CHESAPEAKEQUARTERLYCHESAPEAKEQUARTERLY

Can Trees Save the Bay?

MARYLAND SEA GRANT COLLEGE • VOLUME 8, NUMBER 4

Can Trees Save the Bay?

contents Volume 8, Number 4

Cover photo: Trees stretch toward western Maryland on a bright October morning. It’s in theBay watershed’s western reaches that most big stands of forest remain. Opposite page: Smallbrooks feed Poplar Lick, a mountain stream in the Savage River watershed west of Frostburg,Maryland. PHOTOGRAPH S BY JACK GREER.

CHESAPEAKE QUARTERLY December 2009

Chesapeake Quarterly explores scientific, environmental, and cultural issues relevant to the Chesapeake Bay andits watershed.

This magazine is produced and funded by the Maryland Sea Grant College Program, which receives supportfrom the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the state of Maryland. Editors, Jack Greer andMichael W. Fincham; Managing Editor and Art Director, Sandy Rodgers; Contributing Editor, Erica Goldman;Science Writer, Jessica Smits. Send items for the magazine to:

Maryland Sea Grant College4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300University System of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland 20740301.405.7500, fax 301.314.5780e-mail: mdsg@mdsg.umd.eduwww.mdsg.umd.edu

We gratefully acknowledge support for Chesapeake Quarterly from the Chesapeake Bay Trust for 2009.

4 Saving Trees for the ForestThe Bay watershed must stave off sprawl to protect

the health of its woodlands.

8 Can We Protect the Chesapeake’s Forests?A watershed-wide plan races to preserve forests with

high value for water quality.

12 The View from AboveA researcher uses satellite imagery to make a case for

saving the trees next door.

14 The Tree That WasAn accidental farmer works to bring back the storied

American chestnut.

16 Research & Education OpportunitiesMaryland Sea Grant issues Request for Proposals

and seeks applicants for student fellowships.

Downstream

It’s quiet here. No motor sounds. Nohighway nearby. No airplane over-head. Today a south wind blows

through fall’s final leaves, the season’s lastwarmth before winter. This is the forest,home of a special kind of silence.

Forests are more than trees. Bear livehere. And deer and bobcat and wildturkey. From canopy to roots, forestssilently work with the planet’s elements— carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phospho-rus — to shape their own environment,and ours.

Beyond this, forests are places of soli-tude. Forests give us space to think.

Longtime New England forester RossMorgan says he does his best thinkingin the woods. Morgan is someone Imet through a friend who spends sum-mers in Vermont. For Morgan, a walk inthe woods makes things clearer. In thewoods, he says, “things make sense.”

For 40 years Morgan has consultedwith landowners from his home inCraftsbury, far north of Chesapeakecountry. He’s spent a lot of time in thetrees, and over the years his thinking hasmigrated from technical analysis to morephilosophical consideration — a deeperappreciation for what forests do, whatthey mean. He worries that his fellowAmericans don’t seem to think aboutforests very much.

He tells this parable. When Americansbegan to fully settle this land, three boxeswere sent from Europe with valuableinformation about forestry. The first boxwas marked “science.” By the end of the19th century, Morgan says, our knowl-edge was impressive. Though early forestresearchers lacked today’s tools, theygathered extensive empirical evidence,

Volume 8, Number 4 • 3

mapping, observing, collecting, experi-menting. They learned a lot about howforests function, and that work continuestoday.

The other two boxes of informationabout forestry were marked “philosophy”and “art.” Those two boxes, he says, neverarrived.

Fairly late in his career, Morgan studiedthe foundations of forestry in places likeGermany, Austria, and Switzerland, andhe was amazed to find frequent referencesto Friedrich Schiller and JohannWolfgang Goethe. Schiller and Goethewrote extensively about forests (Goetheincluded science among his manytalents), but they were not foresters.Mostly they were poets. Thinkers.

