scholarly journals Managing Forest Health through Collaboration on the Allegheny High Unglaciated Plateau

2020 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua W Hanson ◽  
Andrea T Hille ◽  
Susan L Stout ◽  
Maureen McDonough ◽  
William Oldland
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Forest Health ◽  
Soil Nutrient ◽  
Nutrient Status ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Storm Events ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
Working Groups ◽  
Broad Cross Section ◽  
Treatment Priorities

Abstract Forests in the High Allegheny Unglaciated Plateau Subsection of Pennsylvania and New York, including the Allegheny National Forest, have been increasingly impacted by an array of native and introduced forest insects, pathogens, plants, and other disturbances for decades. An unbalanced age-class distribution, changing soil nutrient status, seedling establishment issues, droughts, and storm events also threaten forest health and structure. In 2017, the Allegheny National Forest convened a broad cross-section of forest stakeholders to collaboratively assess and prioritize these threats and develop effective strategies to address them. Relying on consensus and shared learning, the Allegheny Forest Health Collaborative assigned priorities and created working groups to address priority threats. This paper describes the collaboration and features a case study of followup, multilandowner work to assign treatment priorities to affected stands and develop silvicultural strategies for stands with poor and decreasing seed source.

Combining sub-field scale soil sampling and GIS interpolation techniques for mapping nutrient hotspots 

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Hayes ◽  
Suzanne Higgins ◽  
Donal Mullan ◽  
Josie Geris
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Soil Nutrient ◽  
Nutrient Status ◽  
Soil Sampling ◽  
Nutrient Losses ◽  
Field Scale ◽  
Soil Nutrient Status ◽  
Interpolation Techniques ◽  
Nutrient Hotspots ◽  
Field Variability

<p>The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) aims to target prevalent poor water quality status. Of the various contributing sources agriculture is particularly important due to the high loading rates of sediment and nutrient losses associated with fertilisation, sowing, and cropping regimes. Understanding soil nutrient status and the potential pathways for nutrient loss either through point or diffuse sources is an important step to improve water quality from an agricultural perspective. Research has demonstrated extensive in-field variability in soil nutrient status. A sampling regime that explores this variability at a sub-field scale is necessary. Traditional soil sampling consists of taking 20-30 cores per field in a W-shaped formation to produce a single bulked core, however, it generally fails to locate nutrient hotspots at finer resolutions. Inappropriate generalised fertilisation and management recommendations can be made in which nutrient hotspots or deficient zones are overlooked. Gridded soil sampling can reveal the full degree of in-field variability in nutrient status to inform more precise and site-specific nutrient applications. High soil phosphorus levels and the concept of legacy nutrient accumulation due to long-term over-application of phosphorus fertiliser in addition to animal slurry is a problem across the island of Ireland.</p><p>This research aims to locate and quantify the presence of soil nutrient hotspots at several field-scale locations in the cross-border Blackwater catchment in Northern Ireland / Republic of Ireland. Based on 35 m sampling grids, the nutrient content at unsampled locations in each field was determined using GIS interpolation techniques. Particular attention was paid to phosphorus, given its role in eutrophication. Gridded soil sampling enables the identification of nutrient hotspots within fields and when combined with an analysis of their location in relation to in-field landscape characteristics and knowledge of current management regimes, the risk of nutrient or sediment loss potential may be defined. This research concluded that traditional W soil sampling of producing one average value per field is not appropriate to uncover the degree of spatial variability in nutrient status and is inappropriate for catchment management of agricultural systems for controlling nutrient losses. Soil sampling at multiple locations per field is deemed to be cost-prohibitive for many farmers. However, sub-field scale soil sampling and appropriate geostatistical interpolation techniques can reveal the degree of variability and suggest an appropriate resolution for field-scale nutrient management that may be necessary to achieve measurable improvements in water quality.</p>

scholarly journals Area-Wide Analysis of Hardwood Defoliator Effects on Tree Conditions in the Allegheny Plateau

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall S. Morin ◽  
Andrew M. Liebhold ◽  
Kurt W. Gottschalk
Keyword(s):  
Tree Mortality ◽  
Forest Health ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Forest Land ◽  
Land Area ◽  
Usda Forest Service ◽  
Forest Inventory And Analysis ◽  
Allegheny Plateau ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Crown Dieback

Abstract The effects of defoliation caused by three foliage feeding insects, the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar), the cherry scallopshell moth (Hydria prunivorata), and the elm spanworm (Ennomos subsignarius), on tree mortality and crown conditions were evaluated using data collected from 1984 to 1999 in the Allegheny National Forest located in northwestern Pennsylvania. While previous studies have focused on the effects of defoliation on trees in individual stands, this study differed in that it used exhaustive maps of defoliation and an areawide network of plots to assess these effects. A geographic information system was used to map the coincidence of USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis and Forest Health Monitoring plot locations with defoliation polygons derived from aerial surveys to calculate cumulative years of defoliation for each pest. Over 85% of the Allegheny National Forest land area was defoliated at least once during the 16-year period from 1984 to 1999. Frequency of defoliation by specific defoliator species was closely associated with the dominance of their primary hosts in stands. Frequency of defoliation was often associated with crown dieback and mortality, but these relationships were not detectable in all species. These results suggest that when impacts are averaged over large areas (such as in this study) effects of defoliation are likely to be considerably less severe than when measured in selected stands (as is the approach taken in most previous impact studies).

scholarly journals Soil Nutrient Status of Brahmaputra Floodplain Area in Tangail Sadar Upazila for Agricultural Uses

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-14
Author(s):  
MAM Hossen ◽  
SA Lira ◽  
MY Mia ◽  
AKMM Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Soil Nutrient ◽  
Nutrient Status ◽  
Available Phosphorus ◽  
Soil Nutrient Status ◽  
Fe Content ◽  
P Content ◽  
Zn Content ◽  
Floodplain Area ◽  
Very High ◽  
Brahmaputra Floodplain

Soil samples from high land, medium high land, medium low land and low land of Brahmaputra Floodplain area showed that pH of the soils were slightly acidic; organic matter (OM) content was medium; total nitrogen (N), available potassium (K) and boron (B) content were low; available phosphorus (P) content was very low; available sulfur (S) and calcium (Ca) content were medium to very high; magnesium (Mg) and zinc (Zn) content were low to optimum; copper (Cu), manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe) content were very high suggesting the fact that soils of this area is moderately suitable for agricultural uses.J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 8(2): 11-14 2015

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document