Ohio Hills

A team of managers and scientists from the Ohio Hills are participating in a study called the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network. The goals of this project are to test different silvicultural approaches to climate change and forest health adaptation that will also serve as useful examples across the U.S. and Canada.

The Ohio Hills ASCC study site is located within southeastern Ohio’s Interagency Forestry Team’s Collaborative Oak Management Region. The research units are distributed within Vinton Furnace State Forest, containing a 2,882-acre research zone that is surrounded by 9,393-acres of state forest and a 3,547-acre wildlife management area. Forest types ranging from dry to mesic species compositions dominated by white oak, black oak, chestnut oak, red maple, yellow polar, and sugar maple are promoted by variation in the dissected topography of the region.

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Key Projected

Climate Change Impacts

Key projected climate change impacts that the project team considered for the Ohio Hills include:

  • Increased average annual temperatures
  • Changing precipitation amounts and extreme weather events
  • Increased risk of drought: reduced snowpack and increased water loss
  • Increased invasive plants, pests, and pathogen
  • Increased risk of wildfires

Climate change will present challenges and opportunities for accomplishing the management objectives of the Ohio Hills, including:

Challenges

  • Increased risk of drought stress on regeneration
  • Drier soil conditions in summer and fall, especially on south-facing slopes, may increase the risk of wildfire:
    • Frequent fires have the potential to kill seedlings of many species, even those species that have relatively fire-resistant, thick bark as adults
  • Changes in tree species habitat
  • Increased frequency of extreme weather events (e.g., windstorms and ice storms) may lead to more frequent large-gap disturbances

Opportunities

  • Longer growing seasons
  • Increased fire frequency could help regenerate oak species and restore the understory composition to conditions prior to fire suppression
  • Climate change capability is good to very good for most of the many species in southeast Ohio, including white oak, northern red oak, black oak, red maple, pignut hickory, mockernut hickory, sugar maple, black gum, and yellow-poplar
  • Other common species are projected to persist over a smaller extent with fair to poor climate capability, including chestnut oak, scarlet oak, sweet birch, and American beech

Management Goals & Treatments

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Resistance

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Resilience

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Transition

Monitoring

Monitoring is an essential component of the ASCC study. Research partners from many institutions are working together to investigate the effectiveness of different silvicultural treatments aimed at creating adaptive ecosystems. Some of the monitoring items include:

  • Oak advanced regeneration
  • Success of natural and artificial regeneration
  • Songbird, bat, timber rattlesnake, and other wildlife community response to treatments
  • Residual tree survival and growth

Progress & Next Steps

Final treatment locations were identified and assigned to each treatment and pretreatment vegetation data collection was initiated in July 2022. A pilot study determining differences in the songbird community among the study site was also conducted in July 2022. Formal prescriptions will be finalized during October – December 2022. Pre-treatment sampling will be conducted Spring 2023. Harvesting is planned to take place in Fall 2023/Winter 2024. Site preparation will begin in September 2023.

Site Leads & Partners

Joshua Puhlick (The Jones Center at Ichauway) is the site lead for The Jones Center at Ichauway ASCC site. Key collaborators include Steven Brantley, Scott Taylor, Brandon Rutledge, and Scott Smith (The Jones Center at Ichauway).

Joshua Puhlick
Site Lead

Ecological Silviculture The Jones Center at Ichauway 3988 Jones Center Drive Newton, GA 39870-8522 Phone: 229-734-4706 [email protected]

Bryce Adams
Site lead

Research Forester, USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station 359 Main Road, Delaware, OH 43015 Phone: 740-368-0054

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