Rooting for the Future: Restoring Arkansas’s Bottomland Hardwood Forests

In this Food, Farms & Forests episode, we travel to the University of Arkansas at Monticello to explore efforts to restore bottomland hardwood forests in Arkansas.

Dr. Michael Blazier, Dean of the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, discusses the Restoring Bottomland Hardwood Forests project, a $3.7 million initiative that plans to convert idle farmland into thriving ecosystems. 

Funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Climate Smart Program, this initiative is part of a nationwide effort to enhance carbon sequestration, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water quality and give small underserved landowners an opportunity to restore their land.

Blazier explains how this project is helping underserved landowners across Arkansas, especially those with smaller plots, to revitalize their lands while contributing to climate goals.

Dr. Nana Tian, an assistant professor at the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources and researcher with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, is the principal investigator leading this initiative.

Read more about the project: Restoring Bottomland Hardwood Forests.

Related Links:

• University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff 

Transcript

[00:00] Intro/Outro:

Welcome to the Arkansas Food, Farms and Forests Podcast. The podcast bringing you the latest on food, fiber and forestry research from the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

[00:17] Jenifer:

Welcome to Food, Farms and Forests. I'm Jenifer Fouch. Today, we are going to the University of Arkansas at Monticello to learn about several projects going on there, more specifically at the College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources. We are discussing the project Restoring Bottom Land Hardwood Forests, which is part of a nationwide Climate Smart program made possible by a $3.7 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. Joining us to discuss these topics is Dr. Michael Blazier. Dr. Blazier, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:52] Michael: 

I'm happy to be here.

[00:53] Jenifer:

So, Dr. Blazier is the dean of the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources. He also serves as the director of the Arkansas Forest Resources Center. He is the advisory board chair for the Restoring Bottomland Hardwood Forest Project, which is being led by Dr. Nana Tian. Dr. Blazier. Can you start by telling us more about this project? It's part of a much bigger nationwide initiative, the Climate Smart Program.

[01:21] Michael: 

This one is one that's been exciting from the chair I sit in for a lot of standpoints because one, it's one of the largest grants that's ever been gained by our unit. It's a $3.7 million, five-year project that's funded through the NRCS. 
 
 And, what's really exciting about that to me is the team that Dr. Tian brought together really brings together and leverages expertise and ongoing work that's been going on within the Division of Agriculture. And so, our team is herself. So, she's got an economics and policy background. Dr. Matt Pelkki, who's, our senior economist within the unit. Doug Osborne is our waterfowl expert. Katie Dick, who is our agronomist and a fairly new scientist. In the beginning, our extension forester, Cal Cunningham, was a part of that project team. And, last year, he moved over to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture to become a state forester. But his successor, Jacob Hackman will slide into that spot from an extension outreach standpoint. So, we've got a broad team of expertise all within the Division of Agriculture. 

We've also got partners with Texas A&M University and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. And I've really got to stress that one there: UAPB is integral to the execution of the project because it's really focused on helping underserved landowners throughout the Arkansas landscape, particularly in the alluvial regions. 

Another part of the Division of Agriculture that is being leveraged for this is, one of the project sites will be at the Pine Tree Research Station. Kind of a large-scale demonstration research site that can live past the life of this grant-funded project and serve as a model of how to restore idle farmland or pasture land into bottom and hardwood ecosystems.

Back in the early 20th century, when we look across the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, which is the regions of particularly Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi that are heavily influenced by the Mississippi River, a lot of that land was cleared at the turn of the 20th century for agriculture, and 70% of those native mixed bottom on hardwood forests were lost in that process. And two things happened starting back in the mid 1980s. It was recognized that farming practices were getting ever more efficient. And more yield can be produced on smaller... per acre. So, some of those suboptimal farmlands that never really did well at farming were getting kind of idle. They just didn't pay out in terms of the inputs necessary to get a good crop yield out of them. And secondly, it was recognized that there were a lot of lost ecosystem service benefits. Th water quality, and wildlife habitat in particular, when we lost that vast amount of acreage of bottomland hardwoods to those early 20th-century farming practices. 

So, starting with the 1984 Farm Bill, there were monies worked into that bill and every farm bill since then to provide cost-share funding for landowners in the alluvial areas to take their less optimal farmland and plant it into the native complex zones of hardwoods that would have been here prior to all that massive clearing for agriculture. So that's been proceeding very well. 

But one of the things that the project team recognized is that sometimes those smaller landowners, the that that have shallower pockets, they even with those cost-share monies that are available, they kind of it's harder for them to get an in on that. And then when we look at the minority communities, they've had such vast cultural stress and strain that that was another barrier to benefit from some of those programs. 

So, with this Climate Smart Agriculture funding, as you mentioned, it's a national effort. They were funding projects that would enhance carbon sequestration, which is tying up carbon from the atmosphere and biomass of some sort, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That's another facet of the carbon cycle. Every plant conducts photosynthesis where it's sucking CO2 in and making plant biomass. But it's also, those plants are also emitting carbon dioxide through respiration. And so, as the soil they grow in through the microbes or decomposition of organic matter.

