Ecology Colloquium Series - Sustaining mixed oak forests in Pennsylvania: Identifying ecological and management factors that affect oak regeneration 10 years after overstory removals

October 5, 2016 @ 01:20 pm to 02:10 pm

Kelly Derham, Penn State

301D Life Sciences

The mixed oak forest type is important economically and is a major ecological component of Northeastern forests. Since the 1950s a proportion of mixed oak forests have been failing to regenerate. In these cases oaks are abundant in the overstory but after a stand-replacing disturbance they are replaced by more mesic species. Many factors have been implicated in oak regeneration failures including fire suppression and high browsing pressure. In Pennsylvania, the Bureau of Forestry acknowledges this issue and starting around the year 2000 began to require managers to use a decision support tool called SILVAH-Oak. This tool provides management recommendations to help maintain mixed oak forests. To obtain recommendations from SILVAH-Oak, managers conduct a field assessment of the overstory and regeneration conditions in the forest stand to be regenerated. These data combined with field assessments 10 years after an overstory removal provide a unique opportunity to identify how biotic and abiotic factors combine with management to determine forest composition in Pennsylvania. This research will impact the way mixed oak forests are managed in Pennsylvania by determining important variables involved in oak regeneration and evaluating the usefulness of SILVAH-Oak as a decision support tool. _

Contact

Dr. David Eissenstat
dme9@psu.edu