At Old Coal Mines, the American Chestnut Tries for a Comeback 2022-09-16T05:00:23-04:00
Threads Involved: Climate Change
| From | johnwunder |
|---|---|
| To | Johnny |
| Date | 2022-09-16T05:00:23-04:00 |
| Headline | At Old Coal Mines, the American Chestnut Tries for a Comeback |
| Source | NYTimes |
Across Appalachia, scientists and foresters are trying to reintroduce a hybrid version, helping to revive damaged land while also bringing back a beloved tree.
Analysis: American Chestnuts bandaging mining scars. Web References https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/climate/coal-mine-american-chestnut.html
At Old Coal Mines, the American Chestnut Tries for a ComebackAcross Appalachia, scientists and foresters are trying to reintroduce a hybrid version, helping to revive damaged land while also bringing back a beloved tree.
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“We, humans, brought in the nonnative fungus that killed the tree,” Dr. Keiffer said, referring to the parasitic fungus that was accidentally introduced to North America in the late 1800s on imported Japanese chestnuts.
After that, mining the land made it nearly impossible for it to develop naturally back into the forest it once was, she said. “Maybe we can be the ones to bring the trees back.”
That calling has always motivated Thomas Brannon, even as a third grader in the 1940s planting trees with his siblings on his family’s land in eastern Ohio, the property that Mr. French visited in August.
“If I can make that 230 acres look better, then that’s enough for me,” Mr. Brannon said.
His grandparents sold mining rights to parts of the property in 1952, and nearly four decades of coal mining followed.
In 1977, the federal government passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, requiring mining companies to return land to the general shape it had before the mining activity.
ImageChris Barton, a forest hydrology professor and president of Green Forests Work.ImageCoal and rough soil in the formerly mined section of the Monongahela National Forest.As a result, mining companies would backfill excavated land, packing rock material tightly against the hillside so it wouldn’t cause landslides, said Scott Eggerud, a forester with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the agency that enforces the mining law. To prevent erosion, mining companies would plant aggressive, mostly nonnative grasses that could tolerate the heavily compacted soil.
From the 1980s to the early 2000s, an estimated one million acres of previously forested area in the Appalachia were reclaimed this way as “legacy” mined lands.
In theory, compacting land and greening it up quickly was a good idea, in terms of preventing erosion and water contamination, said Sara Fitzsimmons, chief conservation officer at The American Chestnut Foundation. But it made re-establishing forests difficult.
Tree planters described the early efforts to reforest those legacy mined lands as “planting trees in a parking lot.”
When Green Forests Work arrived on the Brannon property in 2013, they focused on undoing some of the damage done to the land, bringing in bulldozers with giant ripping shanks that dig three to four feet deep into the soil, loosening up the dirt and pulling up rocks.
By springtime, the group had planted upward of 20,000 seedlings, a mix of 20 different native tree species including the American chestnut, the Virginia pine and a variety of oaks.
They also planted 625 chestnuts in a one-acre space they called a progeny test to evaluate the health of hybridized chestnut trees — fifteen-sixteenths American chestnut and one-sixteenth Chinese chestnut — that were crossbred by scientists at The American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit group formed in the 1980s.
ImageThe fossilized imprint of a fern in the Monongahela National Forest.Image“The biggest limiting factor to tree growth is soil moisture,” said Shane Jones.The Chinese chestnuts had co-evolved with the fungus, making them resistant to the blight’s effects. The scientists then infected the part-American, part-Chinese chestnuts with the fungus to pick out the ones that survived. Then, they repeated that process over several generations.
“We end up with a chestnut that looks more like an American chestnut but retains some of the disease resistance from Chinese chestnuts,” said Jared Westbrook, director of science at the foundation.
The crossbreeding approach to growing blight-resistant chestnut trees proved more complicated than initially expected. Although those efforts still continue, a research team at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has begun genetically engineering the trees by taking a fungus-fighting gene from wheat and transferring it into American chestnut embryos.
Many of the chestnuts growing in the progeny test now reach high above Mr. French’s head. When he inspected them in August, he’d pointed out a few black locust trees that had made their home next to the chestnuts on their own — an exciting development signaling that nature is doing its work, Mr. French said.
The black locust tree can take in atmospheric nitrogen and convert it to a type more accessible to plants. The tree’s leaves fall off and break down quickly, building up topsoil. And as a fast-growing but short-lived tree, it shades other saplings in their earlier years, encouraging them to grow straight and tall as they compete for light.
“We call it nature’s scab,” Mr. French said. “It’s there for a little while, and helps heal the wounds, and then it falls off.”
Climate change has complicated efforts to bring back tree species in other ways. As temperatures warm, the optimal range for the chestnut tree, and a number of other tree species, will be shifting northward into the northern United States and Canada, Dr. Westbrook said. Some wildlife managers have begun experiments to deliberately relocate certain tree species northward in a controversial process called assisted migration.
ImageAnna Maria Branduzzi amid the man-made wetlands of the Monongahela National Forest.ImageA newt in the Monongahela National Forest.Since the chestnuts were wiped out, and any remaining trees only grow to a few years old before they die off from the blight, they have not had a chance to reproduce and adapt to climate change as other species have, Mr. Westbrook said. “They’re essentially 50 to 100 years behind every tree that didn’t have the disease,” he said.
Mine reforestation efforts have focused on planting a variety of native tree species, but chestnuts have always been a good way into the difficult conversation of encouraging the industry to change its standard practices.
“When you start talking to people about the chestnut tree, they get really excited,” Mr. French said.
Reforestation, though, is about more than any one species. It’s important to take a “holistic, ecosystem approach,” said Christopher Barton, a forest hydrology professor at the University of Kentucky and president of Green Forests Work.
At some sites, for example, tree planters don’t just plant trees, they also build wetlands. The man-made wetlands at Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains look like a mosaic of small pools, with tangled branches of downed trees jutting out of the water at spots, left there intentionally to serve as a safe place for amphibians to attach their eggs, said Anna Maria Branduzzi, the reforestation coordinator at Green Forests Work.
The nonprofit group, together with the U.S. Forest Service, has been working to restore the red spruce ecosystem on 2,500 acres of land in Monongahela that had been mined for coal.
Historically, the area would have been wet enough that peat, a spongy material formed of partially decayed organic matter that can serve as an important carbon sink, would accumulate, Dr. Barton said.
After mining reclamation, the area lost its moisture, along with its trees.
“The biggest limiting factor to tree growth is soil moisture,” said Shane Jones, an ecosystem staff officer for the Forest Service. “We’re trying to put the sponge back on the mountain,” he said, grabbing a fistful of dirt and wringing out a trickle of water.
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