So today I'll be, as Matthias said,
and you can read the title of the talk,
but I'll be talking about some of the lessons
that we're beginning to learn as we've been pursuing
various types of adaptation plantings,
pre-plantings, the climate solution.
This is some of our work that we've been doing
in a university setting, but I really want to acknowledge
many of our co-authors here including Chris Zimmerman,
who's here in the audience.
Half of these co-authors represent practitioners,
folks that are working at state agencies,
non-profit agencies.
And so there's really an interesting
and balanced perspective
that we're trying to bring to this work.
So just to dive into things-
Great.
So we're recognizing that tree planting
is increasingly being proposed
as a climate solution initiative.
The Trillion Trees, billion trees initiatives,
and even part of the recent Infrastructure Act,
the Replant Act, titled Repairing the Existing Public Land
by Adding Necessary Trees Act.
So it's appropriately named.
But even as we've scaled
from nationally to more regional emphasis
there's still this regional emphasis and growing attention
on artificial regeneration of what we call tree planting
here as that climate solution.
So there's efforts like the Minnesota Million,
our efforts of potentially planting a million acres
in New York.
TNC's pursuing various frameworks
like the Climate Change Response framework,
which includes tree planting as a means of adapting
or maybe including assisted migration,
and as we recognize that species ranges are shifting.
And so even though tree planting is not historically
a huge thing that we pursue in the Northeast,
it's increasingly being used as a potential tool.
And so why is this happening?
There's a potential need, and tree planting
has been identified as a solution to get
at a couple different problems that folks are identifying.
So a hot button issue with the potential role
of reforestation of many of our forest plans
that are either understocked or could improve that stocking
in terms of the carbon mitigation potential
for tree planting.
Potential opportunity includes many, many millions
of tons of carbon sequestered annually,
many, many millions of acres and potentially
many, many billions of trees.
Again, this opportunity is in quotes,
as there's a little bit of wiggle room as we think
about potential reforestation in this region.
We also recognize that species' ranges are changing,
and climate change is exceedingly outpacing the pace
of natural dispersal rates.
And the Northeast is a potential hotbed
for new and novel species coming into this region.
And so to be able to match those rates of climate change,
the potential need for tree planting
and the movement of new species or seed lots
into this region may be another avenue for tree planting.
And then lastly, we recognize that the Northeast
is really the heavyweight champion
of invasive pests and pathogens.
And so as we potentially lose some species--ash, hemlock--
other species are degraded under abiotic stress.
Can we functionally replace them or can we adapt
or even restore these species that are being degraded?
So as I mentioned, tree planting is not a huge part
of our northeastern forestry culture.
It's not something that we oftentimes are incorporating
into our forest management plans.
We won't go into tremendous detail here,
but the takeaway-
so this is nursed reproduction in the bars by state,
and then area reforested that's being replanted.
This is just based off of FIA measurements.
Really the takeaways, many of our New England states
really aren't planting all that much.
This is from a couple years ago.
Maybe the exception here being Maine,
which is bit more even-age sub-cultural systems,
and they're purchasing a lot of their spruce
from Canadian provinces, not growing their own these days.
Despite a lack of planting, there's increase in emphasis
and potentially an increase in number of projects.
The recent survey that we did of New England
and northeastern foresters that are interested
in pursuing adaptation,
the overwhelming response is that there's an increase
in tree planting projects into the future.
And rather than just maintaining those current conditions,
really focusing on diversifying conditions,
whether this is in response to species range changes
or just promoting a more resilient system.
And so the questions that we're really trying
to get at today is, does current nursery capacity
reflect the growing need to be able
to support a potential diverse need for tree planting?
So just a quick primer on forest nurseries,
and this is really more of a federal perspective,
but it really highlights some of the changes
that we've seen in how nurseries have operated
over the last decade, or century or so.
Initially developed largely based
on conservation and a restoration response.
Then moving into really the Civilian Conservation Corps
and Jobs Creation program in response
to the Great Depression,
moving into the meat of the century of responding
to the public's demand for timber, growing timber products,
responding to the large, even-age systems
that we've largely focused on.
And then as that response and public demand
for timber declined, really retooling and refocusing
on contemporary mission, largely based
on restoration and conservation, broadly speaking.
But in response to that public decline in timber,
we've oftentimes seen many of the economics have largely
become unwieldy for many nurseries,
and we've seen many nurseries close and shut their doors,
and even from some earlier surveys,
we're starting to see inadequate supplies
and fewer planting choices
for folks that are pursuing tree planting.
Now, just as an anecdote for those nurseries
that are still around,
this is from New Hampshire State Nursery:
they're seeing increases in sales.
Doubling, tripling, maybe not tripling, but 30 to 40%
in increases in sales annually over the last few years.
Anecdotally, they've been selling out of everything,
and they potentially credit this
to more public knowledge of climate change
and tree planting as a tool to be able to deal
with some of the impending challenges of global change.
