Eastern Kentucky, Day 4 by Karen Reynolds

Volunteers planting black walnuts at the Fishtrap research
plot in the fall of 2011.

Today’s restoration adventures took us to the Fishtrap Wildlife Management Area in Pike County to delve into the exciting world of data collection.  Fishtrap is located on an inactive mountain top removal (MTR) site that has not been mined in over 15 years.  Despite this long recovery period, much of the area is still grasslands with a few trees and bushes scattered throughout the grass.  This area is perfect for studying tree growth in this common environment for MTR sites.

A two year old seedling
that will soon outgrow its
protective shelter.

Two years later at the same research plots of black walnut
trees on a legacy mine site in Pike County.

Dr. Sarah Hall’s research studies the growth of black walnut trees on MTR sights under various conditions.  The seedlings we examined today in the twelve plots were being tested for two variables.  First, half of the black walnuts were planted from seed, while the remaining plants were planted from one year old seedlings that had been cultivated in a nursery.  In general, reforestation projects plant seedlings to increase the success rate of the plants.  However, this increases the cost of the project and the amount of labor necessary to plant the trees.  If there is a negligible difference between the growth and survival rates of black walnuts seedlings and seeds, than it would make sense to simply plant the seeds themselves rather than going through the trouble of raising and planting the seedlings.

The second variable that is being studied is the effectiveness of using a protective plastic tube to shelter the young trees from herbivores and competition from the other plants in the area.  These tubes are made from a nearly opaque, sturdy plastic that is specifically designed to allow the wavelengths of light that are required for photosynthesis through to the growing tree.  The tubes are approximately three feet high and are built with a perforated strip that will allow the tube to break open once the tree grows too large for it.  Unfortunately, they are not biodegradable and will remain in the landscape long after their usefulness has expired.  Biodegradable options are available, but they tend to be less effective because they break down before the tree has stopped benefiting from the protection.  This study will examine whether or not these tubes make enough of a difference to justify the cost, time, and environmental impact of using them.

Oh, and it rained.

In total, there are 600 trees at Fishtrap separated into twelve plots with fifty trees each.  Because there are the two separate variables, there are four treatment options that could be included in a plot: seedlings with tubing, seedlings without tubing, seeds with tubing, and seeds without tubing.  These trees were planted in 2011, partly with the help of volunteers from Berea College – our own Jordan Engel helped plant some of the trees.  The black walnut seeds were also gathered by education majors from Berea.  We were there to collect another set of data points on the growth of the various tree groups.  Because there is a year difference in age between the seed and seedling groups, it is important to have growth rate data, rather than just comparing overall growth.  We were responsible for collecting the height of each tree and its diameter at the base.  We also noted w  This data will be compiled and analyzed by Dr. Hall and her two interns for the summer, Reena Martin and Yoshua Reece. 
hich trees were not present.

Emily Grace Sarver -Wolf on today's reclamation site.