In the beginning Americans feared theforest. Clearing trees became synonymouswith conquering the wilderness and tam-ing the land. In this country, says Morgan,few understood the full value of forests.Even in the 19th and early 20th century,our philosophy of forestry, still largelyunformed, focused on maximizing short-term profits. This led to clear-cutting andto bare fields and eroding hillsides. To thedestruction of forests.

To be fair, as the country grew itspawned some of its own natural philoso-phers. George Perkins Marsh, for exam-ple, often considered the first Americanenvironmentalist, and Gifford Pinchot,the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service.And later, conservationist and thinkerAldo Leopold, advocate for a new landethic. At the base of this fledgling envi-ronmental perspective lay the Transcen -dentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson andHenry David Thoreau, who went to thewoods to learn to live.

But today, in Thoreau’s New England,many of the landowners that Morganadvises — mostly owners of small wood-lots — don’t put much stock in forests.They manage their trees, with Morgan’shelp, but in the end most cut them downfor short-term gain.

He’s not against cutting trees — weneed timber, he says, for paper and otherproducts. For building our homes. Butwhile his clients appreciate the value oftrees, most of them don’t understand thevalue of forests. They lack the ethic ofsustaining forests as ecosystems.

For those of us who live in theChesapeake watershed the question iswhether economic need — or greed —will determine the future of forests onprivate land. Those forests are often in thehands of those who may not think ofthemselves as foresters or forest owners,or forest philosophers. And the economicpressure is not just for timber. It’s for theland itself.

Morgan worries that our currentefforts at managing forests may failbecause we don’t have a solid philosophyto guide us.

Perhaps. In this issue of ChesapeakeQuarterly we take a walk in the woodswith some who have done their thinkingin the forest, who keep a close connec-tion with rural lands and timberlands.Learning a little about their efforts mayhelp us think more deeply about treesand forests. And about our chance for anew land ethic that values forests asecosystems and as special places. Howwe treat these quiet refuges will also tellus a good deal about the future of theChesapeake watershed.

— Jack Greer

from Deep WoodsTrees on trees, a stalwart legion, Swiftly past us are retreating ...

— Goethe’s Faust

“W atch out for rattle -snakes. Don’t putyour feet anywhere

you can’t see.”Nancy Ailes has been “buzzed”

twice already this year by rattlers.She loves to watch them. She saysthey’re pretty lethargic. Usually.When an Allegany Trail power linecrew recently found a nest offemale rattlers and killed them, itupset her mightily. Rattlesnakesbear their young alive, she says, andthe “mommies” gather in nests toprotect them.

She marches through tall grass.It’s hard to keep up and still watchyour feet.

Ailes is making the rounds today,checking out forests and fields she’sbeen trying to save for nearly adecade. The threat she fears is notrattlesnakes, but development.

This part of West Virginia, aswild and wonderful as the slogans wouldhave it, is within striking distance of thehighly populated Eastern seaboard andthe sprawling cities of Washington andBaltimore. Many of the homes built hererecently, she says, are second homes forpeople who live and work in thosenearby cities. As the head of theCacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust,she works on convincing the locals —farmers and other landowners who stilllive here — to give up their develop-

ment rights to ensure the future of thisrural landscape.

Nancy Ailes loves this land, rattle snakesand all. She grew up in nearby Romney,West Virginia “on the back of a horse.”When she was about seven or eight, herfather taught her to fly-fish in localstreams. Now her worst nightmare is thatthe farms of her youth will begin tosprout houses, and the forests aroundthose farms will fall to make way for resi-dential subdivisions and recreational

developments. She fears that what’snatural and homegrown about thisplace will disappear.

