Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Emerald Ash Borer

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #46
    In Yates County the moths are flying.... amazing gypsies! Ashes are pounded...
    Be careful, don't spread invasive species!!

    When a dog runs at you,whistle for him.
    Henry David Thoreau

    CL50-#23

    Comment


    • #47
      Here's a link that may help you identify invasive species. EAB can travel on its own at certain times of the year.

      Never Argue With An Idiot. They Will Drag You Down To Their Level And Beat You With Experience.

      Comment


      • #48
        Originally posted by St.Regis View Post
        I've seen 'dead' ash trees that looked like telephone poles come back to life after beaver were trapped out or abandoned their ponds and stopped maintaining their dams. The water went down, the bottoms dried up a bit, and the old green and black ash skeletons started sprouting near their bases. Ash are pretty tough and I don't discount their resiliency....But for awhile the buckthorn, honeysuckle, mf rose, and VA creeper are loving the extra sun...I bet the woodpeckers aren't complaining either
        LOL - I don't think I've seen a single Ash tree without a shawl of VA creeper on it.

        Comment


        • #49
          A little off the EAB, but I was just watching a video with Tom Wessels and he was saying how beaver will purposely kill larger trees so they will stump sprout and start a new food supply. They also girdle, and kill the Hemlocks near their ponds, because to the beaver they are worthless. They shade out the hardwood species that they would rather eat.

          Comment


          • #50
            Some of these mysterious, healthy ash trees I've seen might have been "inoculated". Apparently people have started treating certain trees with pesticides which prevent them from being infested. It's an ongoing treatment, so not something that can be done large-scale but seed trees and landscape trees can be saved.

            Comment


            • #51
              Originally posted by montcalm View Post
              Some of these mysterious, healthy ash trees I've seen might have been "inoculated". Apparently people have started treating certain trees with pesticides which prevent them from being infested. It's an ongoing treatment, so not something that can be done large-scale but seed trees and landscape trees can be saved.
              i know that 250+ ash trees in the appalachian trail corridor in MA were treated in this manner last summer.

              Comment


              • #52
                I didn't know there was any treatment. I know the purple traps were tried a decade or so ago, but they didn't seem to do anything. I thought maybe they were just using them to see where the EAB were present.

                I'm also not 100% sure the trees I've seen were treated, but they sure seem healthy compared to everything else.

                Comment


                • #53
                  I've also seen where arborists have removed all the upper branches from some large trees and they've popped some new growth down low.

                  These are big trees with big lower trunks, so I'm guessing the EAB has girdled and killed the upper branches, but may not easily kill the main stem. They also don't seem to kill new growth as they aren't burrowing and making their tunnels in there. So perhaps these trees can recover.

                  I think as St. Regis pointed out earlier, most of these "dead" trees aren't dead. They still have some lower new growth or root sprouts. Some have kicked into a witches broom type response and sprouted growth everywhere, but only the lower branches seem to retain foliage.

                  Not sure they can recover with such minimal energy input.

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    One of my jobs is in utility vegetation management. Basically, I plan tree work along power lines to ensure reliability/prevent vegetation-caused power outages. Needless to say, a lot of my work in recent years has centered on ash trees- finding them, identifying which ones pose the greatest potential threat to the power lines, and getting permission from property owners for the trees to be cut down before they can fall on the power lines.

                    The purple traps were never for direct control of EAB. Rather, they had two purposes- first and foremost, they were meant to help identify where the ash borer was present (back then there was a though/glimmer of a hope that it might still be contained, all such hope has basically vanished at this point). The second purpose was public awareness- the traps were placed in visible areas along roadsides to engage public curiosity, get people asking questions- and accordingly, to help the public learn on their own terms about the threat posed by invasive species (as well as those key necessary behaviors to help prevent their spread, such as not moving firewood).

