Menominee White Pines

Menominee White Pines, WI

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TOPIC: Menominee white pines
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/c3ccc2d447a725f8?hl=en
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== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Jan 30 2008 7:27 pm
From: Lee Frelich

ENTS:

Tuesday I drove over to the Menominee Indian Reservation in WI, where I was
scheduled to give two presentations, one on Fire ecology in conifer forests
and the other on Global warming and invasive species impacts on forests, at
the annual BIA Forestry Meeting. The trip started OK, but I soon ran into
an intense blizzard for the last 200 miles of the trip. Seldom have I seen
such vast quantities of snow in such violent motion, and I had several of
those 'where is the highway???' moments, as the whiteouts limited
visibility to the end of the hood, and then no hood either, just a fuzzy
gray windshield. It was about -15 with 35-50 mph winds. When I arrived in
Shawano, I pulled into the motel, and every car in the parking lot was
pointed southeast, a sure sign of a severe blizzard in the Midwest. The
building vibrated, whistled, pounded and groaned throughout the night as it
struggled to comply with the laws of physics due to fierce winds and a 58
degree drop in temperature.

Anyway, the storm ended the next morning, and I made it to the College of
the Menominee Nation campus, and right across the street from the College
was a magnificent stand of white pines about 140 feet tall, and stands like
that are scattered all along the highway for several miles. Its amazing how
much taller white pines grow in and near the Menominee Reservation than any
place else in WI. By comparison, in the area that was burned in the
Peshtigo Fire in 1871, trees hardly ever grow more than 40-60 feet tall. We
can't even begin to explain these height differences.

The BIA foresters are so much more fun to talk to than foresters who work
for the state or federal government, where every sentence spoken is stilted
by attempts to make it conform to some government policy.

Lee

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Jan 30 2008 7:38 pm
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Lee-
Your drive reminded me of the weekly drives I made between Seward and Anchorage...there were hourlong sections of highway, where the snow was falling so heavy that I was going back and forth between first and second gears, not wanting to lose my momentum, and only vaguely sensing two gray (way low on the scale of 0 to 512 white to black) parallel lines that represented the bladed edge at the roadway...the last 30 miles was along Turnagain Arm, where nearly unmatched daily exchanges of water (river/tidal interface) and air (this winter, we've had numerous high wind warnings (usually in the 65-75 mph range) made driving on snow-covered/icy roads a real challenge...gusts would frequently 'realign' your vehicles 'vector' (most of the time I drove a full sized Ford F150). Ya gotta love winter!!!
-don

== 2 of 5 ==
Date: Thurs, Jan 31 2008 6:58 am
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

Lee,

The height differences of the Menominee pines is a most interesting topic to revisit. It makes me think that the pre-settelement landscape may really have held some dandy surprises. I run hot and cold on the possibilities. The young age at which most stands are cut now may well be giving us a false impression of what we can expect from the species across a landscape harboring many mature stands.

I've spent a good deal of time at Look Park collecting data for the comparison study. The park is dotted by small stands of pines. There are many in the 115-125-foot height class with vigorous tops showing plenty of growth potential left. So, in time would we have 140-footers in Look Park? Would Look Park be just one of many such places in Massachusetts. I don't know. I have put a lot of weight on finding spots in ravines and trying to assess the potential of those locations to produce trees in the 140-150-ft class in time. The jury is still out.

Bob

== 3 of 5 ==
Date: Thurs, Jan 31 2008 7:39 am
From:

Bob,

The discussion of presettlement forests reminds me of a journal article discussing computer visualization of presettlement forests with computer generated images that I recently came across:
http://landscape.forest.wisc.edu/PDF/Stoltman%20et%20al.%20FEM2007.pdf
or
http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/publications/PDFs/Stoltman%20et%20al%20CJFR%202007.pdf
I came acoss them while Google'ing Frelich to see what he's been up to. I found some sites with interesting forestry related articles on line as well as research project descriptions. Look for his name on:
http://landscape.forest.wisc.edu/publications.php
and
http://silv.cas.psu.edu/research.htm
Related site without Frelich references:
http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/pubs.asp
OK, I have to add Lee's page, too:
http://cfhe.cfans.umn.edu/
Regards,

Paul Jost

== 4 of 5 ==
Date: Thurs, Jan 31 2008 1:26 pm
From: "Lee E. Frelich"

Bob:

Native American foresters are comfortable talking about things such as
finding a market for hemlock timber, maintaining hemlock on their property
because no one else in the region has much and it would help with regional
diversity, defragmenting the forest, leaving trees in certain areas for
spiritual reasons.