It’s a realistic fear. Land preserva-tion is a tough task in this neck ofthe woods. Much of this landscapebelongs to farmers who grew uphere. But many are already strug-gling with rising production costsand the falling prices bequeathedby global competition. For many,their land is their savings accountand their stock portfolio rolledinto one.The air smells clean here. From

the middle of the field Ailes pointsout a fenced area, part of a habitatrestoration project — one of thewatershed’s successes. And she cansee, on the other side of the fence,land that’s yet to be saved. Allthrough these valleys and alongthese hillsides there are fields andforests with pretty views ripe for

development.With premature white hair and bright

eyes, Ailes is still this side of 60. As shewalks through this broad field surroundedby ridges, she appears to draw on a deepwell of energy. A natural-born hiker, shetrekked Yellowstone National Park fromtop to bottom with her husband, ecolo-gist George Constantz. And then theyhiked it from side to side. Over the pastseven years, they also took on Jasper,Banff, and other parks. All told, they

Jack Greer

SAVING TREES FOR THE FOREST

Back home in West Virginia, Nancy Ailes devotes time andtalent to saving rural lands in the watershed of the Cacaponand Lost rivers. She’s racing against a wave of populationand development that spreads west from urban centers likeWashington and Baltimore. PHOTOGRAPH BY JACK GREER.

hiked some 1,200 miles with packs ontheir backs.

But her usual stomping ground is herealong the eastern edge of West Virginia,near the Virginia line and just south ofthe panhandle, a shank of the state thatjuts east between Pennsylvania, Virginia,and Maryland. It’s beautiful here, bothfarm country and mountain country.Much of this is grazing land, rollinggrassland surrounded by trees. It’s thetrees that make the ridges green, milesand miles of forest.

Her work in these uplands is part of abattle to save the landscape. It is also

work that will help save the ChesapeakeBay.

When rain and melting snow run offthis part of West Virginia they sooner orlater spill into the Cacapon River. At PawPaw, West Virginia, the Cacapon joins thePotomac. When the Potomac hits GreatFalls, it roars over the cataracts and landsin tidal waters, delivering its load ofnitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment tothe Chesapeake. That deadly trifecta ofdirt and nutrients has altered the ecologyof the estuary, darkening its waters, rob-bing its seagrasses of sunlight, creatingdead zones every year along the bottom.

The forests Ailes wants to save serve asimportant buffers — taking up nutrients,binding carbon, evening out the flow ofsurface waters, and protecting streamsagainst flashiness, eutrophication, andoverheating. Forests perform so many“ecosystem services” throughout the six-state Bay watershed, that scientists in a2006 report on the state of the Bay’sforests estimated their ecological value atsome $24 billion a year.

Saving forestland has emerged as oneof the best ways to restore water qualityin the Bay’s tributaries. And one of thebest ways to save forests is to stem the

Volume 8, Number 4 • 5

LEGEND

waterways

watershed boundaries

state boundaries

Potomac watershedboundary

ChambersburgChambersburg

GettysburgGettysburg

TaneytownTaneytown

BaltimoreBaltimore

College ParkCollege Park

FrederickFrederick

LeesburgLeesburg

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La PlataLa Plata

NanjemoyNanjemoy

HarpersFerryHarpersFerry

HagerstownHagerstownFrostburgFrostburg

BerkeleySpringsBerkeleySprings

RomneyRomney

WesternportWesternport

PetersburgPetersburg

WinchesterWinchester

High ViewHigh View

ShenandoahShenandoah

ManassasManassas

FairfaxFairfax

RockvilleRockville

AlexandriaAlexandria

HyndmanHyndman

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Second only to the Susquehanna, the Potomac River drains a 14,670 square-mile swath of the Chesapeake watershed. In the center of the western ridge-and-valley terrain, the catchment for the Cacapon and Lost rivers rises like a teardrop. The heavily forested Savage Riverbasin fringes the very edge of the watershed in far western Maryland. From the upland reaches to the Washington suburbs, saving forests offers the besthope for improving water quality in “the nation’s river” — and in the Chesapeake Bay. MAP CREATED BY JENNIFER D. WILLOUGHBY, INTERSTATE COMMISSION ON

THE POTOMAC RIVER BASIN.

Potomac River Watershed

tide of sprawl development. Conser va -tionists and others — after watching adegraded Chesapeake fail to improveafter more than a quarter century ofcommitments and restoration efforts —are counting on Nancy Ailes and otherslike her to preserve the region’s openlands and especially its forestland.