                    The branches sprouting from the base of the trunk is a phenomenon known as epicormic branching. This is a common stress reaction in many tree species. In some cases where the damage to the upper portions of the tree was purely mechanical (i.e., the top broke off in a storm, or beavers as mentioned above), it can sometimes successfully keep the tree alive despite the loss of much of the live crown. However, in the case of EAB, it's more of a "last, dying gasp of air" before the tree finally succumbs. I've planned removals of plenty of stone-cold dead ash whose stumps were covered in dead small branches that had sprouted out during the final year or two that the tree was still alive. The new branches from the base wasn't enough to keep those trees alive.

                    I know that there is some thought with other tree species affected by invasive pests that society was too quick to cut all of the remaining trees down, and that by doing so we may have inadvertently felled (and killed) trees that may have possessed natural resistance to those pests. I've asked people much more knowledgeable in the field of EAB than I whether there has ever been any indication that ashes may exist with natural resistance to EAB, and they've answered fairly firmly with "no, we've seen no indication of this whatsoever."

                    I was also curious about the possibility for isolated pockets of ash to escape infestation. However, where I have been working the past few weeks, the ash is pretty sparse. I've been finding ashes affected by EAB that are likely close to a mile (or more) from the next nearest ash. So EAB is not limited by a short range, at least- and I'm less hopeful that we might see some isolated pockets escape infestation.

                    There is a treatment but it's an ongoing thing- it needs to be reapplied every few years. My instructions from electric utilities have been to target even treated trees for removal (i.e., at least ask the property owner for permission). What they have been finding is that a lot of folks are paying for a treatment or two, and then as the dawning realization sinks in that they are going to be paying for this for the remainder of the tree's life (and it's not cheap), they are giving up and the trees are being allowed the succumb to EAB and die anyways.

                    Ash was also a fairly common street tree in a lot of areas. I've worked in municipalities where street after street was lined with hundreds of ash trees, all owned and maintained by the local government. Many of these municipalities are paying for each and every single one of these trees to be treated, but what I've also been finding is that they aren't saying no to any removals planned by electric utilities- because it's that many fewer trees that the municipality has to pay to keep treating.

                    I've lost track of the number of dead ash trees I've planned removals for. I've had single properties where the number of ash trees that needed to be removed approached 100. The total number of removals I've planned is unquestionably in the thousands and may very well be in the tens of thousands at this point. The project I'm on right now has been running for less than a year, and as every individual ash tree gets entered into the database, it gets an incremental unique ID- and the number is already above 40,000 trees and counting.

                    With regards to the trees whose crowns were removed but the trunk allowed to remain standing- this was probably a utility removal. Some utilities have ceased doing full removals with ash due to the need to be efficient, not for any consideration regarding whether the tree might survive through epicormic branching. Rather, they simply cut the tree to below striking distance of the wires, and move on. When you consider the following, the need to be efficient is readily apparent:
                    • The numbers like I mention above;
                    • The fact that all ashes trees are pretty much dying uniformly at the same rate in any geographic area;
                    • The cost involved for a full removal (anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars per tree depending on size);
                    • And the skill and equipment necessary (ashes killed by EAB are pretty dangerous to work around and you can't put climbers in them).
                    I know that there is some thought that the hemlock woolly adelgid (another invasive insect that is wrecking havoc with hemlock populations through the mid-Atlantic, and accordingly also causing severe consequential impacts on trout habitat) may not be able to survive the (relative) extreme cold of Adirondack winters and therefore may not have the ability to firmly establish itself within the bulk of the Adirondack Park. I have no idea if there's any similar hope that the same may be true of EAB, but I have personal hope, at least. And of course, with climate change, who knows whether future winters will be a limiting factor for the adelgid, either.

                    The Ian Malcom-inspired idea that "life, uh, uh, finds a way" and that ecosystems will recover from invasives over a long enough period of time isn't necessarily wrong... but it ignores the substantial economic impacts that society must bear the weight of. Current USDA estimates for the financial impacts of all invasive species combined on the North American economy run around $26,000,000,000 a year (and increasing).