This project was funded because its climate-smart ag practices are taking idle land that just sort of out there holding the world together, not growing anything all that well because it's unmanaged, and converting it into it's native ecosystem, which is bottomland hardwood trees that are going to grow for, you know, decades and decades. 

And then, if they are harvested, they can they'll be made into furniture or homes and structures that will last for decades even further. So that's, that's a practice. - and we call that afforestation - that's putting a forest where there previously was not one. And that's one of the most impactful things we can do to put something out there that's going to absorb a lot of carbon from the atmosphere and contain it above and below ground, and in the eventual structures that can be made from that woody biomass, for a long time to come.

[07:24] Jenifer:

So, two big takeaways or two big benefits from this restoration project is benefiting landowners, or especially smaller landowners, to do something with this land that, as you mentioned, is just sitting there idle; it's not really doing anything for them. And then the environmental impacts. And then also the long-term impacts, as you said in the future, maybe it can be turned into furniture, be turned into something.

[07:51] Michael: 

That's correct. And the project team is engaged in a lot of different fronts in making this happen. Our partners with the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff are integral to this. They have a program called Keep It in the Family which focuses on building a network of minority landowners through Arkansas and providing them with that extra assistance to help them become, you know, have better access to some of these programs and land management practices that can improve the profitability and quality of the land. Like, oh, and it's through their network of landowners that they've been building for several years that the project team is reaching out to become potential participants in this project. 

And that, this is another thing that I think that's really exciting about the project is that this isn't just a research trial, this is an operational scale program. So, when this, when all is said and done, there should be about 600 new acres of bottomland hardwood forest in Arkansas that themselves will be showpieces to bring other landowners and to show them what was done to restore that suboptimal land management. 
 
The project focuses on equal parts research and outreach. Our extension programming team will be hosting field tours of them, converting the data that's gained from all the survival and growth, and carbon sequestration metrics that they're measuring and turning that into extension bullets.

[09:40] Jenifer:

And what does it take for a landowner to be a participant in this project? What are the requirements, and what are some incentives for them? Because if I'm a landowner, could I just say, “Oh, leave it alone. I don't want to mess with it. It sounds like a lot of work,”? Can you explain that part of it, the requirements, and then kind of the incentive for them?

[10:03] Michael: 

What the project team needs are landowners that, first and foremost, have a clear title to their land. We need to know that they have a legal right to be able to make those decisions on the property. 
 
Secondly, looking for landowners that have somewhere between 20 to 80 acres of land, whether that's contiguous or not, doesn't matter. But 20 acres is about the minimum level we can do. And then the 80 to 100-acre maximum is kind of ... it was set by the project team because feel like that that land ownership range are the landowners that could benefit handsomely from, from having their land converted back into forest, but also are smaller in scale to the point that they would be, they would have a harder time getting in on some of the traditional cost-share programs that are available. 
 
And then the third and final thing - sign a land access agreement with the Division of Agriculture, allowing the project team and the contractors who were going to conduct the work to enter the property, to plant, to do all the pre-planting operations, and allowing the project team to come in afterward to make those occasional measurements to see how well things are going and maybe even have to recalibrate in a subsequent year to do some things like supplemental planting, like they didn't get quite enough survival that they were aiming for. They can still go in and continue to restore the land. 
 
And what the landowner gains from this is 100% of the expenses of the operation are covered by the grant, all their pre-planting operations, the labor and seedlings of all with the planting, and anything that needs to be done post planting to make sure those seedlings survive and grow well over a seven-year period, as is the window the project teams looking at. 
 
It's a five-year project, but they're asking for seven years of access just in case there are any kind of hiccups on the front end. Like I mentioned, if they say if something came in like a deer got really aggressive and ate too many seedlings or something, they can go back in and replant and make sure that as that contract or as that land access agreement ends, those landowners are left with a really good forest. At the end of that period, everything is theirs free and clear.

[12:26] Jenifer:

Can you explain a little bit more of the different types of research that are going into this? There are several people on the project team, and each of them has a different focus because it takes a lot to make this happen. And we want to measure the data. We want to see how things are going and how they're progressing. Can you talk about the research that goes on behind the scenes for this project?

[12:49] Michael: 

Certainly. Starting with Dr. Tian who's the leader of their project. You know, she's got a lot on her plate managing this monstrosity of a project. Her biggest part of the project will be interacting with landowners, doing some survey work with them to understand what were barriers to them getting into to be able to get their land, you know, planted. And forested. And she's also going to be doing a lot of quantification, like the economic benefits of these conversions. 
 
Dr. Pelkki is going to be a close collaborator with her in that component of the project of looking at, you know, extrapolating how these forests that they're planning are developing and how they should develop and what kind of economic benefits both traditional products and nontraditional things like, so like carbon trading or something like that, that those are the kind of things that they're working together on. I know Dr. Pelkki is also looking at existing data from existing bottomland hardwood forests that have been planted for decades on conservation easements and looking at their biomass accrual rates so they can help inform the new sites that they're planning for this project and kind of predict in the future how they're going to grow and how much carbon they'll sequester. 
 
