Fire-ravaged forests get help from pine cone collectors

With sw rey to fall, scramble was on to collect as many ponderosa pine cones as possible. A crew outfitted with spurs, ropes and hard hats scaled hefty tree trunks and used long clippers to snip branches loed with prickly orbs.

cones being gared in Jemez Mountains of rrn New Mexico represent fruits of a bumper crop. Every dece or so, trees turn out more seeds to ensure future propagation as a hedge against hungry predators and whatever or hurdles nature might throw at species. cones will be dried, ir seeds cleaned, sorted and grown into seedlings that can be used to reforest fire-scarred hillsides. Similar work is ongoing in Coloro, South Dakota and or places in U.S. West.

With warmer temperatures, more frequent drought and severity of wildfires on rise, scientists say seed collection and reforestation efforts are becoming more important.

“We’ve h so many large, high-severity fires in state, and without our intervention re is a possibility that some of those areas will never be forests again,” said Sarah Hurteau with Nature Conservancy in New Mexico. “What we’re trying to do is collect seed to help reforest se areas. This is a huge effort.”

goal: 1 million seeds.

It might sound lofty, but those helping with project in New Mexico and sourn Coloro are looking to take vant of a rare bumper crop this fall that has resulted from back-to-back summer and winter seasons of aver to above-aver rain and sw. This doesn’t happen often in arid Southwest, and scientists say it could become more infrequent as climate changes.

Kyle Rodman, a post-doctoral research assistant at University of Coloro Boulder, studied density of seedlings that sprouted following fires between 1988 and 2010. In a study published this month, he and his colleagues found absence of viable seeds can drastically hamper a forest’s ability to recover and that some burned areas were more vulnerable than ors.

“ ability of trees to produce seed has a huge implication for natural recovery,” he said. “If seed is t being produced, n it can’t get to places that are disturbed, n chances for ecosystem to recover to that forested state are obviously pretty low.”

In comes Steven Sandoval and his forestry crew from Santa Clara Pueblo, one of dozens of partners in seed collecting effort. Sandoval’s crew has been charged with scouting parts of Bandelier National Monument to locate those ponderosa stands with greatest potential.

Cone picking is a science, much different than a leisurely stroll through woods to collect cones from forest floor. Crew members are looking for perfect cones — curves, sap, insect bore holes. One such tree was standing t far from trail atop Bandelier’s Burnt Mesa. Loed with cones, it took more than an hour to harvest.

Labor- and time-intensive, but necessary, says Meredith Prentice who les a seed crew with Ecological Restoration Institute.

“re’s a lot of catastrophic elements like wildfire and drought. It’s being exacerbated by climate change, and so pool of native species that we’re able to get seed from is shrinking because ir environments are getting destroyed,” she said.

From ir vant point atop mesa, cone pickers can see for miles passed monument boundary and deeper into canyons that make up Jemez Mountains. It’s a landscape that has seen several devastating fires in just past 20 years. Overall, number of fires in U.S. has decreased slightly over past three deces, but number of acres burned is on rise. Every year since 2000, an aver of 10,900 square miles (28,231 square kilometers) have been charred, according to figures compiled by National Interncy Fire Center.

Last year marked a year of particularly dangerous and destructive fires. More than 100 lives were lost in California, with Camp Fire accounting for most of those deaths. Nationwide, more than 25,000 structures were destroyed. Far less land has burned this year, but scientists are confident in ir predictions that combination of overgrown forests and hotter, drier conditions increase threat of catastrophic fires.

Santa Clara Pueblo has been among hardest hit in New Mexico, with much of its watershed destroyed by fire in 2011. Sandoval said tribe is fortunate because it began collecting native seed years earlier and h built up its own seed bank of ponderosa, Douglas fir, spruce and or pine variations.

pueblo has gared seeds from about 2.5 million trees in over a dece, he said. Some are stored in special freezers to ensure y last ar century. Ors are sent to nurseries in New Mexico and Arizona, where y are grown for post-fire restoration efforts. Sandoval has one word for drought-hearty native seeds from lower elevations: “precious.”

Similar work is happening in Black Hills of South Dakota, where an estimated 2 million trees have been planted since 2003. Neva and Utah also have seed banks.

This is first year for collecting at Bandelier, where officials have requested that seeds from each tree be kept separate to ensure a genetic profile. Crews also record details on tree’s location, elevation and measurements. Earlier this fall, Bandelier planted 6,000 seedlings from cones collected from Jemez Mountains. Some were planted in study plots that will be monitored to see what planting strategies work best.

“We want to make best use of this resource,” said Kay Beeley, who has worked at Bandelier for nearly three deces. “It’s renewable but t always available.”