And so from the perspective of a nursery,
say you're the New Hampshire State Nursery,
and you recognize there is this market pressure,
maybe there's potential need for new species, new stock.
Climate is is really driving some of this market.
At what point do you make this speculative investment
into growing those species, increasing that overall volume
and that supply, do you start incorporating
different seed lots and growing different stock sizes?
Seedlings take 3, 5, 10 years to grow.
And so to be able to hit that target down the line
really requires a speculative investment
on the part of the nursery.
Many state nurseries are really tied to their sales,
and if they don't hit those marks, taxpayers,
legislation may need to come in and support that.
And that can really put that risk profile or portfolio,
can really be pretty challenging for many nurseries
to build up, make that speculative investment.
And so there's, if I haven't emphasized this enough,
there's really a need for diversification
in how our nurseries are able to supply
that growing need for tree planting, particularly leading
into some of that speculative investment.
So some of this work that I'll be talking about right now
is really leading into this inverted triangle,
this supply chain of how the volume of seedlings
may need to increase and diversify our species,
the seed sources, and that stock.
So let's just step through some of this.
This is some stuff, this is some work,
that we've been recently pursuing,
and others have have really highlighted the need
for overall increases in overall production.
Really the main takeaways that I want to give you today
is that most of our tree nurseries
are largely focused in the lake states,
in the NRS northeastern region.
As I already mentioned, nurseries have generally been
on the decline, so we've formerly had 11 federal nurseries,
and now there's one.
Many of our production has largely been focused
on conifers, again, largely in the north central states,
think of that being the lake states.
These conifers are for wind breaks, they're Christmas trees,
and many of them are oftentimes for timber purposes,
and relative to, again, the diverse species and those needs.
In addition to the volume that we potentially may need
in terms of the many, many millions or even billions
of seedlings that are potentially required
for future tree planting efforts,
the 10 to 20 million that are being annually
produced really pales in comparison to that need.
Moving down that line is starting to think
about some of the nuances as a forester or a landowner.
If your goals are to promote future climate-adapted species
that may have increases in future habitat,
or maybe your goals are to respond to loss of ash
and maybe functionally replace that species
with another species, or maybe your goals are
to restore some culturally ecologically important species.
When we query, look to nursery inventories
from the last year,
so these are just a handful of target species
that we wanted to understand what that supply looked like.
This is just number of nurseries that sold
and had inventory of a handful of species.
And so the overall trend that I call up to you
is that most of those seedlings are being produced,
again in the Lake States.
I already mentioned that.
But think about that.
You're a forester in the Northeast;
you want to get a batch of seedlings.
Those seedlings then must travel
on a box truck for three to five days.
Potentially, they were lifted, they were dug out
of the ground weeks prior to snow melt and mud season
here in the region.
And so this really leads to stock quality problems
as the seedlings are shipped across the country,
as opposed to having that globally local seed source.
Now, some species are also more readily available.
Northern red oak, white pine, these are some
of the most commonly reproduced seedlings in nurseries.
But other more nuanced species, say bitternut hickory,
or even red spruce, with very, very few choices
in terms of nurseries that are actually
selling these species in the last year.
One, as an anecdote, red spruce was sold
in two nurseries this past year, with an overwhelming number
of 800 seedlings publicly available.
This is enough to reforest an an acre or two,
depending on your goal.
So matching that species to volume
to then moving down the line
as we think about where those seed lots are coming from.
So historically, seed zones have been identified
to target locally adapted genotypes
to both the ecosystem as well
as those that fit that climate.
But we recognize that as climate warms,
those seed zones may change.
So we're planting in Montpelier, in the near term,
and under a medium emissions scenario,
this orange highlights that potential seed zone
where we maybe we want to target our seed lots,
and then the far term under a high emissions scenario,
we can see those seed zones move all the way
down to Missouri, parts of Kentucky, Pennsylvania.
And so do those seed zones actually match
what that inventory is?
So this is a map of northern red oak range in gray.
The polygons that are different, that are levels of green,
are different seed zones.
And then that intensity of green corresponds
to the number of sources that were sold.
So these were mature seedlings,
and where the seed lots were obtained.
And the quick takeaway here is that only 15 to 20%
of all seed zones are represented.
And, again, this is the most commonly propagated
deciduous tree in commercial tree nurseries.
As we move to some of our more nuanced species,
this is a little bit of more tricky figure to understand,
but each of these cells corresponds
to those same seed zones, and that gradient is the same.
So that intensity of green corresponds
to those number of sources that are sold there.
The main takeaway is that there are very few seed zones
of each species that are being sold,
and some of them like swamp white oak,
just about all of those seeds that are being sold,
all of those seedlings that are being grown,
are being obtained from one seed zone.
So I won't dwell on that too much longer.
The last point that I want to leave us with,
and I won't go into too much detail here,
but as we think about tree planting for novel objectives,
for restoration in wetlands,
as we think about targeting species migration,
we may need to develop stock that is a bit more hearty
and resilient, and pairing that with both seed,
as well as that species diversity
will be something we'll need to be focusing on.
