When it comes to regenerating a forest in eastern United States, most foresters know that deer browse will often be part of the equation.  But assessing the severity of browse and ultimately its impact on successful recruitment of trees is not always easy.  We continue our conversation with Dustin Bronson, a Research Plant Physiologist with the US Forest Service, Northern Research Station and Casey Menick, Forest Regeneration Program Specialist with Wisconsin DNR, Division of Forestry to learn how good regeneration monitoring can help us answer some of these challenging questions.&nb ..read more

It’s not worth saying anything unless it’s worth taking a long time to say, to paraphrase Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings. And sometimes you need to play the long game if you’re a research forester too. Long-term silvicultural studies are surprisingly rare, but extremely valuable. That is why a recent paper on six decades of selection cutting results got our attention. The Cutting Methods Study is a long-term investigation of cutting systems in second-growth northern hardwood stands on the Argonne Experimental Forest in northern Wisconsin. Join us on this episode of SilviCast as we explore ..read more

Sometimes foresters in eastern North America may feel as if they are in a Lemony Snicket novel, with chestnut blight, spongy moth, Dutch elm disease, and emerald ash borer creating a continuing series of unfortunate events.  Emerald ash borer or EAB is one of the most recent invasive pests with the potential to eliminate an entire tree species. And foresters have many questions on how to manage EAB impacted stands and what they can do to help maintain ash trees as a component of our forests. On this episode of SilviCast we talk with two of North America's leading researchers working on EA ..read more

As foresters we spend a great deal of time looking up, to evaluate forest composition, structure and growth. The story below ground is equally as interesting however, with complex interactions between soils, nutrients, water, roots, and a host of other flora and fauna. As they say in Vegas, what happens below ground, stays below ground! Everything here is more difficult to study. This is particularly true about a class of organisms critical to trees, mycorrhizal fungi. We know that mycorrhizal fungi play an important role in allowing trees to uptake more nutrients and water. But does it go fur ..read more

No matter how you define it, old-growth forests are scarce as hen’s teeth in the eastern United States. More than 99% of our forests are second growth. While we can’t speed up time, we can speed up the development of old-growth characteristics through creative silviculture. Join us on this episode of SilviCast as we talk with Paul Catanzaro, Professor and State Extension Forester at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, about a range of silvicultural techniques to restore old-growth characteristics. To earn CEU/CFE credits, learn more, or interact with SilviCast, visit the uwsp.edu/SilviC ..read more

The official Society of American Foresters' definition of silviculture describes it as both an art and science. Are foresters both artists and scientists? What role does creativity play when developing a silvicultural prescription or setting up a timber sale? In forestry school we learn the foundational sciences of silvics, forest ecology, soils, wildlife, and water. And through experience and time spent in the forest we learn how to best apply that science to particular stands and site conditions. Join us on this season 4 finale of SilviCast as we talk with Marcella Windmuller-Campione, Assoc ..read more

If you're a whiskey enthusiast, you are probably aware of a lesser-known federal law that requires all bourbon (an American whiskey) to be aged in a “charred new oak container." And those containers or casks are made almost exclusively from white oak (Quercus alba). But white oak has been popular long before the recent rise in whiskey-sipping Gen Xers! It is simply hard to overstate the importance of this tree species to forest products, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem services. In fact, stakeholders from across eastern North America have joined forces to promote the long-term sustainability o ..read more

They say if you want forest heterogeneity, just get a larger group of foresters to mark the stand. While it is true that not every forester marks the same, it is often challenging if we want to intentionally create spatial variability. Especially if we want to emulate spatial patterns that would be typical for a specific forest type and natural disturbance regime. The ICO method (which stands for individuals, clumps, and openings) is a stand-level tool developed in the western US to help foresters restore the patterns of individual trees, clumps, and openings commonly found in pine/mixed conif ..read more

Foresters love a challenge! And one such challenge in eastern Northern America has always been northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis). A both ecologically and commercially valuable tree species that can be slow-growing, tricky to regenerate, and highly susceptible to deer browse. Join us on this episode of SilviCast as we introduce you to the Cedar Club, a passionate group of forest practitioners and researchers who have been tackling the cedar management question for the pat 23 years. Explore the challenges and opportunities to sustainable management of northern white-cedar. Featured "Ced ..read more

It seems that every young forester may have heard the old adage “green side up" tossed at us half-jokingly while learning to plant our first tree seedlings, almost as if to say "don't overthink this one kid." As experienced foresters we soon learn that achieving tree planting success is a whole lot more complicated. There are critical variables from stock type to site preparation to planting technique. If the world is going to get the trillion tree initiative right, all of these variables must be addressed. And there may be no group of professionals who know these variables better than forest ..read more