From Field to Forest by David Heithaus was originally published in the BFEC Newsletter, Vol. 18/No. 1, Winter 2014.
The BFEC has planted 10,000 trees and restored 70 acres of land to natural habitat over the last 15 years. We’re now embarking on the next project: transforming an agricultural field into prairie and forest.
One of our primary goals at the BFEC is to maintain and improve our landscape in order to support the maximum diversity of native plants, animals, and habitat types. Most of the time this means fighting a holding battle against invasive species — a task that at times can feel somewhere between futile and hopeless. Like being a Browns fan.
A major hurdle to maintaining habitats that are burdened with invasive species is finding an effective way to knock off the bad guys without inflicting damage on the good guys hunkered down amongst their roots. This means the easiest methods of control (broadcast herbicide, fire or a bulldozer) would be like carpet-bombing a block of terrorist training camps interspersed with nursery schools. Most of the time we are left with the responsibly inefficient tactics of manual removal, cut stump herbicide application or sighing heavily and walking to a less impacted area.
While there may come a day when some areas become so overrun that we will be forced to start from scratch (at least in the understory) we much prefer the rare opportunity to start from square one without having to use a flamethrower or drone strike. Over the years, several such opportunities have presented themselves and from these we’ve created acres of prairie and planted over ten thousand trees of over forty distinct species. This fall, we got our latest crack at starting over at the very heart of the BFEC, between the resource center and the Kokosing River.
Land used for agricultural purposes — either grazing or row crop — offers some of the best opportunities to manufacture "native" habitat and to plan for the effective control of invasive species. In fact, most if not all of the BFEC was used for agricultural production at some point. Few have become as efficient as modern farmers when it comes to starting each season fresh and selecting for the plants they like while reducing the impact of plants they don’t. While we are generally after a slightly more complex balance of species, the blank slate left by agriculture is by and far the best place to begin a reclamation project.
We are restoring three such areas this year: one to prairie, one to prairie and riparian buffer, and one to prairie, hardwood showcase, and experimental forest. The latter, encompassing eight acres along Laymon Rd. between the Gap Trail and Kokosing River, is the most ambitious and exciting.
The finished product (installation anyway) should be completed by the fall of 2014. It will be comprised of four major and four minor elements. The major elements to be installed in 2013 are the prairie unit, the oak grove, the birch grove, and a portion of the beech/maple grove. Minor elements include a number of "species interest and utility" such as pawpaw, butternut, Kentucky coffee tree and devil’s walking stick.
Future plantings will establish the remainder of the beech/maple grove and smaller units showcasing different forest communities from across the state and investigating the practicality of assisted migration with species that traditionally grow at more southerly latitudes.
The prairie unit will contain four types of warm season grasses and thirteen flowering plants including butterfly weed, purple and grey-headed coneflower, wild bergamot, foxglove, and black-eyed Susan. It will create a habitat useful for birds and pollinators and act as a transition into what will become the forested section of the project area.
The oak grove, which lies at the center of the projected area, contains about 300 trees of 30 distinct species — over half the number of species that occur naturally in the Eastern United States and well over half of the species that are actually likely to survive in Ohio.
The project began, as they tend to do, with site prep and layout. To get everything ready for planting after the harvest, we started by brush-hogging the entire field, which can corn stubble at the time. Realizing that we still had a troubling amount of (now finely shredded) debris covering the area we turned to begging and bribing folks who had long since put away their baling equipment to come rake and bind over thirty round bales... of corn stubble. Which are considerably heavier than round bales of more traditional materials. At present they are sitting patiently on the edge of the field awaiting a crane or airlift or some other bigger-than-mine piece of equipment to load them onto a flatbed to be used as winter bedding for cattle.
Turning to layout, we had conceived of the oak planting as a series of concentric circles. Deciding that trying to establish exact planting placement on the fly was a bad idea, we took to the field with several stakes, a length of rope longer than was wieldy, a big stake, a little stake, two sharpies and several hundred little plastic flags.
The idea was to drag the rope around the big, central stake to create each circle’s perimeter and to place a flag every twenty feet along each one. The twenty feet was established with the little stake and some extra... oh, never mind. We placed a huge number of flags in the field to mark future tree locations in a carefully planned layout that looks quite random unless you happen to be orbiting Earth above Knox County. We’ll define the circles with paths in the next ten years or so.
Needless to say, when a fantastic number of flags appear in the middle of a cornfield right next to the Kokosing River along a heavily traveled section of road, people tend to notice. Indeed, the field of flags along Laymon Road raised a number of eyebrows and questions and I will endeavor to address some of them here... albeit retrospectively:
What we are not doing: installing new drain tile, being compulsive about soybean placement next year, tunneling under the Kokosing, fracking, sending coded messages to orbiting Chinese spy satellites, summoning forces from the beyond.