The last bit I'll need to highlight here,
I'm not sure where I'm at in terms of time,
but is the human dimensions of it.
Five minutes left?
And I won't ask you to digest this figure.
This is merely just promoting a paper
that a colleague just had published.
It really just highlights some of the uncertainties
that many foresters have with tree planting.
There's really a knowledge gap
in terms of the best practices.
This is something that I want to put my chips into.
Where are the finances?
How do I actually pursue this?
And while there is a great bit of knowledge
in terms of reforestation, as we think about some
of these more novel tree planting initiatives,
human dimensions of this play a tremendous role.
So I won't leave you with doom and gloom, but in conclusion,
there's really some avenues for reducing these barriers.
Some of these include improving policy and financing.
So many state and federal agencies don't have policies
around the movement of species and genotypes.
And improving policies to be able to support that
or at least develop some guardrails
around that would be beneficial
for foresters as well as nurseries who are trying
to make these speculative investments.
Reflecting on programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps,
we now have the proposed Civilian Climate Corps.
Labor is a tremendous bottleneck on much
of these planting efforts as well as nurseries,
and being able to provide that labor
will be able to help support and offset some
of the financial components of this.
For the sake of time,
I'll just quickly jump through a few of these others.
Grants and cost-share programs, again related to finances,
professional development incentives,
programs like the Target Plant Concept.
This has been proposed, essentially trying to work
to bring foresters and nurseries together to be able
to develop plants that are most appropriate to a site.
But many foresters don't actually pursue this.
This is something that we've learned in our work.
So developing programs that train folks
on actually how to pursue this.
And then lastly, national seed labeling standards
and developing a high quality database to be able to secure
and identify where those seed zones are coming from.
It's really challenging to call a nursery
and to actually find where those seed zones are coming from.
And it can take a tremendous amount of time,
and oftentimes those seed lots
are often identified as very broad.
So developing that standard and increasing the ways
in which we track, that and the outcomes for our work.
So, gone over.
Thank you for your time--I appreciate it.
(audience applauds)
[Audience Member] Do we have time for questions here?
[Moderator] Yeah, we have a few minutes for questions.
[Audience Member] I've seen this nursery challenge
firsthand, and my question is how can-
it's probably unlikely that the state
or federal government's going to respond
as quickly as we would need them to.
[Peter] Yeah.
[Audience Member] Well what about the private sector?
Are they now being able to ramp up their abilities?
Have they seen the opportunity in terms of supply and demand
to help fill this gap?
[Peter] I'm not sure I have that answer.
I don't know if there's others in the room
that have worked on this.
I mean I think that as they've led off,
we really need to see that sustained market pressure
for the private sector to actually respond to it.
[Audience Member] Mm-hmm.
[Peter] Anecdotally, when I speak to nurseries,
it doesn't seem like it's enough of that market pressure.
But again, it takes 3, 5, 10 years
to start growing that stock.
So, that delay is further going to compound the challenge
for us down the line.
But I don't have evidence of that.
It's more of an anecdotal (indistinct) conversation.
[Audience Member] And do you have a sense of, I guess,
reforestation projects that you mentioned,
planting bare-root seedlings versus seeds in general?
Like is there, what proportions?
[Peter] Yeah, so I mean, so direct seeding the seeds
versus planting a bare-root seedling
versus planting a containerized stock
that's in an actual container.
There are pros and cons to all of those.
In terms of the ontogeny of an organism,
it's much cheaper to direct seed,
but the probability of survival is significantly lower.
I mean, even for planting a red oak
that's 3 millimeters versus 10 millimeters,
the likelihood of that red oak reaching maturity is 10%
for a smaller seedling and 50% for a larger seedling.
But that's also a cost-- it takes more time
to grow that seedling.
So yeah, there's costs and benefits.
It really depends on what the landowner's objective is
and the nursery's capacity.
[Moderator] Okay, we have 10 seconds.
(audience laughs)
[Audience Member] Pete, thanks.
I think my question's a little bit like the first one
but especially to your more nuanced species.
Is there really demand there,
and it's just this three to five year, whatever year, lag?
Or is the demand not even there?
Like from the science side, you think it should be there
because of climate change, because of et cetera.
[Peter] Chris, what are you running into
in your work as you try to scale up?
Chris has been working on this stuff and really
represents the practitioner perspective, trying to-
[Chris] We've done a project that merged
with your project-
[Peter] Yeah.
[Chris] Where we were trying to get supply
and were not able to, right?
[Peter] Yeah.
[Chris] So that would be an example.
But I think the demand's periodic,
and what you pointed to as far as the market signal
is periodic and it's focused on grant funding
or short term funding sources-
[Peter] Yeah.
[Chris] Where they need a sustained market signal
ramp-up, I think that's what I've heard.
So is that-?
[Audience Member] That's great clarification, yeah.
So, what a nursery needs use versus what a forester
or a landowner is able to pursue is cyclical
versus that (indistinct)
Thanks for that perspective.