The challenge she faces each day isconvincing farmers and other landownersto give up their development rights topreserve this watershed’s farm and forest-land. Whether her efforts ultimately suc-ceed will depend on her continued pas-sion, her skills as a negotiator, and on thewillingness of those who own the land toforgo potential profits for the greatergood — for the good of the land.

Saving forests here is like holding theline in an ecological battle. After all, it’shere in the western reaches that most ofthe Bay watershed’s large tracts of forestremain. And according to the ChesapeakeBay Program, the Bay watershed is losingmore than 100 acres of forest a day.

How are forests doing out here? Howhealthy are they?

High overhead a hawk pierces theafternoon with its sharp cry. Ailes shadesher eyes to look up. Probably a redtail,she says. The hawk wheels toward a highridge, toward where autumn-tinted treesstretch way off to the west.

A Life in the Trees

It’s the first day of bear season, but KeithEshleman doesn’t think about that. Notuntil a ranger in a pickup rumbles downthe rocky access road and pulls up withhis arm out the window. Yep, first day ofbear season. Probably should be wearingan orange hat. Or vest.

The access road — meant for rangersand off-road vehicles — runs alongPoplar Lick, a bright mountain streamthat lies about ten miles west ofFrostburg, Maryland. Poplar Lick flowsinto the Savage River, which means thatlike the Cacapon River, it’s a tributary ofthe Potomac. On this October morningit gurgles with rainwater filtered clean byleaf duff, roots, and all that’s buried

beneath the forest floor. Along this streamthe trees look hardy. Hemlocks grow darkgreen. Ash leaves flash burnt yellow.

Eshleman, who’s on foot, has come toobserve several streams and to check oneof his many monitoring stations. Ahydrologist, he’s spent nearly 15 years inFrostburg at the Appalachian Laboratory,part of the University of MarylandCenter for Environmental Science. In thismountainous countryside he studies con-nections between woodland streams likePoplar Lick and the health of the foreststhat surround them. It’s a great laboratoryfor testing how forests affect watersheds.

As he walks along the stream, he picksout ash and beech and shagbark hickory.He taps black cherry trees with trunks asbig around as oaks. For a hydrologist, heseems unusually fond of trees.

His team operates 7 stream monitoringstations in Western Maryland forests and3 more on mine land. He also tracks anumber of monitoring stations in theShenandoah National Park, including 40on Paine Run alone. Most of the read-ings he gets from his forested sample siteshave remained fairly stable over manyyears. That stability allows him to pick up

small changes. He says that after a goodrain he can spot sediment signals evenfrom small farm fields or erodingbackyards .

The Savage River watershed, of whichPoplar Lick forms a part, is now morethan 80 percent forested, but it wasn’talways so heavily treed. Early in the 20thcentury, after heavy logging, these hillsstood bald. The trees have come back,and Eshleman now describes theseforests as well established, full of bearand other wildlife, and well above the 70percent coverage needed for goodstream health.

But some of his monitoring data havepicked up worrisome changes in thetrees, not just here but in other water-sheds as well. After a steep drive uphillfrom Poplar Lick to the Monroe Runoverlook, he points to the problem. Onthe right-hand ridge, bare limbs show upas patches of gray. These leafless oaks arenot just dormant, they’re dead. Victims ofthe gypsy moth.

This troublesome insect arrived inNew England in the late 1860s, courtesyof a scientist named E. T. Trouvelot.Trouvelot hoped to breed gypsy moths

6 • Chesapeake Quarterly

Taking the pulse of mountain streams, Keith Eshleman tracks the health of the forest by lookingfor telltale signals in the quality of the water. Opposite page: Monroe Run passes through forestedhillsides once bared by heavy logging. Now gray patches reveal another threat, oak branches strippedby gypsy moths. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK GREER.

with other moths to create a new strainof silkworms. Instead he spun a night-mare. With few natural enemies, thegypsy moth moved west and south —recently aboard trailers, campers, trucks,and cars . ..wherever the wandering mothmight lay its eggs.

