Trees slated for logging marked with blue slashes are shown in August in a 362-acre section of Mount Washington State Forest known as the “Cattle Barn Lot.” A report by an eminent forest ecologist says that the large stand of sugar maple trees here has a unique climate-cooling effect.
MOUNT WASHINGTON — A forest scientist says that a stand of sugar maples in an area slated for logging by the state should be “defended” for its climate-cooling features.
Lee E. Frelich, director of the Center for Forest Ecology at the University of Minnesota, was hired by an environmental nonprofit to investigate the area of Mount Washington State Forest known as the “Cattle Barn Lot.” He studied the area over two days in November.
In his report, released this week by Green Berkshires, Frelich says that cutting these maples at a time when they are sorely needed is a bad idea.
The “core sugar maple stand is likely to persist in a warming climate,” said Frelich, who specializes in this tree species. “The crown architecture and leaf arrangement of sugar maple (dome effect) leads to a local cooling effect.”
In addition, Frelich says, the location of the trees at the bottom of the valley makes the maple stand “a climate refugium with cold air drainage and pooling, as well as good water supply.”
By “refugium,” Frelich means that climate-wise, it would stand apart from regional temperatures and effects of global warming. Frelich told The Eagle that anywhere these refugiums exist, they should be defended, like those “on the edge of the prairie” where he lives.
The dark green areas show a high abundance of sugar maples. The arrow is pointing to a dark green pixel showing the sugar maple stand in the Cattle Barn Lot in Mount Washington that a forest ecologist and sugar maple specialist says has a climate cooling effect and should be left alone.
“We actually have a lot of sugar maple stands like that in Wisconsin and Minnesota and even in Iowa,” Frelich said, “so for me, it was easy to see when I got there.”
The property in question is part of 816 acres donated for preservation by a late resident. The DCR named this 362-acre management area after the old cow barn that sits near this forest, and can be seen from the road. The state reduced the cutting zone to 178 acres of the lot. It includes cutting a total 458,000 Mbf, or “thousand board feet” of cut lumber, of six different tree species. Of that, sugar maples account for 121,000 Mbf.
The state has paused the plan for further study following pushback by Green Berkshires, residents, town officials and scientists.
Officials from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation officials at the Cattle Barn Lot property in August, explaining that their plans for management and logging there will have a beneficial effects that include improved forest health and mediating climate change into the future. They have since put the project on pause for further study.
Frelich’s is one of three studies commissioned by Green Berkshires in an effort to amass more information about the property and in the interest of helping state officials decide how to proceed with the project — or not. The nonprofit has sent the reports to state officials.
DCR spokesperson Ilyse Wolberg said that the agency’s team, having only recently received the reports, “are in the early stages of reviewing.”
Opponents of the plan point to harm from equipment and the removal of mature and healthy trees, the immediate loss of carbon storage, and the use of weed killers on invasive species in the Karner Brook watershed’s stream network that feeds into Egremont’s water supply. They also point to the aesthetic and cultural impact on mountain views and the forest environment in a town that is mostly state forest.
The DCR says the plan would help with “climate resiliency” so that younger trees will store carbon into the future. This will create, the agency says, a mixed-age forest for that purpose. The plan involves cutting dead or dying ash for both safety and to rid the trees of a disease.
The state also says the invasive plants are harmful to the forest and the watershed. The agency relied on research showing that their use of the chemicals on invasives last summer will not pollute the area.
It also acknowledges that it wants to support a local timber harvest industry in the age of imports.
Green Berkshires co-founder and Executive Director Eleanor Tillinghast says the nonprofit is continuing to study the area so the state can “make informed decisions,” and says the sugar maple findings alone are reason to leave the entire 816 acres alone by placing them into the the forest reserve.
“Lee Frelich’s report confirms that,” Tillinghast said. “The whole system of the Karner Brook watershed depends on the integrity of that sugar maple stand.”
MIGHT CURB FLOODING
Frelich says that climate “refugium” tree stands are ”always several degrees cooler than surrounding forests in the nearby landscape.” Cranberry bogs also are climate refugium sites, he said, because “they pool cold air.”
The sugar maple stand, he said, “has the best chance of any place I’ve seen around there of staying cold because it has [mountain] ridges on every side” that shelter it.
“It doesn’t have to deal with being hit by sunshine for hours and hours,” he added, “even in the middle of summer.”
Given all this, the sugar maple stand also would minimize flooding in this watershed and downstream, says William Moomaw, a Williamstown-based climate scientist and professor emeritus at Tufts University. Moomaw also was on Gov. Maura Healey’s Climate Forestry Committee.
Having read Frelich’s report, Moomaw explained that the trees draw water in through the roots and send it out as water vapor through the leaves. This not only has a cooling effect but also would reduce flooding in what is just one part of the trees’ “miraculous complex chemistry that we still can’t possibly duplicate.”
‘VERY SENSITIVE’
Apart from Frelich, two other scientists found a multitude of species they say should not be trifled with. These include a bevy of different ferns, three species of salamanders, endangered timber rattlesnakes and even two rare orchids.
Photos of some of the numerous salamanders found in a watershed in Mount Washington State Forest indicating a healthy stream network protected by the forest. The area is slated for a logging project that the state has paused for further study.
Botanist Charles Eiseman documented multitudes of tree and plant species at the site, and is concerned about what a logging project might do to the entire ecosystem. Some of it relies on shade, like the “uncommon,” spotted coral-root orchid. He also found a large whorled pogonia orchid in the tree-cutting zone. The latter, he noted, is on MassWildlife’s Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program Watch List.
Eiseman, who said he found three intermittent streams that were not on the state’s project map, also questioned plans for cutting some dead or dying white ash trees, given that insects and animals that feed on or use dead trees for dens or nests. But he acknowledges that these trees near the road pose a safety hazard.
And Eiseman writes, “Cutting the healthiest trees, risks eliminating individuals that have some genetic resistance to emerald ash borer attack.”
Another scientist says that such a logging project here could harm this wildlife ecology so much that it could take a century or more to reestablish.
Michael W. Klemens, a biologist who has researched stream salamanders in New England for 50 years, said the 1,567 salamanders found during his field research during just 48 hours and during a severe drought, is “unusual when compared to many other areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut.”
It is, Klemens writes, “testament to the value of a densely forested watershed in maintaining stream quality.”
Stream salamanders are “very sensitive,” not only to chemical pollution, but to disturbances like that from equipment and logging on the “steeply graded forested slopes.” Use of herbicides here, he adds, could “further destabilize and pollute the Karner Brook watershed.”
“The end result of these habitat disturbances,” Klemens wrote, “will be that the stable ecosystem of Karner Brook will become damaged, and its recovery, if even possible, to the mature second forest that presently exists will take close to a century if not more.”
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