                    And there's societal impacts too. I've worked in areas where invasives have run rampant, and they are absolutely destroying forest ecosystems in those areas. It's so bad that in some areas, abandoned farmland isn't becoming reforested- rather, it's turning in a dense, tangled, impenetrable mess of only a few invasive species (barberry, bittersweet, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and the worst hands-down, multi-flora rose). Great for small mammals, sure, but if you hike and enjoy natural scenery there's little to no value in it for you. And the reality is that this is the end state that society is barreling towards, everywhere. When you consider areas where ashes represented as much as 90% of the standing timber, then the loss of pretty much the entire overstory caused by EAB is absolutely a foothold for these other invasives to further spread and establish themselves. Across much of western NY (Buffalo and Rochester), it won't be another native tree species that repopulates the area in the absence of ash, it will be one of the aforementioned invasive species.

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      Originally posted by DSettahr View Post
                      It's so bad that in some areas, abandoned farmland isn't becoming reforested- rather, it's turning in a dense, tangled, impenetrable mess of only a few invasive species (barberry, bittersweet, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and the worst hands-down, multi-flora rose). Great for small mammals, sure, but if you hike and enjoy natural scenery there's little to no value in it for you.
                      Also, to this point: There is some evidence that the increase in small mammal populations being driven by the increase in invasive plant populations is in turn driving an increase in tick populations... and correspondingly, an increased prevalence of Lyme disease in those areas. It's not too far-fetched to hypothetically link EAB and the loss of ash trees to this chain of events in those areas where ash is/was super prevalent (again, Buffalo, Rochester, etc.).

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Correct - we already have a number of invasives that create a real mess of the understory.


                        Those trees may have been trimmed to protect the utilities, but honestly I don't see why they didn't take the whole tree. Perhaps it was a budgetary consideration and those branches that were removed were the main liability.

                        I've anecdotally noticed like 100% death rate in groves of Ash in swamps and such, and all smaller diameter trees - probably in the 12" dbh range or less. I'd assumed the EAB is just able to girdle them much easier and because there are so many, transmit them very easily from tree to tree.

                        The trees I've seen alive and healthy have been isolated, but I assume they must be treated because I've seen plenty of isolated landscape trees that are toast. Also I know EAB was in the proximity because I could see stands of dead Ash not far from them.

                        Anyway, I figure that those large diameter trees might be tougher to kill.

                        Epicormic shoots look to be what I see - it's not as dense as a witches broom. And yes, I figured it was just a severe stress response in hopes to keep itself alive.

                        They don't seem to be progressing with more new growth, but rather slowly losing more and more foliage. And of course some are already being choked with VA creeper.



                        Regarding the long term impact - some speculate we may come out with stronger ecosystems from this... but the timeframe on that is probably in centuries. Short term it's a real mess. I had already considered the major impact it will have for homeowners, but as you point out, it's become a double hit as utility consumers and towns will end up bearing the burden of removal or continuing treatment.

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Originally posted by montcalm View Post
                          Those trees may have been trimmed to protect the utilities, but honestly I don't see why they didn't take the whole tree. Perhaps it was a budgetary consideration and those branches that were removed were the main liability.
                          Like I mentioned above, some utilities have ceased doing full removals of ash for reasons of budget/efficiency. Utility tree crews are not private tree care companies, and the results of their necessary work isn't always going to be the most aesthetically-pleasing sight. But in the case of pruning live tree branches back from the wires, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily unreasonably harmful to the health of the tree, either (contrary to what many property owners like to claim).

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            I'll check and see if there's any utilities around these ones I've seen.

                            I generally notice utility trimming, because all our roadside trees are trimmed, but perhaps the ash stood out as being butchered.

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              It's also possible that if it were someone's private tree, the tree care company they contracted gave them two options: "We can either cut the entire tree down and you can pay more money, or we can mitigate most of the risk by cutting most of the crown but leaving the trunk and you can pay less money" and the property owner went for the less money option.

                              The trunk may have also been purposefully left as a snag for wildlife.

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Yeah, I was going to mention that. I've seen this done for private residence where just the crown is removed. My neighbor has a black walnut where he did that, and it's coming back to life, it seems. It's been growing new shoots every year and keeps growing.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X