Eshleman says that gypsy moths hitthese forests with a double whammy.Forests cover large stretches here, but thewoods are literally moth-eaten. Becausethey defoliate and kill so many trees, themoths thwart the forest’s knack for takingup nutrients and sequestering carbon.Then, adding insult to injury, the feastingcaterpillars excrete large amounts of“frass” — waste that’s rich in organicnitrogen and carbon. So just as the forestloses much of its capacity to handlenutrients, the caterpillars drop a heavyload.

This is what his monitoring stationshave told him. When moths defoliate thetrees, in-stream monitors pick up risinglevels of nitrogen.

The trend is alarming. These forestsface a number of exotic enemies, he says— not only the gypsy moth but theemerald ash borer and a woolly adelgidthat attacks hemlocks. In places not pro-tected from harvest, trees also face thechainsaw. In some areas of the Bay water-shed, forests now resemble a patchworkquilt.

These forest disturbances damage morethan the trees. They hamper the ability offorests to take up nitrogen and phospho-rus, their ability to protect the Chesa -peake Bay. This is particularly damaginggiven that the Bay already suffers fromtoo many nutrients, too much sediment.

He says that the loss of trees in forestedbowls between ridges would be especiallybad for water quality. Up here these hol-lows can send large amounts of rainwater toward streams and rivers. If disturbed byinsects or chainsaws, forests will also senddown big slugs of nutrients.

Eshleman says he appreciates the effortsof those working to restore forest buffers,but he doesn’t think that saving riparianbuffers is enough. Buffers can often bethin strips of trees, he says. “That may beimportant down near the Bay,” but we’re

The loss of trees inforested bowls between

ridges would be especiallybad for water quality.

Continued on p. 10

From hillsides to shorelines, trees filledthe Chesapeake Bay watershed to thebrim when the first Europeans planted

their roots in the 17th century. Forests cov-ered nearly 95 percent of the land. But bythe turn of the 20th century, logging andagriculture had felled 60 to 70 percent ofthe watershed’s lush forest cover.

Today, forests make up an estimated 58percent of the watershed, according to theregionwide Chesapeake Bay Program. Amarked improvement from 100 years ago,but still far from what experts say is neededfor a healthy Bay.

With daunting deadlines for restoring theChesapeake looming, officials and managersare looking to the trees for answers. Scien-tists widely recognize forests as the mostbeneficial land cover for preserving waterquality. Trees help shield the Bay from pollu-tion, acting as sponges that soak up excessnutrients and filters that trap water-cloudingsediments.

Don VanHassent of the Maryland ForestService puts it simply. “We spend a heck ofa lot of money trying to clean the junk outof the water. Well, how about trying tokeep the junk out in the first place?”

Forests help do that, he says. He thinksthat they are the defensive line the Bayneeds. But it’s a defense under pressure.Since the mid-1980s the watershed has lostabout 100 acres per day to development .

Keeping up — or at least catching up —with these losses means preserving forestsbefore they become part of that depressingstatistic. To that end, VanHassent and hiscounterparts throughout the Bay states areintent on “keeping forests in forests.”

They’ve even been ordered to do so.In 2006, the Chesapeake Executive Coun-

cil issued a directive calling for retaining andexpanding forests in the Chesapeake Baywatershed. The Council noted that althoughits efforts to preserve land had been widelysuccessful, they did not specifically targetforests — the very land hailed as mostimportant for the Bay. A comprehensive

report, The State of Chesa-peake Forests, whichdetailed the threat of devel-opment to the region’s pri-vate forests, further spurredthe call to action.

In 2007, in response tothe directive, the ExecutiveCouncil released a plan call-ing for permanent protec-tion of 695,000 acres offorest (about the size of six-teen Washington, D.C.s) by2020. The goal targetsforests in areas of “highestwater quality value” — suchas those near headwaters,steep slopes, and riparianareas, and large interiorblocks of forest that mayconnect to other preservedland.

