Forest Summit Presenters 2011

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Frederick L. Paillet
Department of Geosciences
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR

The American Chestnut: Ecology, Devastation and Restoration of a Forest Icon

Just about everyone knows of the tragic loss of an iconic eastern forest tree that once was such a valuable timber source and prolific nut producer for wildlife and humans alike. The chestnut was not just another big forest tree. Its ecology and life history were and still are distinctly different from those of the oaks and beech to which it is distantly related. We start by looking at the Holocene history of chestnut, showing that its peculiar response to climate produced a late Holocene re-organization of New England's forests. Blight arrived in America shortly after 1900 and its spread through the range of chestnut and chinquapin is documented by the release pattern of adjacent trees wherever it grew. The unique qualities of chestnut are further demonstrated by its ability to persist in the forest in the presence of two separate introduced diseases, so that the tree can often dominate the understory without benefit of sexual reproduction. We investigate this phenomenon in detail, and then visit unique stands where chestnut can be seen today as a forest dominant - the West Salem, WI stand where chestnut escaped into native oak hickory forests in a location far beyond the range of blight; and in the unblighted forests of closely related European chestnut in southern Russia. We end with an update on the status of the American Chestnut Foundation program to restore chestnut to its rightful place in our ecosystem.

What We Know (and don't know) about an Enigmatic Woodlot

Dr. Henry W. Art
Robert F. Rosenburg Professor of Biology & Environmental Studies
Williams College

The Robert F. Rosenberg Professor of Biology & Environmental Studies at Williams College, Henry Art has taught biology and environmental studies at Williams College since 1970, when he rejuvenated the Hopkins Memorial Forest as a field research site. His research centers on the impacts of past land uses on the successional patterns, growth rates, and ecosystem functions of a landscape typical of western New England. He is a past chair of the Biology Department and former director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams. He also serves on the Williamstown Conservation Commission, the Board of Trustees of the Conway School of Landscape Design, and is the Vice President of the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation.

Liriodendron Tulipifera, King of American Hardwoods

Will Blozan
President and Co-Founder of the Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS)

Co-founder and president of the Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS), Will has been a practicing arborist for over 24 years. He currently owns his own business as an arborist in Black Mountain, North Carolina. His passion for climbing and caring for trees brought him to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1993 where he worked on identifying, mapping, and inventorying old-growth forests. It was during this project that he discovered numerous champion trees and developed a fascination with old-growth forests. Will's climbs have helped pioneer arboreal efforts towards the development of precise survey techniques, including the documentation of some of the largest specimens of eastern trees ever recorded. Will Blozan is a living legend. Will has climbed and documented the tallest trees in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and elsewhere for both science and sport. He has been featured in several television documentaries. He was instrumental in adopting and refining techniques of western US canopy researchers, which has allowed the ENTS to introduce three-dimensional crown mapping and volume modeling to eastern trees research. In addition to numerous eastern big/tall tree climbs Will has been assisting world-renowned canopy researchers on projects in the giant sequoias of California.

The Role of the USDA Forest Service in Promoting Natural Communities

Don Bragg
Research Forester
USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station

The southeastern United States is the largest timber producing region in the world, and is poised to retain this position through the ever-increasing use of intensively managed plantations of genetically improved pines, primarily loblolly (Pinus taeda) and slash (Pinus elliottii). While extremely productive from a biomass standpoint, these plantations represent considerably less diverse plant communities with reduced genetic, age, and structural complexity. Pine-dominated stands of natural (seed) origin are not as commercially lucrative but offer a wider range of structural, functional, and compositional attributes that, when coupled with the timber productivity of these forests, may provide a better value in total ecosystem services. The US Forest Service and the University of Arkansas-Monticello are currently evaluating a number of ecosystem functions within these natural origin pine-dominated forests, including carbon storage, fiber production, soil properties, and wildlife habitat, and comparing them to intensively managed pine plantations in the Upper West Gulf Coastal Plain. Preliminary results suggest that some of the productivity elements of naturally regenerated stands are more comparable to pine plantations when not viewed strictly as commercial products (e.g., lumber) but rather as an ecosystem service (e.g., carbon sequestered).

DCR's role with the tornado and how it affected DCR properties

Peter Church
Director of Forest Stewardship, Department of Conservation and Recreation

Multiple factors and thresholds for forest change in a warming climate

Lee E. Frelich
Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology

A warming climate will lead to increasing frequency of storms, drought, fires, and insect outbreaks, as well as alter the influence of invasive species and large herbivores, in the temperate-boreal forest ecotone. These drivers of change will create a number of scenarios for sudden change in forest composition under a gradually warming climate, in some cases by directly exceeding a threshold for a jump to an alternate state and in other cases by opposing change early on, causing stress to build up until the forest system makes a sudden jump.

Lee Frelich is Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology. He received a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. Frelich teaches courses in Forest Fire Ecology and Landscape Ecology on St.Paul Campus. He has advised 23 graduate students, and is a senior member of the Conservation Biology, Natural Resource Science and Management, Ecology, and Invasive Species Graduate Programs. Frelich has published many papers on forest ecology with 81 coauthors from 10 countries and has been listed among the top 1% of all scientists in the world in the Science Citation Index, Ecology and Environment Category. He has appeared in the news media 300 times including The New York Times, Newsweek, National Geographic, and many TV and radio stations. Current research interests include fire and wind in boreal forests, long-term dynamics of old-growth hemlock and maple forests, invasive earthworms in forests, moose-vegetation relationships, patterns of tree height and global warming.

