Aspen Forests
Can the simple beauty of an organism be enough to want to restore and preserve it? If so, Aspen would be at the top of that list. So much more than a beautiful tree, a stand or group of aspen trees is considered a singular organism with the main life force underground in the extensive root system. We talk with Paul Rogers, professor and Director of the Western Aspen Alliance, about the threats to Aspen today across the west and the Colorado Plateau. In the face of increasing drought and fire across the Colorado Plateau, this resilient tree finds itself most susceptible to the vast numbers of animals that forage on its young and nutritious shoots.
Meet the Scientist: Paul Rogers
Paul holds a B.S. and M.S. in geography from Utah State University and University of Wisconsin –Madison, respectively. His doctorate is from Utah State University in Ecology. Paul’s prime area of study has been human impacts on vegetation in the western United States. He worked for the U.S. ForestService for 16 years conducting monitoring activities and publishing results from the Interior West of theU.S. Dr. Rogers was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia (2014) and was awarded a Fulbright Specialist scholarship to Mendel University, Czech Republic (2017). Paul’s Ecosystem monitoring research has taken him around the U.S., as well as to Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. He is currently working on issues related to disturbance ecology and wildlife impacts/benefits to aspen ecosystems. He has published more than 50 professional and technical papers and appeared in media print, video, and online content more than 100 times. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Environment & Society, a USU Ecology Center Associate, and the Director of the Western Aspen Alliance. Paul has taught Environmental Problem-Solving, Natural Resource Monitoring, Environmental Science, and Planet Earth for honors students, as well as instructed at more than 40 professional workshops.
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Interview Excerpt - Beautiful and Resilient
We talk with Paul Rogers, USU professor and Director of the Western Aspen Alliance, about the threats to Aspen today across the west and the Colorado Plateau. In the face of increasing drought and fire across the Colorado Plateau, this resilient tree finds itself most susceptible to the vast numbers of animals that forage on its young and nutritious shoots.
Science Moab: Let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in the west today, specifically on the Colorado Plateau, where we’re experiencing more and more drought, and more tendency towards fire. From what little I know of aspen, they kind of seem to be fire resilient, but how is the drought and, you know, fire tendency? How is it affecting these Aspen forests in the west today?
Rogers: Generally speaking, fire is an advantage for Aspen. We’ve come out of roughly a century that was very wet iin the intermountain west, based on tree ring records. So in a sense, any drought or change that comes out is going to look sort of drastic. Where aspen grows with conifers is susceptible to burning, and Aspen responds pretty well so we would expect Aspen cover to increase with more fire in those areas where it grows with conifers. There are a lot of places across the Colorado Plateau, where Aspen grows in a more pure form and it’s not fire dependent at all and so it has a completely different ecology. It’s more of a slow and steady regrowth of aspen without that big catastrophic event. So there’s different things going on there, but if we would anticipate more fire, we would expect to see an expansion and improvement in the resilience of aspen forests.
Science Moab: So what is threatening the aspen forests today?
Rogers: Number one in the West threatening Aspen communities and health is herbivory from large ungulates. Those are animals that have hooves, and some are domestic and some are wild. The problem is when you have those highly nutritious shoots coming up and the animals are eating every single one. And if that goes on for a few decades, you have a really skewed demography you have this what we call a gallery forest and these beautiful mature trees, but there’s nothing coming up underneath No, no babies, no teenagers, no young adults. And so if that was a human population, that would be a pretty risky situation to be in. And that’s the condition of a lot of our Aspen forests across the Colorado Plateau. we need to do a better job of managing those wild and domestic ungulates.
Another big new threat is a small, tiny invasive species called oyster shell scale. And it’s decimating some forests in Arizona, and it’s moving north, and is now found in southern Utah and so on. But it’s a very tiny thing that looks like a little oyster shell, right, and you would get 1000s of them on a tree and then cut off the circulation of the tree. This is brand new, within the last human generation, and so we’ve got to untangle these things and understand them better.
Science Moab : The western Aspen alliance that you run it’s a joint venture between Utah State University, federal agencies, state agencies, and scientists. What types of restoration and or conservation are you trying to do to help Aspen forests?
Rogers: We don’t do advocacy per se, like a lot of conservation groups folks might be thinking of, but our main mission is education and outreach and facilitating science. So, building science teams to take on certain issues. we do that in a wide variety of ways from small, brief, easy to read papers, to technical papers to webcasts. We do a lot of professional workshops in the summer around all the western states and we facilitate those with regional experts. then the recipients of that information, which are really participants, are going to hopefully be from a diverse number of disciplines and agencies, tribal institutions, and as much diversity as we can get, so we can enliven and enrich the discussion.
Science Moab: Apart from their inherent beauty, of course, why is it important to conserve and preserve and restore Aspen forests?
Rogers: When we think about living in tandem with our planet, we need to appreciate things for what they are. Just the simple aesthetic value is something that is very important. So clearly, I’ve been emphasizing the biodiversity of these systems. What happens to Aspen either pro or con, there’s a trajectory of a lot of other species that are going to follow that trend. So biodiversity at a global scale is out front, and we’re recognizing that more and more in our ecosystems in the American West as well. We have economic advantages. We have biodiversity advantages, we have resource advantages. It’s also used for livestock forage. What’s the value, you might say? To humans? I would place right up front there, just the aesthetics, the intrinsic value of these things existing and people seem to be attracted to them.