As part of this “ForestConservation Initiative,”states must protect 266,400acres (about six Washing-ton, D.C.s) by 2012. Butwhile the land conservationgoal of the Chesapeake2000 Agreement was metwith great success — sur-passed two years ahead ofschedule — this new focuson forests has proven moredifficult.

Sally Claggett from theChesapeake Bay Programand the U.S. Department ofAgri culture Forest Servicereports that in the first yearthe watershed preservedabout 85 percent of the annual target of50,000 forest acres. Although this is a signifi-cant amount of forest cover, Claggett saysthat they were “not necessarily high-valueacres.”

She says that in 2009 they’ve been con-centrating more heavily on working with the

states to target high-value areas, which —while following the goal’s true intent — maymean coming up even shorter.

Preserving forests is more challengingthan preserving places like agricultural lands,she says, because there simply aren’t asmany preservation programs aimed at

8 • Chesapeake Quarterly

Can We Protect the

Both farmland and developed land send more nutrientsand sediment downstream than forests. To rescue Baywater quality, the regionwide Chesapeake Bay Program haslaunched a “Forest Conservation Initiative,” targeted to protect695,000 forest acres by 2020. PHOTOGRAPHS: ABOVE, BY JACK

GREER; BELOW, BY ANDY LAZUR; OPPOSITE PAGE, BY SANDY RODGERS.

forests. Claggett says working with local gov-ernments is key. “Decisions on what to pro-tect and where to protect often come fromthe local government.”

Don VanHassent agrees. “It all starts atthe local level with land planning andzoning .”

VanHassent also teams up with local landtrusts, conservation organizations, andforestry boards all across Maryland to reachout to private forest owners who may beinterested in setting aside their land in aconservation easement or applying forfunds through national efforts such as theForest Legacy Program.

He is pleased that efforts to conserveforest in Maryland recently got a boost withpassage of the Sustainable Forestry Act of

2009, which went into effect on October 1.Among other things, the act calls forenhancing outreach efforts and financialincentives to encourage landowners to pro-tect their forests from development.

But what exactly does protection mean? In most cases it means permanently pro-

tected from development, but there arealways exceptions. In the case of easementson private land, VanHassent says each ease-ment has its own terms. The degree towhich they protect forests varies. Some mayallow building a house or two, while othersmay not even allow maintenance treeharvesting .

Sally Claggett says that sometimes forestson “protected land” can be cleared forother uses. She witnessed this during a tripto Gettysburg National Military Park whereshe saw trees cleared to make way for anew visitor center and museum. Not all pre-served land is managed with conserving theenvironment as its primary goal, sheexplains.

Military bases, which may boast extensive

tracts of forest, also illustrate the complexityof forest preservation. While the land isoften considered protected, if the militaryneeds to build an airstrip or barracks, thetrees will come down.

All of this makes focusing attention onprotecting forests more important — espe-cially forests with a strong influence onwater quality. In recent years, riparianbuffers, bands of vegetation along streamsand rivers, have received special emphasis.Additional watershed-wide goals call forrestoring and planting buffers, but even newplantings do not necessarily enjoy officialprotection.

In the end, Claggett says, it will comedown to developing long-term partnershipswith those who own or control forestlandsto get the amount of tree cover needed fora “healthy, functioning watershed.”

Partnerships, along with patience andperseverance , because it may take a whileto get there. But at a rate of 100 acres offorest lost each day, will we run out oftime?

Volume 8, Number 4 • 9

Chesapeake’s Forests?Jessica Smits

The Heart of the MatterCan we control population growth?

Forests fall and suburbsspread for many reasons. Big-ger homes. Bigger lots. Morecars and more highways. Butunderlying all this sprawl liesa driving force: an increasinghuman population and aneconomy based on growth.It’s not a topic many want totake on. It’s politically compli-cated. It runs afoul of our cul-tural assumptions. But Bayauthor Tom Horton con-fronts the issue in a provocative white paper entitled Growing, Growing, Gone.

