Forest Regeneration in an Era of Climate Change: Building Community to Secure the Future

Stretching across approximately 50 million acres of land in New England and New York, the hardwood and spruce-fir forests of the Upper Northeast are a pervasive presence in the region. It is not surprising, then, that they are also intertwined with many aspects of its ecology, economy, and culture. Forests support biodiversity by providing habitat for a wide range of unique plants and wildlife, including many species prioritized for conservation by state wildlife action plans. They serve as the foundation for timber product and outdoor recreation industries that employ thousands of Northeasterners and sustain local economies. They help create a distinct sense of place and shape regional identity. And they mitigate the impacts of climate change by absorbing vast quantities of carbon dioxide. 

Despite their prominence in sustaining the vitality of the region, however, forests in the Upper Northeast are imperiled. “It is tempting to assume that our forests are healthy because they occupy vast expanses of the landscape, have developed impressive canopies formed by mature trees, and do not suffer from obvious catastrophic threats such as the wildfires that now consume several million acres of forest in the western United States each year,” says NE CASC Principal Investigator Anthony D’Amato, a faculty member and director of the forestry program at the University of Vermont.  “Nevertheless, our forests have been confronted by numerous challenges that, while less visible than wildfires, are collectively every bit as dangerous. The forests of the Northeast are experiencing death by a thousand cuts rather than a single, fatal blow.” 

As D’Amato explains, the attack on the region’s forests encompasses a growing array of insect invasions and diseases–such as emerald ash borer, beech leaf disease, hemlock woolly adelgid, and the Asian longhorn beetle–that have  killed millions of trees in the Upper Northeast. These afflictions are compounded by climate change, which is occurring so rapidly that it is expected to render several common tree species in the region, like balsam fir, poorly or entirely unsuited for their current environments within the next two to three decades. Taken together, D’Amato says, these threats will continue to undermine forest health and increase tree mortality, impairing the ability of trees to regenerate–or regrow–naturally. 

Developing strategies to facilitate forest regeneration has become a priority for D’Amato, who is leading 25 operational scale tree-planting experiments designed to ensure that the region’s future forests will provide the same ecological, economic, and cultural benefits that they offer today. To accomplish this goal, he has collaborated with dozens of federal, state, Tribal, NGO, and academic partners to plant more than 80,000 trees across 3500 acres at experimental sites in New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. These experiments are helping identify tree species capable of maintaining the traditional functions of northeastern forest ecosystems while possessing the ability to grow under current and projected climatic conditions, which are expected to include warmer average temperatures, more intense storms, and more frequent droughts and floods. “We need to know what tree species are flexible enough to thrive across our region both now and in the future so we can provide managers with information that will allow them to make the best decisions possible about forest regeneration,” D’Amato says. “Since trees may require several decades to mature, it is important to make this information available as soon as possible.” 

Toward that end, D’Amato has collaborated with several states across the NE CASC region to help guide their reforestation efforts. In New York, for instance, he and Peter Clark, a University of Vermont research faculty member and former NE CASC fellow, partnered with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to help lead the Reforestation and Regeneration component of New York’s ambitious Reforestation Plan. This transformative ecological blueprint calls for the planting of 25 million trees and the development of 1.7 million acres of new forest by 2033. For their part of the project, D’Amato and Clark developed a comprehensive set of best practices focused on advancing reforestation in the context of climate change and other ecological factors.  Their recommendations outline strategies for identifying future-adapted tree species, planting trees to achieve multiple objectives, sourcing seeds that genetically complement native ecosystems, selecting and preparing planting sites, and navigating challenges posed by invasive species.

More recently, D’Amato and Clark have partnered with Paul Catanzaro, co-director of the Family Forest Research Center and Massachusetts Extension Forester, to distill these recommendations into an informational booklet for forest managers and landowners across the region. Now nearing completion, their guide will be distributed in the coming weeks and is intended to complement the in-person training that D’Amato and his collaborators routinely offer to the region’s forest managers at experimental sites.

“It will be exciting to see this resource become widely available because it represents a significant step forward in disseminating the ground-level, practical knowledge needed for successful forest regeneration,” says D’Amato. Equally important, he adds, is the principle underlying that pragmatic advice. “Because forests are experiencing multiple compounding threats, the best way to sustain them is the creation of multiple paths leading to a functionally and genetically diverse forested landscape. We need to recognize that forests are integral to many different communities who value them for a variety of reasons. Those objectives, whether they are ecological, economic, or cultural, must be reflected in our approach to forest regeneration. Similarly, we must pursue those diverse objectives by planting a diversity of tree species. Adopting a broad-based or portfolio approach to planting will give us the best chance of regrowing adaptable and sustainable forests in the face of an uncertain future.”

Although the development of effective tree-planting strategies is essential to the survival of forests, D’Amato observes that the most important outcome of his forest regeneration experiments is the emergence of a practitioner community focused on growing future-adapted forests. “While large-scale tree-planting is a common practice in other regions of the U.S., it hasn’t historically been part of ordinary forest management in our region,” he says. “Consequently, Pete [Clark] and I have learned that there are a variety of bottlenecks that must be eliminated to quicken the pace of forest regeneration. For example, we lack a large and skilled technical workforce that is equipped with the expertise required to ensure the survival of vulnerable saplings and collect the appropriate seeds and cones. Additionally, the region’s nurseries haven’t historically stocked tree species that align with climate projections or varied planting objectives.” The key to addressing a far-reaching crisis faced by one of our most important natural resources, then, is fundamentally social. “By bringing people together across professional and disciplinary boundaries, we can create the human infrastructure required to realign priorities and alter the current trajectory of forests so that they can continue to meet a variety of needs,” D’Amato says. “Developing a large and diverse community is the best way to tackle this large and complex problem. Fortunately, we are beginning to see that community come into view.”