By Michael French and Don McCann

On August 13, Bryan Burhans, President and CEO of The American Chestnut Foundation, Don McCann, President of the PA Chapter of TACF, Kurt Simon, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Michael French, Forester visited two sites in Pennsylvania as a follow-up to a Conservation Innovation Grant awarded to TACF in 2011.

The first site, near Tremont, PA in Schuylkill County, was planted in early 2012. The second site near Force, PA in Elk County, was planted early this year. The early results a very encouraging.

(Photo: District Conservationist Dennis DiOrio, Public Affairs Specialist Molly McDonough, State Biologist Barry Isaacs, and State Conservationist Denise Coleman have a laugh while direct-seeding chestnuts at the Michael Coal CIG site.)

Each site was planted with mixed hardwoods, including Restoration Chestnuts 1.0; TACF’s most advanced backcross hybrids that are expected to exhibit resistance to the chestnut blight, Cryphonectria parasitica. 

There is also a fenced one acre enclosure planted almost exclusively with Restoration Chestnuts 1.0, with a few pure American and pure Chinese and early backcrosses for control purposes. 

There will be additional CIG plantings in 2014 and some potential future sites were also visited during the tour.

CIG Grants are “intended to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies while leveraging Federal investment in environmental enhancement and protection.” CIGs are administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.  The funding is provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

The grant “enables NRCS to work with other public and private entities to accelerate technology transfer and adoption of promising technologies and approaches to address some of the Nation's most pressing natural resource concerns.”

The CIG awarded to TACF was to utilize an innovation in soil preparation for planting trees on reclaimed mine sites.  Historically planting trees on reclaimed sites failed because of the heavy compaction of soil by use of bulldozers to grade and smooth the filled sites. 

The approach taken with the plantings under the grant was to rip up the soil using a large bulldozer equipped with a single shank to rip the soil to a depth of at least 3 feet.  Typically this is done in a crosshatch method to avoid creating channels for erosion and enable healthy root growth in the loosened soil.

This technique is termed the Forest Reclamation Approach.  It was developed as a result of research at a number of universities in states comprising the Appalachian region.  Its application is coordinated by the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative. ARRI “is a coalition of groups, including citizens, the coal industry, and government dedicated to restoring forests on coal mined lands in the Eastern United States.”

CIG Tour Sites Visited

Site 1: Michael Coal CIG – Planted 2012: This 22-acre site in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania was graded and compacted in the usual manner.  It was then seeded with native warm-season grasses and planted with trees and complied with the mining permit conditions.

Residents downstream from the site were concerned that the flooding and sedimentation that they were facing were a result of the mining disturbance, which could have been caused by flash runoff from the compacted area and the reduced ground cover.

Bill Reichert of the Schuylkill Headwaters Association brought this site to our attention, so TACF worked with Schuylkill Headwaters, ARRI, the Department of Environmental Protection, NRCS, the landowner, i.e., the mining company, and others to cross-rip the site to a depth of 3’ which mitigates the compaction and allows rainwater to infiltrate the soil so that it is released more slowly from the area and reduces sediment loading of the watershed.

The area was then re-planted with native hardwood and early successional trees and Restoration Chestnuts 1.0 as called for in the CIG project description.

As with all CIG sites, this site will be monitored for success.  During our visit the effect of the large brood of cicadas was evident. The seedlings were scored from top to bottom where the cicadas had laid their eggs beneath the bark.  The seedlings had died back, in some cases to the ground.  But the good news is the roots had been established in the loosen soil and virtually all had re-sprouted.

Site 2: Western Pennsylvania Conservancy CIG – Planted 2013: This 30-acre CIG reforestation area is part of a larger property in southern Elk County, Pennsylvania that was acquired by Western PA Conservancy in 2008 so that they could improve the watershed.

A small section of the property had been mined and reclaimed in the mid-1980s and returned to a hay/pastureland post-mining land use. Very little natural hardwood regeneration was occurring due to the soil compaction from mining equipment during the final grading and due to vegetative competition from the grasses and legumes that were seeded to meet groundcover requirements of the mining permit.

TACF worked with ARRI, Green Forests Work, Western PA Conservancy, Pennsylvania Wildlife Habitat Unlimited and others to cross-rip the site to a depth of 3’ to mitigate the compaction. A mix of one year old hardwood and shrub seedlings, including Restoration Chestnuts 1.0, was planted in the spring of 2013 by professionals and more than 75 volunteers from several states.

This site is being monitored and a targeted herbicide application are being planned to give the planted seedlings a competitive edge.

Contact information for participants in the tour of mined land sites: Michael French-- michael@acf.org; Bryan Burhans-- bryan@acf.org; Don McCann-- mccann.mccabin@verizon.net; and Kurt Simon Kurt-- Simon@wv.usda.gov. 

For more information, visit the PA Chapter-The American Chestnut Foundation website.

9/16/2013