Read about Horton’s report in a web-only feature of Chesapeake Quarterly online,and learn what the Bay writer might say differently, if he were writing that report now.Visit www.mdsg.umd.edu/CQ.

Dark green patches show lands that areboth protected and forested. Other forest-lands, even when enrolled in conservationprograms or ease ments , may not bepermanently protected . SOURCE: CHESAPEAKE

BAY PROGRAM.

Protected Forestland in theChesapeake Watershed 2008

10 • Chesapeake Quarterly

not just holding the line on nitrogen, heargues. We’re trying to reverse currentdegradation. Forests are “anti-degrada-tion,” he says

Forests can take hits from exotic pests,chainsaws, and changing climate, if wegive them space to respond. They canexperience shifts in shape and speciesmakeup, but with sufficient size anddiversity they can be remarkably resilient.

Even when forests are disturbed, hesays they’re still the most “retentive”landscape we have — the best spongefor nitrogen and other nutrients. “Wehaven’t gone far enough,” according toEshleman. “If we’re serious about protect-ing water quality, we have to save whatforests we have left.”

Of Farms and Forests

Back in her dining room, Nancy Ailes sitsdown with Mike Rudolph. His family’sfarmed this part of West Virginia forthree generations. The room is cozy, witha mountain view through wide windows.Rudolph seems mostly at ease, but heclearly has a lot on his mind. The local

supply store sent him the wrong fenceposts this week and he’s had to reorderthem. The guys he’s working with on thefencing project are waiting for him, andthere are decisions to make. During along conversation, Ailes’s phone rings. It’sRudolph’s coworkers, calling about thefence.

Rudolph won’t say so, but he has oneof the biggest cattle operations in thispart of West Virginia. His cattle graze dif-ferent parcels of land in both Hardy andHampshire counties. He’s quick toexplain the economic squeeze that heand other farmers feel every day.

“Imagine,” he says, “that you were stillmaking whatever it was you were earningback in the 1970s and trying to live onthat in 2009. That’s what farmers are try-ing to do.” Beneath the visor of his FarmCredit field cap his blue eyes are piercing.

“Farming’s the only business I know,” hegoes on, “where you buy everything retailand then turn around and sell your prod-uct wholesale — and still try to stay inbusiness.”

According to Rudolph, the squeezebetween what a farmer can get for hisproduct and what he has to pay — espe-cially for anything that’s energy related —gets tighter all the time.

It’s in this harsh context of farming andeconomics that Ailes speaks to Rudolphand other farmers about putting some oftheir land in easement. She asks them tosign legally binding commitments thatwill keep that land from being developed— forever.

A tough sell. But she argues thatwithout this kind of intervention, farm-land will disappear. The legacy of landthat these farmers inherited will nolonger pass to another generation. Thewatersheds of the Cacapon, thePotomac, and so many rivers that flowinto the Chesapeake will lose their rurallandscapes .

It’s clear that Rudolph cares about theland. He speaks of local tracts with affec-tion, telling their histories. There’s a piecedown by the river that might go up for

Saving Trees, from p. 7 It’s in the harsh context ofeconomics that Nancy Ailes

speaks to farmers aboutputting some of their land

in easement.

Generations of farming run through theblood of Mike Rudolph (above). He and hisbrother have invested considerable time andmoney in best management practices, includ-ing a confined feeding station for cattle (left).Trees form the backdrop for his grazing lands— about 40 percent of forested lands in theBay watershed are associated with farmland.PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK GREER.

sale. A big chunk up on the ridge that’salready been sold. He’s especially worriedabout a family that owns a lot of acres inthe watershed — it looks like they mightsell that property in pieces.

