Grace Smith, a forestry technician, spent spring working for 10 hours planting trees in the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Vermont.
Smith and her coworkers use dibbles, aEUR” long pointed tools with handles to make holes in the ground. They can resettle 200 to 300 saplings per day in test plots before it gets too hot for young trees.
Smith said that they are “super handy” to be able “to get these roots deep enough.”
A variety of species were selected to test if the saplings will improve the forest’s resilience. One red spruce variety, chosen because it is from the mountains in West Virginia, will be used as a test for what scientists call “assist migration.” This involves introducing people from warmer regions to northern latitudes that are expected to get hotter and drier with a changing climate.
As a deer appears at the far end, the refuge’s forester, Jeremy Goetz warns, “Grace, there are trouble over there.”
The refuge provides habitat for Canada lynx, grouse and other declining bird species, as well as a Canada warbler, a songbird with bright yellow stomachs.
However, the forest’s past has made it vulnerable.
Goetz points out the ruts that were left by heavy timber harvesting machinery decades ago, when the land was owned by a paper company. “The machine they would use for pulling out logs.” The trees are unusually uniform in appearance, with young balsam fir.
This could lead to a lot more dead trees in this area due to the increasing heat and dryness of the climate or new insects. Tony D’Amato is the director of University of Vermont’s Forestry Program. He says that climate change has made it more difficult to preserve forest functions.
His team will plant saplings in partnership with the refuge. They will be planting a variety species that have been grown in tree nurseries such as pine, cedar, and hemlock. But he is most excited about red spruce. According to him, the climate from which the seeds were grown in the Central Appalachians is similar to what the models for Vermont predict for the region by 2070.
Katy Barlow of The Nature Conservancy, who produced the seedlings says that red spruce is already growing in Vermont but will show small genetic differences to the species further south.
“The northern New England region is home to the majority of red spruce population. Barlow states that each place has its own climate and the populations have adjusted to it.
Genetic analysis has shown that there are differences in the starting and ending times of the West Virginia red-spruce growing season. An established population of trees that can adapt to the climate in Vermont could help this forest adapt to future climates.
There are many experiments being conducted by foresters in assisted migration. The term “assisted migration” can be used to describe a wide range of activities, including moving a genotype within a tree or introducing an animal where it has never lived before.
“Thinking about actively moving animals around is a little, well, a lot uncomfortable,” says Abe MillerRushing, Acadia National Park science coordinator in Maine. What might the unintended consequences be? What are the unintended consequences of moving species about?
He said that the Parks Service prefers hands-off management, and has modeled restorations on past conditions. He noted that Acadia’s evergreen forests could be destroyed by shrubland and invasive bushes if the Parks Service does not intervene as climate change is occurring.
Miller-Rushing says that in a warm environment such as this, one would expect trees from south like oaks or hickories, to move up into the park. But the climate is changing at a faster pace than these species can cope with. He also said that “we’ve put many obstacles in their path”, fragmenting the landscape with suburbs, highways and cities.
The National Park Service published last year a guide for staff who are interested in assisted migration. Miller-Rushing and Mark Schwartz, a researcher from The University of California at Davis, helped to write the guide. According to Miller-Rushing, forest managers who attempt to shift genotypes or species face a lot uncertainty.
He says that assisting in relocations “might turn out to be the worst bad idea we have.” We may have to get involved in more.
Decision-making will be informed by more data from experiments such as the one in Vermont.
D’Amato, a research scientist, says that there’s always a challenge. It’s like the scientific versus personal. D’Amato says he would not like to see the northern forests where he works disappear, especially if it meant losing species such as red spruce or sugar maple. “Personally, I would be very upset.”
However, he says it will be comforting if there are lessons to be learned from the test plots in woods.