Hard woods dying

[alanh]

I live on 7 acres in central Ct., Its all hardwoods, red oak, maples, some ash, cherry and black locust. Very sandy soil but the softwoods all died off from disease before I moved there 10 years ago. I`ve seen pics of the area from the early 1900`s and it appeared to be farmland. question is, they seem to be dying at a rather rapid rate, not any particular species, it just seems every where I look there is another fallen down or bare tree. I know the locust doesn`t get too big before they go down and I get the ones that get rubbed by the backhoe but I cut about 4 cords for firewood every year for the past 10 and never seen to get caught up with the dead stuff.

[Ron Wenrich]

How thick is your stand?  If you have too many stems per acre, there isn't much growth and trees get crowded out.  Drought may be another problem, especially on south facing slopes and sandy soil.  Sandy soils are dry, and they don't hold nutrients all that well.

[nativewolf]

Ron,

Caveat this to heck and back but I'd view what is happening as natural progress.  Perhaps hastened by drought impacts from recent bad drought of 2016.  In the last few decades years we've had several instect/disease issues hit our eastern forest.  Wooly adelgids, white pine weevil, chestunt blight, gypsy moth, emerald ash borer, dutch elm disease.

Species impacted include all the Ash species (a significant species in CT I'd think)-really catastrophic death, Elm's - many american elm already gone, hemlocks, fir & spruce are getting whacked by the adelgids, chestunts long gone now.  There is an emerging awareness of some sort of oak decline- they are still trying to figure this one out but older oaks are dying-white and red oak species (so White oak, Chestnut, Northern Red oak, etc).  A gypsy moth attack on a forest weakened by drought can have fairly dramatic impacts and kill almost the entire dominant tree structure.

Other species like many pine and black locust are early successional species- their death is natural and appropriate (locust is my favorite firewood) and you should not see them in mature forest (your forest may well be close to 100 years old if the fields were abandoned in WWI to WWII period as were many small farms from MA south to the gulf coast.

Species that should be healthy would be yellow poplar, black cherry, birch-but I don't know much about birch age classes-can they live much past 100, maples, and hickory. 

What many people don't think about is that the forest is a giant living ecosystem where most dominant species are trying to kill one another in the quest to survive and propagate.  The dominants are duking it out and some win.  Put another way, back in 1920 there might have been 3-10000 tree seedlings on an acre.  Today that 100 year old forest might have a hundred  or two winners.  Sure some died due to introduced pest or native pest but most died at the hands of the surviving dominates.  Those other 2,800 (just guessing) trees were mostly killed by the surviving dominates or as part of the decline of early successional species.   So you are seeing something natural unless you have a forest with Ash (a major tree species in CT) in which case you may be seeing huge loss due to the EAB (very sad).    The other point to make here is that dead wood on the ground and standing dead trees are important in the ecosystem.  Leaving some is good for the ecosystem in general.