Nebraskaland

NEBRASKAland October 2016

NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.

Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/725550

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 28 of 79

OCTOBER 2016 • NEBRASKAland 29 and was stimulated and revealed by the wildfire that burned through that area in 2012. The largest aspen stand in Nebraska covers several acres of Nebraska National Forest property near the Hudson-Meng Research and Education Center north of Crawford. That stand has been fenced to protect it from grazing cattle. With help from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the fenced area was recently expanded to allow the clone to spread even farther. State and federal foresters aren't certain of the status of most stands in the Pine Ridge. "They could all stand a little more aspen care," said Fred McCartney, a fuels reduction specialist with the Nebraska Forest Service in Chadron, who has helped a few landowners with cost-share programs to rejuvenate their stands and would like to help with more. The most visited native aspens in the state grow in a mile-long stretch of the Niobrara River in and around Smith Falls State Park in Cherry County, a segment that is part of the Niobrara National Scenic River. A dozen stands of these survivors, a unique hybrid cross of quaking and bigtooth aspen, grow in the cool, moist spring-branch canyons on the south side of the river alongside paper birch, another Ice Age relict, ponderosa pines and burr oaks. Some are on private land upriver from the park, others downriver on The Nature Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve. The stands are in poor health, suffering from encroachment and shading by other trees, disease, insects, browsing and warming temperatures. Much work has been done during the last decade to rejuvenate them, and more will come. (See sidebar on Page 32-33.) McIntosh collected leaves from the Smith Falls aspens, as well as from 11 other stands across the state, one in the Loess Hills at Stone State Park in Sioux City, Iowa, and one in the Black Hills, for genetic testing completed by a U.S. Forest Service laboratory. The DNA testing found that all of the aspens at Smith Falls originated from a single clone. More recent samples collected for a University of Minnesota study and subjected to more in-depth tests found that there are three genotypes found among the 12 stands, according to Nick Deacon, a post-doctorate researcher leading the study. From this, researchers speculate that the original clone was separated by erosion as the Niobrara Valley deepened, and three remaining clones, which have since been further divided, have been around long enough to develop their own characteristics. Other scattered stands of quaking aspen persist in places much less hospitable to the species, leaving trees that are much shorter and smaller than those found elsewhere. One is found on the Bessey Ranger District of the Short, scrubby quaking aspens grow among soapweeds on a north-facing slope in the Sandhills on the Bessey Division of the Nebraska National Forest near Halsey. PHOTOS BY ERIC FOWLER

Articles in this issue

view archives of Nebraskaland - NEBRASKAland October 2016