What we are doing: laying out an absurdly complicated oak grove to be enjoyed from space in about twenty-five years. Planting thirty species of oak, four species of birch, two species of beech, and a half-dozen other hardwoods of interest. Seeding four acres of warm season grass prairie.
Once we had our layout established it was time to plant trees. With some very dedicated help, each and every flag got its very own young oak to spend the winter with. The sun shining down on a thin layer of snow, we stood back and admired our field of flags and toothpicks. A lone buck wandered out of the tree line to the east... then another. Four does and two yearlings eyed us from the Gap Trail...
With the site prepared for seeding and planting nearly complete, we’re watching our prairie test-tray in the greenhouse and waiting for the right conditions to frost seed our prairie unit. We’ll let you know how that went in the spring!
Assisted migration is the transporting of species into new areas in order to prevent extinction in their traditional range caused by climate change. While many plants are able to adapt relatively quickly, others (particularly at the edges of their range) might not if the pace of change is too rapid. Assisted migration attempts to identify these plants and accelerate their dispersal rates. At the BFEC, it means planting species that usually grow a state or two to the south of Ohio, in case it gets too hot for them there and they can’t spread north fast enough to survive.
It is a controversial topic. “Moving foreign plants into new habitats? Won’t they become invasive? Isn’t that exactly what you’ve been telling us NOT to do???!!” Yes it is and this is the primary argument against assisted migration as a management tool. That being said, assisted migration could be extremely effective for some species if a couple of things are kept in mind: 1) pick a species that may actually BE at risk (probably one that does not spread aggressively on its own then); 2) Monitor any transplants closely to ensure they fit in to their new home without displacing traditional residents or otherwise mucking up the neighborhood. What we will be doing at the BFEC is selecting a very small number of non-aggressive plants in small numbers and charting their growth (or not) relative to environmental conditions. The entire project will provide a number of research opportunities in the years to come.
Two important parts of any restoration project are clear and measureable goals and a sustainable (for you) maintenance plan. What do you want the area to look like next year? In five years? In twenty years? Do you care what it looks like? Are you more interested in attracting and providing food or habitat for wildlife? Which kind? These are the very first questions to ask before embarking on a project.
Step 1: Decide what you want an area to look like or what ecological role you’d like it to perform.
Step 2: Assess (honestly) how much you want to put into the project in terms of time and resources. Does that allow for step 1 to become a reality? If yes, proceed to step 3. If no, proceed to step X.
Step 3: The fun part: prep the site, plant the trees/grasses/perennials, wash hands, have dinner.
Step 4: Maintain, maintain, maintain. Keep an eye on your project site to make sure you’re encouraging only what you want to. Remove invasive plants before you get established! Remember: a small bear is easier to wrestle than a big bear... or a herd of bears. Or a herd of bears riding bull elephants with machetes strapped to their tusks.. Just pull the invasives as soon as you see them, okay?
Step X: Leave it alone (or keep mowing...)
Prairie, in my opinion, is the way to go for quick return and relatively low maintenance cost over time. While it can be expensive to install depending on your particular seed mix, the amount of time you’ll invest once it takes off is negligible and will generally only occur once or twice per year. A simple mowing or burning regiment generally does the trick.
Generally speaking, a straight up mix of warm season grasses (which grow best in the heat of summer) is not expensive and not overly technical to install. Its ecological value is marginal compared to a mature woodlot but there are native animal species that depend on large tracts of grassland/prairie if it’s managed properly. If the area isn’t of a certain size most of what you’ll be providing is food for birds, refuge for small mammals, less mowing for you and a more pleasing aesthetic for yourself and passerby... but that’s not so bad and it sure beats mowing.
So what makes a prairie? A prairie is more than just grasses- most feature a number of distinct flowering plants (forbs) as well. Ohio has at least eight distinct types of regional prairie featuring between 30 and 40 species of plants between them. Prairies vary from state to state and from region to region. Variety comes in the form of species composition with different grasses and flowering plants preferring the different characteristics of each region.
My favorite! Certainly the most productive and "natural" in Ohio, woodlots can be fun to install and rewarding over time but they will also require the most work to keep on track. Whereas a prairie establishes a ‘natural’ habitat that is then managed to prevent succession, a new woodlot is one where succession is the whole idea... but it’s going to need some guidance. The types of forest one might plant should be governed initially by regional appropriateness and secondarily by desired aesthetic or ecosystem role.
At the BFEC we plant a lot of oaks, hickories and walnuts because of the number of animals that find them beneficial. Once you’ve planted the trees, the work has just begun; keeping invasive plants out of the site will be your primarily task. Once the canopy has formed this will get easier but hen it will be time to work some native understory plantings into this picture. Even when you’ve done that (or your children have done that... griping about your scheme all the while) a woodlot in Ohio will still require monitoring to ensure maximum diversity and health. The reward is there, it just take a while to kick in.