Presentation
from the 2020 annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), which
took place online August 3-6, 2020.
Click the link above to view the recording of
this presentation.
Challenges
in the Tree Planting Pipeline: From Seed to Nursery to Outplanting on Post-Fire
Restoration Sites
Owen
Burney, New Mexico State University
Background
Large, catastrophic forest fires are
becoming commonplace in the southwestern US due to a combination of factors
that include historic fire suppression, high tree densities, inadequate
management, and a warming climate. In the expansive, treeless areas associated
with high-severity fires, natural regeneration of native tree species is
unlikely and often requires the need to reforest via tree planting. Within the
last few years, there has been a growing interest to increase the use of reforestation
as a tool to restore these degraded post-fire landscapes. However, there are
major concerns on how to achieve such large restoration planting objectives,
both in the southwestern US and globally.
Conclusion
With an increased interest to
reforest post-fire landscapes, it is critical to discuss the resources and
infrastructure required to accomplish this overall objective in the
southwestern US. There are three main components to the reforestation pipeline.
The first is the foundation to most restoration efforts, which is seed
collection and storage. Currently this is not prioritized through any programs at
the state, federal, tribal, or private level in the southwestern U.S. This is primarily
due to the high costs of seed collection and the 3 to 7 year interval for when
seeds are available (masting years). Without seed, there is no restoration. The
second component to the restoration pipeline is the production of seedlings in
a forest nursery. There are very few nurseries in the southwestern US and many
are not producing high quality seedlings. The Target Plant Concept (TPC) defines
the importance of matching the right seedling characteristics and qualities to
specific planting sites that ensures outplanting success. Current research in
New Mexico is showing promising results using seedlings that are drought
conditioned (TPC) in the nursery phase that promote both higher survival and
growth in the field. The third component is the act of actually planting seedlings,
also known as outplanting. The outplanting effort considers issues such as site
preparation techniques, planting windows, and distribution patterns across the
landscape. For example, the use of a nucleation or “tree island” planting
strategy is currently being studied in New Mexico as a way to restore disturbed
landscapes without recreating the initial problem of high tree densities that
resulted in these large, catastrophic fire. As land managers begin to plan
reforestation activities, it is important to bring attention to these three
components of the tree planting pipeline and the limitations that exist within.
