Author Note: this article will be updated with new information as it comes in.

My mom sent me this cool article about pollarded beech trees in Romania. Romanian beech is Fagus sylvatica, rather than the Fagus grandifolia that grows around Athens County. People in Romania use pollarded beech roundwood as a building material. Ohio settlers were accustomed to using beech roundwood to timber-frame large barns. Today, those beech barn timbers get re-used for building modern houses. Romanians use the tiny but nutritious and abundant beech nuts for fattening up pigs. Farms in Appalachian Ohio often have beech as an increasingly dominant component of their woodlot. Maybe farms around here can learn from Romania, and make efficient commercial use of beech trees?

Building houses and barns with beech roundwood may take special consideration. A friend who builds timber framed houses around here had this to say about American beech wood: “Strength-wise it comes close to hickory but apparently beech is very hard to dry properly. It checks and twists and shrinks a ton. Folks recommend using it higher up in the frame, typically only in unfinished spaces like barns. So, cutting in winter when it’s already at its dries would make sense and then letting it air dry for awhile before use, probably stickered and strapped. Because it also reabsorbs moisture more than most woods, it’s critical to seal the end grain when drying.” As this friend points out, not all woods are equally useful in all parts of a timber-framed house. But since most private forestland is lease hunted, retaining beech to fatten up wildlife could be viewed as an additional economic benefit of choosing to protect beech from BLD. For the moment,, American beech seedlings and saplings come up thickly under overstory oaks and hickories. Later I’ll describe how that can sometimes be a problem. Pollarding small sawtimber sized beech stems for later commercial harvest of building materials may result in smaller, more vigorously growing stems. Given the limitations on its use, it would take a particular kind of highly motivated landowner and homebuilder to realize commercial value from beech roundwood. If you’re that person, I want to tell you about a new challenge to consider in 2024. A disease is spreading across Ohio that is severely damaging this species, and it’s almost at our doorstep. Treatment options are available, fortunately.

Beech Leaf Disease  (BLF) is a potentially fatal tree disease caused by nematodes from Eurasia. Last year, BLF made it as far south as Muskingum County. That means only Morgan County stands between Solid Ground Farm and these nasty little worms. It may be here within this calendar year. If we think beech can be valuable, and I say that rhetorically because it’s obviously valuable, what should we do to manage it when confronted with high disease pressure?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Our hypothetical land owner could establish a stand where there’s a focus on beech trees, and work with them long term. In 2022, Ohio researchers shared encouraging results from a five-year research project. Using an off the shelf type of fertilizer, applied twice as a soil drench or soil injection to soil beneath small diameter American beech stems, the beech tree’s immune system was bolstered enough so that the tree was able to fight off the BLF. Soil injection is regularly conducted by certified arborists. If you are stewarding a forest with beech trees and you have an end use in mind for the nuts and wood, we might need to engage in a little “target hardening” if we’re going to partake of the beech’s gifts into the future. I like this fertilizer option, because we’re not injecting a tree with pesticide, we’re simply nourishing it and letting it do its thing.

The product that was used in the study was PolyPhosphite 30, which bills itself as “The Only True Long Lasting Potassium PolyPhosphite Fertilizer”.

Here are two written resources furthering detailing this Integrated Pest Management option:

Beech Leaf Disease Management Options

Beech leaf disease treatment

Additional options for spot treatment of BLD exist. Bio-SAR Fungicide/Nematicide is a certified organic bio-stimulant product made of Chitosan that has been successful. A synthetic alternative that has also shown effective nematode and symptom reduction is fluopyram, a FRAC Group 7 fungicide. Broadform, a fluopyram plus trifloxystrobin product labeled for ornamental and shade trees, is typically the synthetic product used and has shown good efficacy. It’s good to have different options.

How is American beech doing in southeast Ohio, immediately prior to BLD’s arrival in Athens County? A useful website for looking at that question, which uses Forest Inventory and Analysis data, is maintained by the American Hardwood Export Council. “Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) data shows U.S. beech growing stock is 348 million m³, 2.6% of total U.S. hardwood growing stock. U.S. beech is growing 4.5 million m³ per year while the harvest is 3.8 million m³ per year. The net volume (after harvest) is increasing 0.7 million m³ each year.” As of 1/31/24, their website was showing that in a region encompassing Athens, Hocking, Meigs, Morgan, Perry, Vinton and Washington Counties, there is 78,000 m³ of American beech that grows every year, and 71,000 m³ of American beech that is harvested each year, for a net increase of 7,000 m³ increase across these 7 counties each year. I’m guessing that number will go down and be reversed after BLD arrives.

