DOVE CREEK Soon after the Narraguinnep and Bradfield fires scorched 8,900 acres of the San Juan National Forest southeast of Dove Creek in 2009, the Dolores Ranger District began a recovery effort that continues today.
When we surveyed the area in the spring of 2010, it looked like a moonscape, said Ashton Hargrave, Dolores district forester. All of the trees were dead or scorched. The seed sources necessary to maintain the forest were gone, and the areas were on the path to becoming oak meadows. We opted to do something to try and influence the natural course.
Hargrave put in a call to the Charles E. Bessey Nursery in Nebraska, the nations oldest federal tree nursery. Pine cones that had been collected in the Dolores Districts Doe Spring area back in 1983 were pulled from storage and germinated. Because they were grown from local stock, the seedlings would be genetically disposed to survive the local climate and soils.
Last week those seedlings came home to the San Juan, after growing at the nursery for more than a year and being frozen over the past winter to prepare for spring planting. They are the hope for a future pine forest on 160 acres of the burned area.
The forest service hired Cutting Edge Forestry of Oregon under contract to plant 48,000 of the pine seedlings. A contract crew of a dozen planters completed the job in just a few days over the past week.
They prepared a microsite for each planting by clearing a small area so the seedlings wont have to compete with other vegetation, said Hargrave, who oversaw the operation. Seedlings were planted next to standing dead trees, clumps of oak, rocks or stumps to provide shade and shelter.
Each seedling was planted with a handful of biochar, a carbon-based soil amendment produced by cooking wood in the absence of oxygen. Although biochar does not provide nutrients directly, it does create a habitat for organisms that facilitate the exchange of nutrients from the soil to the trees. Current studies show an increase in the growth and survival of seedlings planted with biochar.
We wet the biochar beforehand to help offer a little extra water transport to each seedlings root system for a short period of time, Hargrave said. The immediate goal is to help them get through May and June when we typically dont have much rain.
About 300 seedlings were planted per acre in 20- to 40-acre plots to create seed islands, in an effort to provide a source for future pine forests.
There are scattered trees in the area with green crowns, but those trees are struggling to survive, Hargrave said. We dont expect that most of the trees that survived the high intensity fire will be able to produce enough cones to re-establish the forest.
That hope will rest with the seedlings planted last week. Hargrave estimates those that thrive will reach breast height in 15 to 20 years, and will begin bearing cones in 30 years. Stocking surveys will be conducted over the next five years to measure their growth and monitor their survival.
In addition to the replanting, other burned area recovery projects over the past two years have included aerially reseeding with grasses, rebuilding of range fences and reinforcement of damaged bridges.