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MARTINSVILLE, Ind. (AP) — Wildlife biologists are counting acorns and salamanders and following rattlesnakes to their hibernation nooks at two Indiana parks for a wide-ranging study of the connection between trees and wildlife. Their project, planned to last 100 years, seeks to pin down the relationship between tree species and the animals they support to devise new forest management approaches. Cortney Mycroft, a Purdue University forest technician who’s overseeing the research, hopes it can find ways to counter the forces that are slowly altering the Midwest’s hardwood forests. Mycroft said oak and hickory trees and the protein-rich nuts they produce are slowly being replaced in woodland areas by maple and beech trees with smaller seeds that support fewer wild turkeys, squirrels, grouse and other animals. The study enlisting Purdue scientists, state wildlife biologists and other researchers will use periodic tree-cuttings to try to boost the oak-hickory mix, and oaks in particular. “Our species composition is changing with our trees, so we definitely have an interest in maintaining oaks,” Mycroft said. “So many animals feed on acorns.” The study is unfolding in nearly 2,000 acres in southern Indiana’s Morgan-Monroe State Forest and nearby Yellowwood State Forest. The project started three years ago when the researchers began collecting data on the selected woodlands. One area in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest that’s being studied is a large tract that was leveled in 1990 by straight-line winds and later harvested by a lumber company. Nearly two decades later, that parcel of land is now filled with trees of varying heights and dense shrubbery that shed light on how forests recover from violent upheavals, said John Seifert, the head of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources’ forestry division. Seifert said natural events such as severe storms and forest fires once shaped the state’s woodlands, as did periodic fires Indians set to open up clearings for hunting or villages. But those forces are no longer at work now that most of Indiana’s original forest cover has been pared down to state parks and smaller areas on private land. To get the decades-long study moving, forest tracts of up to 10 acres were logged over the past summer in six of the project’s nine 200-acre plots. Other areas will be logged at 20-year intervals during the study. Mycroft said different tree-cutting techniques will be used randomly in the logged areas. That includes cutting all trees in a particular area, cutting trees of a certain age or cutting only selected trees. Previous research has shown that the size of an opening created by nature or man in a forest canopy dictates what tree species will eventually take hold there. Maples, for example, are well-suited to growing in shade and quickly take advantage of a new forest clearing. Mycroft said that strength can allow maples to quickly dominate areas once ruled by oaks. Brian MacGowan, a Purdue Extension wildlife expert, said he and the other researchers are eager to see what impact the logging will have on a wide range of wildlife, including endangered species such as timber rattlesnakes, Indiana bats and Cerulean warblers. MacGowan has fitted 22 timber rattlesnakes and 25 box turtles with radio transmitters so he and others can track their movements and periodically catch them to assess their health. The researchers also are checking 3,000 boards spread across the forest floor for salamanders and plastic tubs mounted on poles beneath black and white oaks to measure how many acorns they drop. Mycroft said she and her colleagues soon will begin installing nearly three dozen 65-foot-square fenced areas to control one of the prime forces behind the state’s changing woodlands — white-tailed deer. The fenced-in areas keep deer out of selected areas so that acorns dropped by oaks can lie undisturbed and sprout into small trees without becoming a deer’s dinner.
Posted 11/17/2008
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