According to recent historic trends in American beech growth, how do foresters around here tend to view this species? Beech trees are slowly accumulating in the midstory of many oak and hickory stands, and it looks like beech would replace a greater share of the current overstory, via ecological succession, in the absence of prescribed fire, thinning, or BLD. But that outcome seems in question, now. For people tending the woods, furnishing an increasing amount of oak-hickory timber and nuts is perhaps the most common goal on high, dry sites. In pursuit of that goal, beech dominance of the midstory is widely regarded as problematic. Maybe with the advent of BLD, concerns of beech dominance in oak hickory stands will diminish without any effort at mid-story removal. Maybe some forest managers will consider setting a goal of retaining some healthy beech trees, instead of ignoring or discouraging these from growing. Hopefully this happens on at least a small subsection of site types, where this species naturally grows productively.

Carving out a stand here and there for beech to become co-dominant might be easy, even with the advent of BLD. Maybe this goal doesn’t have to conflict with oak-hickory management, at least in southeast Ohio- even though the oak wants fire, and the beech does not want fire, these mutually contradictory management strategies could be spatially segregated. Our location in Athens is almost exactly in the center of beech’s current natural range. To quote Silvics of North America Volume 2: “At latitudes in the middle of its range… beech is more abundant on the cooler and moister northern slopes than on the southern slopes.” In contrast, oaks and hickories thrive on a bit of deprivation, having a competitive edge on drier sites. I have seen service foresters set aside the driest 1/3 of a landscape to manage oak and hickory, variously calling these sites “oaky dokey”, generally with an Acid Mixed Sedimentary Upland ecological site description. One could manage those sites with fire, while excluding fire and fertilizing beeches on some portion of the shaded side of the hill, thereby supporting habitat diversity and beta-level species diversity.

To dig deeper into this topic, of dry sites with shallow soil being conducive to commercial management of white oaks, check out Trystan Harpold’s 2022 master’s thesis: “Uneven-Aged Management in the Missouri Ozarks: Effects of Site Conditions, Stand Density, and Prior Populations on Oak Regeneration“. Soils are overall more mesic in southeast Ohio than in the Missouri Ozarks, so attempting the same management strategy as Harpold wrote about without the addition of prescribed fire may get different results.

I am not arguing that this fire-excluded, phosphite fertilization of beech is commercially viable across entire stands. But some healthy beech stems could probably be retained for wildlife value, and builders who like using beech lumber in their projects may be motivated to try this. If I dare to speculate, maybe after two treatments with phosphite fertilizer have been applied as a prophylactic against BLD, pollarding some beech stems (as is done in Romania) may be something worth pursuing for such builders.

CAUV Program: this is one of two programs in which Ohio landowners may enroll qualifying parcels of forest or farmland into. The goals of the program are ensuring land management for commercial production of timber or other crops, while reducing the tax bill for the landowner. CAUV stands for current agricultural use value. The exact amount of reduction in taxes is dependent on the specific soil types present on the farm.

OFTL Program: this is one of two programs in which Ohio landowners may enroll qualifying parcels of forested acreage into. The goal of the program are ensuring land management for commercial production of timber, while reducing the tax bill for the landowner. OFTL stands for Ohio Forest Tax Law. If your land is enrolled in OFTL, the forested acreage (which may or may not be the entire property) qualifies for a 50% reduction in the tax rate, independent of differences in soil types across the farm.

Wildlife Habitat: depending on what types of wildlife you want to support on your land, your management activities may look radically different. You may want to foster particular game species like deer, wild turkey or trout. Other people may prioritize managing habitat for specific species of song birds such as prairie warbler or cerulean warbler. If you have state or federally threatened species on your property, such as hellbenders or Allegheny woodrats, you might decide to manage for these. Some people want to manage for everything. At the landscape scale- say 50,000 acres- you could certainly manage for every single species you’ve ever heard of. But on the scale of 10 acres or 100 acres, there are some tradeoffs. Certainly it’s possible, even at this smaller scale, to create more diversity in habitat types by changing the forest structure. Because every species of animal has a slightly different ecological niche, more diversity in forest structure is generally regarded by foresters as better. When we say ecological niche, we mean something like the typical “lifestyle” needs, diet, habitat requirements for feeding, breeding, rearing young, etc. for any specific species.