Are We Making Progress? The Role of the Friends Network

Sharyl Heller
Massachusetts Friends Network

Travels to Far Away Places with an Eye on the Trees

Bob Leverett
Executive Director and Co-Founder of ENTS

Described as the "old growth forest evangelist of the east," Leverett's widespread forest meanderings have led to a large database of tree measurements and an encyclopedic knowledge of the significant remaining forests of the eastern U.S. This evening Bob takes us on a visually stunning tour of the "Great Forests of Massachusetts."

Bob and fellow ENTS co-founder Will Blozan have pioneered tree measuring techniques that have allowed ground-based measurements to be accurate to within a foot of true height. Bob is the President of the Friends of the Mohawk Trail State Forest, the primary architect of the Eastern Old Growth Conference series, and co-organizer of the HCC/ENTS Forest Summit Series. His extensive wanderings throughout the Eastern US have earned him the title "Eastern Old Growth Forest sleuth". Bob's recently published book (coauthored with Bruce Kershner) entitled "Sierra Club Guide to Ancient Forests of the Northeast" will be available at the Forest Summit.

Lessons Learned In Old-Growth Forests

Joan Maloof
Salisbury University, MD

Joan Maloof will be presenting an idea that developed during her visits to old-growth forests in every state east of the Mississippi River. She will be discussing her new book, "Among the Ancients," and her work on the Old-Growth Forest Network. The network will identify one forest in every county, nationwide, which will forever remain unlogged.

The author of "Among the Ancients: Adventures in the Eastern Old-Growth Forests" and "Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest," Maloof has a BS in Plant Science from the University of Delaware, an MS in Environmental Science from the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, and a PhD in Ecology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the coordinator of Champion Tree research for Wicomico County, Maryland, where she lives. Maloof recently retired from teaching Biology and Environmental Studies at Salisbury University to work full time on developing the Old Growth Forest Network. Her books will be available for sale at the conference.

Pre-contact and Colonial period views, management techniques, and material culture of Native Americans in Massachusetts

Elizabeth Perry
Wampanoag Nation

Native American artist and researcher Elizabeth James-Perry will focus her discussion on pre-contact and Colonial period views, management techniques, and material culture involving trees in Massachusetts, the traditional homeland of the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc and Mahican Native people.

Valuing the Environment in America: A Historical Perspective

Doug Seale
Environmental Ethics
Framingham State University, MA

This presentation focuses on the history of evolving attitudes and environmental values in America. Thoreau, Emerson, John Muir, T. R. Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold, L. H. Bailey, and Rachel Carson, among others, are included. All have contributed greatly to our current understanding of environmental and ecological values and of man's place in nature.

Doug Seale is an independent researcher in environmental ethics, environmental philosophy, and the history of environmental ideas, which are his areas of special interest. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and teaches Environmental Ethics and other courses at Framingham State University. He is a review advisor for, and frequent contributor of book reviews to, the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. He is a former Board Member of the Friends of the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, and currently serves as Vice-Chair on the Board of Supervisors for the Middlesex Conservation Distric

NHESP Priority and Exemplary Forested Natural Communities in Massachusetts

Pat Swain
Natural Community Ecologist, Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program
Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife

The types of forest communities found in Massachusetts and their role in biodiversity conservation is the main focus of the talk at the Forest Summit. Old Growth occurrences of any type of forest community are considered to be exemplary and are tracked by NHESP. In Massachusetts, some forested natural community types are generally uncommon, others are approaching the northern edge of their range here, and a few other types here are near the southern limit of their distributions - and some others are widespread. Using forest types as examples, the talk will cover what natural communities are and how they are classified, and why their identification is an important tool for conservation.

Natural community ecologist at NHESP since 1987, Pat Swain works statewide identifying and describing Massachusetts' rarest and most imperiled natural community types and exemplary examples of common natural community types. She is revising a classification of the natural communities of Massachusetts. Using the classification, NHESP tracks of examples of the Priority and Exemplary natural communities. Natural communities are an integral part of the NHESP effort to protect the biodiversity of Massachusetts through conservation planning, land protection, and public education. 

 

Salamanders in North American Deciduous Forests

Steve Tilley
Department of Biological Sciences
Smith College

Bark: Get to Know Your Trees

Michael Wojtech
Author, Illustrator, Naturalist

In New England trees are a primary part of the landscape, and are accessible to people of all ages in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Knowledge of trees-both their species identities and how they interact with their environment-provides an entryway that helps people connect with their local landscape. And it is often from these local connections that broader knowledge, questions, and concerns arise. The traits most often used to describe tree species-leaves, buds, and twigs-are often not clearly visible or, in the case of leaves, absent more than half the year. Bark is always visible, in any season. But bark is typically considered too complex to distinguish for all but the most practiced observers of trees. I will present a system for identifying the multiple stages of bark appearance for each species, which is detailed in my book, Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, that is accessible to people at all levels of experience. I will also discuss some of the environmental cues that have influenced the evolution of bark's diverse characteristics.

As a naturalist, writer, photographer, and illustrator, Michael Wojtech strives to share the science and beauty of natural history in an accessible and compelling fashion. He began his ongoing study of tree physiology and ecology at Antioch University New England, where he earned his Master's Degree in Conservation Biology. Michael's recently published book, Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, will be available at the Forest Summit. More about his work can be found at www.knowyourtrees.com.