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.
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said results are expected next year and will help managers know how the stands might react to the changing climate. Other forestry experts brought into the fray have pointed to other causes for declining aspen health, including oystershell scale, a condition caused by an insect that forms a hard shell on the bark while feeding beneath it. Work continues to preserve the aspens. TNC crews have been clearing cedar trees throughout their 56,000-acre Niobrara Valley Preserve, and planned to do more thinning in their aspen grove this summer. Commission staff hope they can help conduct additional prescribed burns in the park every 5 or 10 years to both stimulate aspen growth and control cedar regrowth. Managers also hope a thinner, healthy forest void of ladder fuels will help slow a wildfire like the one that burned 74,000 acres of the Niobrara Valley downstream in 2012. The park is certainly better for the work. "From a recreational standpoint, you couldn't see the forest for the trees," said Mike Groenewold, horticulturist with the Commission. "It was daunting to anyone that might want to walk through there. Now the woodlands are much more open and user-friendly. That will benefit wildlife, too. We've created sunlit openings where grasses and forbs are coming back where they were once too shaded for anything to grow." No one knows whether the aspens, which survived drastic climate change since the last ice age, will persist. But managers will continue to look for ways to control the things they can. "Aspens in Nebraska are a unique relict of a bygone era," said Groenewold. "There are so few groves remaining in the central Niobrara River V alley that it certainly seemed worthwhile to try to bring them back or at least sustain what we have left as a representative of this resource." ■ id lt t d t d ill h l Flagging tape marks an aspen sprout in a stand above the falls at Smith Falls State Park after cedars and other trees were cleared to promote suckering. Commission employee Guy Mclaughlin installs a fence to protect aspen suckers from browsing deer at Smith Falls State Park. OCTOBER 2016 • NEBRASKAland 33