Increasing/Maximizing the Value of your Standing Timber: the value of a log depends on its species, and qualities encapsulated by the “grade” (think grades in school) of the log quality. Historically, black walnut and white oak are the most valuable species. The grade/price of a log is a factor the log length, diameter, and how many linear feet of trunk is straight and free of defects. If you’re formulating a plan for maximizing the value of your timber in preparation for making a timber sale, there are a few things to consider. The first is, buy low and sell high! If you have some traditionally valuable species with good form, but the market for selling the timber is temporarily depressed, as long as the stand is not “overstocked” (read: so crowded with trees that the rate of growth has stagnated) it might make sense to hold off on a sale until the price recovers to something closer to the historical norm. The second consideration is to effectively treat all undesired invasive species BEFORE a timber harvest. If there are invasive species present, the soil disturbance and increased light levels on the forest floor and skid trails will cause the invasive species populations to explode, and growing trees in the future will likely be impeded by these pernicious weeds. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. A third consideration is, what trees will replace the ones that are harvested? A landowner will probably need a forester’s help in order to really answer this question. Once the question is answered- what trees will replace the ones harvested- a landowner will very often not like the answer. There may be trees left standing, but a logger would prefer to buy the most valuable trees, leave woody stems that are crooked or stunted or just not a valuable timber species. Loggers also are not paid to ensure that there are seedlings of desirable timber species vigorously established on the forest floor before they conduct a harvest. Thus, if a landowner wants to allow another profitable timber harvest in 20 to 100 years from now, they would be wise to get help from a forester to manage their woods until the seedlings they want are in place- and then they can harvest some or all of the overstory. There are many techniques that alone or together may need to be employed to get the replacement trees locked and loaded. These techniques include but are not limited to: thinning the overstory species, conducting prescribed fires, “cut the worst first” for firewood and mushroom logs or cabinetry, planting the right trees in the right place at the right time with adequate tree shelters, or girdling undesirable overstory trees to create snags for wildlife habitat.

Payment for Ecosystem Services: landowners might choose to manage their native woodlands and grasslands for public benefit, which is a laudable and idealistic goal, but sometimes difficult for an individual to financially justify. Because of this, certain programs have been created to pay landowners to manage their land for public benefit, on behalf of other parties. The Nature Conservancy’s Family Forest Carbon Program is an example of payment for ecosystem services.

Cultivating Non-Timber Forest Products: there are many valuable herbs, mushrooms, nuts and fruit (and other things) that people may cultivate or manage for eventual harvest and sale from their grasslands and woodlands. Managing for these non-timber forest products (NTFPs) can happen simultaneously with other types of land management, but it requires specific timing and sequencing in relation to the timber management cycles, and the changing of the seasons. Even foresters certified by the Society of American Foresters are not required to know much about this aspect of forest management. However, Paradise Ecological Services has world-class expertise and experience with many aspects of this complex topic and can help landowners develop management plans to generate additional ROI from NTFPs. Cultivating NTFPs is often referred to as “forest farming” in the US.

NRCS Conservation Practices: the US government recognizes many different valid conservation practices, land management techniques that are useful for reducing soil erosion, storm-water runoff, biodiversity protection and air quality enhancement. Every fiscal year, state-level NRCS offices release updated “scenarios” for implementing approved conservation practices, including details on typical costs of getting these conservation practices executed.

Prescribed Fire: a planned fire that burns across the ground and is lit and controlled in order achieve land management objectives such as killing invasive species without the use of herbicide, stimulating wildflowers to flower and seeds to germinate. Prescribed fires are also sometimes called “controlled burns” or “prescribed burns”. A forester, ecologist, range management specialist, or holder of traditional ecological knowledge, can “prescribe” a fire in the way a doctor prescribes a medication- to treat a particular set of undesirable conditions in the patient/landscape. The prescription entails a set of environmental conditions (temperature, relative humidity, wind direction and speed, and many other things that support the probability of meeting the burn objectives. In Ohio, the Ohio Division of Forestry manages the state’s prescribed fire program.