Regarding government, private and industry foresters, there is a lot of
variety in each group in level of enlightenment.

Lee

== 5 of 5 ==
Date: Thurs, Jan 31 2008 1:49 pm
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

Lee,

Your final comment is no doubt accurate and certainly diplomatic. So, it's back to the blizzard. Have you ever been in a blizzard that you didn't like? As for the white pine height in the Menominee area, any theories? Native shamans?

Bob

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Menominee white pines
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/c3ccc2d447a725f8?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Feb 1 2008 6:11 am
From: "Lee E. Frelich"

Bob:

All blizzards are great, too bad there aren't more of them. The one last
Tuesday was an unforecasted surprise. The snow was so penetrating in those
high winds that the space around the gas cap, inside the little door that
covers it, was packed solid with snow the next morning. Good thing I was
alert enough to notice all the cars pointed southeast, and parked my car
accordingly. If you leave your car pointing north all night in that type of
blizzard, the engine compartment will be packed solid with snow in the
morning, and that means you aren't going anywhere until the car is towed
somewhere to be thawed and dried.

Regarding tree heights:
White pine heights could grow higher if there is a substantial allee
affect, which there does seem to be in white pine, and which would be
maximized on the Menominee Reservation. With more pollination partners,
there would be more seedlings with different combinations of genes, and the
ones with the best genes for height growth would overtop the others and be
the seed producers for the next generation.

There could be something about the physical and biological structure of the
soil that helps as well. Since most of the soils on the Menominee
Reservation never went through clearing and plowing, these would be more
intact there than most other places.

The area also has an ideal climate for white pine. Its just far enough
south to have long but not hot summers, and just far enough north to have
good snow cover in winter to prevent soil freezing, and just far enough
east to have fewer droughts and severe storms than most of Wisconsin.

The effect of all these items on height is speculation, we aren't anywhere
close to being able to explain tree height differences.

Lee

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TOPIC: Lee's fascinations
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/4e74ef24b7bc779d?hl=en
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== 1 of 3 ==
Date: Fri, Feb 1 2008 11:21 am
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Lee-
I was hoping Bob was going to ask too...I was thinking it was a typo, and you were referring to a "lee" effect, like being on the lee side of an island, protected from wind and waves.
Perhaps you were referring to something akin to the following from the Northern Research Station (USFS):

Title: The Allee effect, stochastic dynamics and the eradication of alien species
Author: Liebhold, Andrew; Bascompte, Jordi
Date: 2003
Source: Ecology Letters. 6: 133-140.
Description: Previous treatments of the population biology of eradication have assumed that eradication can only be achieved via 100% removal of the alien population. However, this assumption appears to be incorrect because stochastic dynamics and the Allee effect typically contribute to the extinction of very low-density populations. We explore a model that incorporates Allee dynamics and stochasticity to observe how these two processes contribute to the extinction of isolated populations following eradication treatments of varying strength (percentage mortality).

...which to my simple mind equated to a 'kick them while they're down' strategy?
-Don

== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Fri, Feb 1 2008 1:51 pm
From: "Lee E. Frelich"

The Allee effect means that small populations have difficulty reproducing
and larger populations are more likely to have successful reproduction.
This could be because of more pollination partners, leading to some
seedlings with better genetic make up that will be better competitors and
fewer self pollinated seedlings with poor vigor, and/or alteration of the
environment by the critical mass of adults in such a way as to favor the
seedlings (this latter also gets into neighborhood effects). It is named
after a researcher named Allee. I can't remember how old the concept is,
but I think it was established before my time.

Lee

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