Natural History. Stewardship. Sustainability.
PINE PLANTATION MANAGEMENT IN HARTLEY PARK
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In 2007 the big pine plantation just northwest of Rock Knob was found to have had a very fast tree growth rate due to the trees having been planted well spaced apart. All of the pine plantations have been abandoned since their planting.
The present high tree density in the big (wide) plantation prevents insufficient light to enter to allow tree replacement. Tree saplings and seedlings can’t survive dense tree cover. Forest shrubs and forest floor flowering plants can’t exist there either. Not even the aggressive and exclusive exotic buckthorns can live there, where otherwise they are taking over large areas of the park.
Some parts of other pine plantations in the park have also become too dense, forming a mass of lower dead branches that inhibit the animal and people users of the park. In plantations that are now too dense, the bird life has shown to be almost zero in terms of population sizes and species diversity due to the few resources those stands provide for the birds.
Click here to learn how the big plantation affects birds.
In the more or less natural ecological processes that foresters well know, it is expected that the beautiful large plantation will not retain its beauty for long now. Its high productivity of new tree growth is about to end since the trees are already closing in on one another. They will shade out their lower branches and only a little green will be left above a bunch of dead lower branches. The trees will become stressed by competing with each other for water, sunlight, and nutrients. Trees under severe and chronic stress actually attract native and exotic insects to kill them by feeding on them. Trees in and out of the plantation are getting stressed by increasingly very dry and warm summers and it could become worse if that becomes the new climate norm in the park. Because of the high tree density, the planted pines have additional stresses.
It is recommended to do some standard forestry management of the big stand to make its plants and animals productive and diverse without resorting to pesticides to try and control out-of-control tree-killing insects. That will mean some thinning and creation of wildlife suitable openings planted with native trees, shrubs and forest floor flowering plants.
If the park is to continue to be a small wildlife refuge in the middle of residential area, it needs to be maintained by application of sound ecological information.
Some of the other pine plantations have parts of them which have openings that have long edges of adjacent differing vegetation cover, at least when compared to the more circular shape of the big plantation. Because their long edges add a different vegetation structure to rest of the vegetation of the park, they actually provide for more edge habitat. That can help increase animal diversity in the park. The interiors of those plantations that have higher diversity and productivity are much smaller or narrower than the big one. That’s why these plantations are not recommended to be managed at the present time, except for a small part of the one that’s in the deer exclosure area below.
Click here to see an airphoto of the plantation that is partly within the deer exclosure area.
Click here to learn the approximate ages of the plantations
