I was just wondering what would come up first if I Google “aspen.” The pretty tree or the wretched berg? Predictably, it is not the tree.
Aspen the tree is an interesting species (the overpriced municipality is to be avoided). One Forest Service employee told me it is the most common forest cover in the US. Aspens typically grow in clonal colonies—stands usually easily regenerate after disturbance (fire, logging, blow down) via root suckers. The tree—at least the tree trunk—usually only lives for 40-150 years, but the root system can be absurdly long lived. Another employee has provided me directions to “Pando” a colony of aspens on the Fishlake NF in Utah that is supposed to be 80,000 years old, making it the oldest and largest living thing in existence (the Malheur National Forest in Oregon also claims to have the oldest and largest living thing—some sort of fungal mat).
Aspen is ubiquitous in Colorado. It is also, in areas, experiencing a mysterious and, to many, disturbing decline. Older aspen stands are dying of the usual aspen old-age sorts of things: Canker infections and insects like the poplar borer. But there’s no regeneration of younger aspens. This problem, called “Sudden Aspen Decline” has affected as much as 340,000 acres. The GMUG, San Juan and Rio Grande NFs have been particularly hard hit.
(Low to moderate SAD stand. Note some aspens are defoliated.)
Nobody knows exactly what’s going on, but aspens on low elevation and south and west slopes are the worst affected. These sites are the driest and warmest, so it is possible that this cold tolerant species is experiencing a climate-change induced range adjustment.
I spent the day on Terror Creek outside of Paonia, CO on the GMUG with Wayne Shepperd and Skip Smith. Skip is a researcher at CSU in Fort Collins. Wayne used to work for the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. Wayne claims to be retired, but a fishing pole is not among the gear in his pickup.
Wayne and Skip are looking for nine different units or plots of trees on Terror Creek with with low, moderate and heavy incidents of SAD. Portions of each unit will be logged this winter. Each unit will have an unlogged control, allowing the researchers to confirm if logging helps arrest SAD.
We tramp around for the better part of the day looking for “moderate” intensity SAD outbreaks. It is harder than you’d think. Each plot has to be at least 15 acres to allow for logging and a control. It can’t be too SAD, or not SAD enough.
(Skip and Wayne)
I ask Wayne a lot of questions about the Rocky Mountain Research Station, where he was a research silviculturist for thirty years. The biggest change, he says, is in funding. The research arm of the Forest Service used to be the pride and joy of the agency, figuring out how to reforest tough sites, maintain water flows and more. Today, research stations around the country are losing retiring personnel that aren’t being replaced. Labs are quietly closing. “Now you have to hustle for money,” Wayne says. In his last years with the RMRS he became an expert grant writer.
Wayne is an old school researcher. He radiates can do. Every obstacle the forester encounters will yield to a carefully planned siege of replicated experimental plots. He tells me I’ve got to go look at the Black Hills National Forest. “A very well managed forest—what forest management should be, if you ask me.” (I’ll be on the Black Hills on Sept. 8).
Wayne and Skip were pretty well skunked finding moderate intensity plots. But at the end of the day, walking back to Wayen’s rig with thunder sounding ominously overhead, we find the perfect plot. More than 15 acres, some SAD… but not too much.
“You never find it until you stop looking,” Skip beamed.
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