brunei and Wisconsin. …“These new technologies, like bioacoustics, artificial intelligence … they’re finally enabling us to really understand what is out there and how it’s changing,” she said.

ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service announced it is investing more than $2.1 million in four projects across nine states in the Southern Region to restore state and private forestlands. These investments directly support the agency’s efforts to reduce wildfire risk, increase timber production, and expand rural economies, while providing critical support to landowners across management jurisdictions as they work to promote healthy, productive forests that benefit rural communities. The investments, totaling more than $7 million nationwide, are being delivered as competitive grants through the Landscape Scale Restoration program. Of the total funding, $600,000 will support two projects for federally recognized tribes. …In the Southeast, protecting wildlife habitat and restoring important forest ecosystems such as longleaf pine and oak are important priorities to ensure continued economic productivity of rural working lands.

…a University of Delaware professor has found that there is something of value to be learned from what’s left behind in the remnants of a wildfire. The charred debris left in the wake of wildfires … is known as wildfire char. UD’s Pei Chiu, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, studies wildfire chars and the ways they just might prove useful in reducing methane, a powerful gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Methane emissions come from many different sources, ranging from livestock manure to landfills and wastewater treatment plants. This work also informs his research on biochar — man-made chars created from leftover wood chips, rice husks, corn stover and other agricultural biomass — that can be used in soil amendments, stormwater treatment and other applications. Chiu shares five important facts about char — both natural (wildfire char) and manmade (biochar). 

The US Forest Service kicked off timber sales in the Hoosier National Forest this week despite resistance from advocacy groups and Gov. Mike Braun, who called the federal project “misguided.” The timber auction is part of a controversial forest management plan called the Houston South Project — an initiative the USFS says will promote tree growth, reduce disease and move the landscape toward “desirable conditions.” Local environmental advocates have been suing the agency to halt operations since 2020, saying the project could jeopardize the quality of drinking water 130,000 Hoosiers rely on in Lake Monroe. But the project is plowing ahead, despite local outcry and direct pleas from Braun to halt the project. The Forest Service declined to immediately comment to IndyStar’s request, instead asking for one to two weeks to respond. …The project includes prescribed burns on 13,500 acres of forest and permitting timber harvests on another 4,300 acres across the next 10-15 years.

Near the bottom of a shady hillside in Jericho, a lone beech tree stretches high into the canopy, a relic of a bygone forest. Through luck or (hopefully) genetics, this mighty tree has avoided contracting beech bark disease—a fatal fungal pathogen that has proven deadly to mature beech trees. And it stands just outside a hotspot where a new pathogen called beech leaf disease (BLD) is spreading across Vermont forests. “Beech is here a lot as a sapling … but if you look out into the forest it’s not really common in the overstory,” said Jess Wikle Ph.D. ’24, lecturer in forestry and manager of the University of Vermont’s Research Forests. The beech trees that do succumb often send out a series of root sprouts before they die, turning a forest of big trees into a thicket of saplings. Beech leaf disease is different. It seems to be spreading faster and young beech trees tend to die first.

State foresters Tuesday recorded the first deaths of beech trees from a disease that just arrived in the state four years ago and is now present in all 16 counties. Scientists say beech leaf disease could decimate a species that’s common in Maine woods and an important food source for wildlife. An invasive microscopic roundworm called a nematode causes the disease, which was first detected in Ohio in 2012 and has since rapidly spread north and east. Aaron Bergdahl, a forest pathologist with the Maine Forest Service, said while checking a monitoring plot in the MidCoast Tuesday morning, scientists made an unfortunate discovery: the first tree deaths from the disease. …Bergdahl said there are currently no practical forest-level treatments for beech leaf disease, but there are for homeowners.

Texas A&M Forest Service and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative launched an online forestry education course—Forest Literacy: Understanding the Values of Trees, Forests and Sustainability. The online course is designed to provide access to forest and natural resource concepts to all formal and informal educators, academic administrators, natural resource personnel and others who engage in public outreach about forests across the United States and Canada. The purpose of the course is to empower educators, parents and community members to deepen their understanding of forests and inspire the next generation of environmental stewards. …Topics covered in the course include the ecological and societal roles of forests; forest ecosystem functions and indicators of forest health; forests’ roles in human well-being, biodiversity and climate resilience; deforestation, urbanization, pollution and environmental impacts on forest ecosystems; forest health management; and personal forest stewardship encouragement.

The Nature Conservancy announced it planted 2.5 million trees in northern Minnesota this year in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and three county land departments. This is a record number for the organization, and the second consecutive year the program has planted more than 2 million tree seedlings The tree seedlings were planted on public lands—across 5,810 acres of national forest, state forest, state park and county-managed forest lands—and covered six counties, including Cook, Lake, Saint Louis, Itasca, Cass and Carlton County. The planting areas included 1.8 miles along scenic Highway 61 and 41 miles of stream, river and lakeshore that connect to Lake Superior. It also included 1,740 acres of moose habitat enhancement, completed in partnership with the Ruffed Grouse Society and Minnesota Moose Habitat Collaborative—whose tribal representation is critical in maintaining habitat for this species of cultural importance to Indigenous communities.