Dr. Dick is, she's our agronomist, and she's actually going to be quantifying greenhouse gas emissions and how they change, emitted from soil with these land changes. So, she's looking at the farmland pre and post, after the conversion, and looking at mature forests to see how the nitrous oxide, CO2 and methane emissions are altered  and ideally reduced by converting into forest land. 
 
And Dr. Osborne is going to be doing some work looking at how waterfowl utilize these new forests as well as the existing forests. And it's interesting to me because it integrates a lot of different things of the Arkansas landscape. And to have a healthy waterfowl population we have to have a mixture of hardwood forests for nesting, for foraging, for acres and, a lot of agricultural land. They really benefit a lot from the abundant rice we have in our landscape. And that's why Arkansas was fifth in the world in terms of the quantity of ducks that occupy the flyway.

[15:23] Jenifer:

When can we expect those updates? You mentioned the field site visits. Is planting going on right now? Is that going on next year? Where are we on the project?

[15:33] Michael: 

The rubber is really hitting the road this year, this fall in particular. They're getting the first freeze on the ground. They'll have about 40 acres planted over the next few months. I know at Pine Tree all the preliminary work has been done. 
 
One of the other longer-term project sites that will be part of this effort past the life for the grant is being planted it at the Five Oaks Lodge in the Stuttgart area. We in this unit have a pretty close relationship with the Five Oaks Lodge. We have a formal private partnership, private public partnership with them that provides recurring assets for our programs. And being able to plant 20 acres of this project on their side is yet another one of those great things that they've contributed. I know at least two private landowner sites are aiming for planting this winter as well. 
 
So, in forestry, we plant during the wintertime. Fall is about as early as we can plant, and we can only do that if we've got seedlings that have a vermiculite plug around those seedlings. But a lot of what we plant are just what we call bear root seedlings that are listed, that are produced in nurseries and listed at about December to January. And January, February is really the high time for planting trees. We put them in the ground when they're dormant. That way, they can get established and blown out with everything else in the spring.

[17:01] Jenifer:

So, we'll have to check back in with you sometime next year here in a few months to see how things are going. And then on the research side of it, too. What does it mean for you, in your position? You said you have been in this position, as Dean there for four years, to be a part of such a big project.

[17:20] Michael: 

I tell people a lot that my job as administrator of a unit like this is to be surrounded by brilliant people and give them all the help they can get to get their job done. 
 
And this couldn't have happened without the teamwork involved. And the mixture of unique disciplines that we, that Dr. Tian, pulled together. And it couldn't have happened without the fact that we were already engaged heavily for a long time doing this kind of work. 

We have a, a really robust background and doing research devoted to the reestablishment of Bottomland Hardwood Forest. A lot of that is a consequence of where we sit. Monticello is right here at the intersection between coastal plains. So, it's you can practically go on the east, the west side of town, and you've got pine trees. You go to east side of town, you're in the Arkansas Delta. So, we really are poised geographically well, to be engaged heavily in research, restoring and enhancing hardwood forests. 

And Dr. Osborne has really built his waterfowl program up to be nationally recognized. 

And, and our partnership, we already had it going with Five Oaks was certainly something else that was a strength that was leveraged by the project team to let this to, well, allow this to happen. 

You mentioned it, you know, we got word on this project being funded - I think that email came in to Dr. Tian, and she forwarded over me - it was like midnight or something at the end of 2022. And, you know, I jumped up and kind of rubbed my eyes like, like, let me make sure I read this correctly. $4 million is coming our way. Wow. And immediately after that, within a day that we were informed that the Under Secretary of the Department of Agriculture was going to come visit us that following week to give the congratulatory, kind of introduction to being part of this Climate Smart Agriculture funding program.

[19:28] Jenifer:

Is there anything else you'd like to discuss that I didn't ask that you'd like to mention?

[19:33] Michael: 

Well, I just I just want to thank you for providing the spotlight on our unit here. I think we've got a lot of great folks doing some really important research. 
 
Giving a couple more examples of the impactful work that some of our folks are doing. Our Dr. Ben Babst is working closely with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission looking at flooding tolerances of different species of bottomland hardwoods. So, that's actually, that's informed their management on the flooding processes for drawn-in waterfowl. You know, what can be done sustainably? 

Just as another, you know, impactful example, our Dr. Don White has been doing black bear research for decades, and Arkansas now has a black bear hunting season that was informed heavily by his work on the genetic diversity and abundance of the black bear populations in the state of Arkansas. 

So, we're percolating in the background on some things that a lot of our a lot of folks across the state are benefiting from.

[20:41] Jenifer:

Dr. Blazier, thank you so much for your time and for sharing all that knowledge with us. And just, a little bit, I'm sure, just the tip of the iceberg of all the work that you and your team are doing. Thank you for your time.

[20:53] Michael: 

All right. Thank you.

[20:55] Jenifer:

That was Dr. Michael Blazier, dean of the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Thanks for listening. I'm Jenifer Fouch. Don't forget to subscribe.

[21:09] Intro/Outro:

The Arkansas Food, Farms and Forests podcast is produced by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Visit aaes.uada.edu for more information.