Sitting forward on her dining roomchair, Ailes says that selling off propertyis a strong temptation, when land pricesare high and times are tight. But she’sshown that conservation easements canhelp farmers surmount the difficultfinancial hurdles of holding on to theirland. She works with lawyers who iden-tify tax breaks — savings in federalinheritance taxes, for example. The LandTrust is able to purchase a few of theeasements, but most are donated. Herjob would be easier if West Virginiaoffered state tax advantages for conserva-

tion easements, but so far that hasn’thappened.

Are the slim incentives now in placeenough to make the difference for aworking farmer? Will someone like MikeRudolph actually give up his develop-ment rights to protect the land in theface of financial uncertainty?

The Future for ForestsThere is no doubt that the future of theBay’s forestland lies largely in the handsof private landowners. According to theNational Forest Service, some 64 percentof forested land in the Bay watershed isfamily owned. Businesses, by contrast,own only 14 percent. As the number ofprivate landowners goes up — currentlysome 15,000 families and individuals —

the size of the forest parcels they owngoes down. For nearly 70 percent of allthose private forest owners, their piece ofthe forest measures less than 10 acres.

In short, more people now own smallerplots. That may be highly democratic, butit creates a special challenge for those try-ing to manage forestland, and for thosetrying to protect the Bay’s water quality.

It’s easier to deliver to a few biglandowners a convincing message aboutmanaging forests than to reach out toscores of new tree owners. That’s whyNancy Ailes right away aimed for a fewbig spreads in the Cacapon watershed. Bystriking deals with a relative few, she wasable to protect thousands of acres fromdevelopment.

Now it’s getting more difficult — for

Volume 8, Number 4 • 11

58. Percentage of the Baywater shed that is forested. Whilea signifi cant improvement fromthe turn of the 20th century

when logging and agriculture left forests aghost of their pre-colonial past, this is still along way from the 70 percent forest coverthat some scientists think is needed for ahealthy Bay.

100. Estimated number offorest acres lost per day in thewatershed since the mid-1980s.Some experts believe the actual

number may be even higher. And naturalresource managers are concerned thatdespite the slumped economy, developersstand poised to ramp up once the realestate market bounces back.

7.32 million. Acres ofland preserved in theChesapeake Bay watershed asof 2008. This surpassed the

Chesapeake 2000 Agreement’s goal of 6.8million acres or 20 percent of thewatershed by 2010. This is not allforestland.

70-80. Approximatepercentage of preserved landthat is forested. A concrete

number is hard to come by given that dataon preserved land are not easily brokendown by land cover. Additionally, someforests on military land are considered“protected” although they could beconverted to other uses.

By the Numbers 695,000. Additional acresof forestland the Bay states havecommitted to preserving in thewatershed by 2020 as part of

the Forest Conservation Initiative. The goaltargets so-called “high-value forests” —those with the greatest influence on waterquality.

42,551. Acres of forestpreserved in 2008 toward theForest Conservation Initiativegoal — though the Chesapeake

Bay Program notes that most of this is nothigh-value forest.

10,000. New goal for milesof forest buffers planted by2010.The original goal was 2010miles by 2010, reached far ahead

of schedule. Experts predict the states willfall short of this new goal by approximately2,000 miles. And buffers planted does notnecessarily equal buffers protected. Riparianforest managers worry they could be losingbuffers as fast as they are planting them.

6,172. Miles of forest buffersplanted along streams since1996. A buffer must be at least35 feet wide to count toward

this goal, though buffers between 100 to300 feet prove most effective for improvingwater quality.

— Jessica Smits

her and for many like her. To get a sense of the task facing the Potomac watershed,multiply the challenge Ailes faces in theCacapon many times over. And evenmore for the whole Bay watershed.

Easements will be an important tacticin the fight to protect open lands fromdevelopment, but they will not be theonly tactic. Ailes’s husband, GeorgeConstantz, founded the Cacapon Instituteto focus attention on the health of theriver and its watershed. Education.Advocacy. Technical assistance. These aresome of the tools people like Ailes use toprotect the land one acre at a time.

Her tools, it seems, are working.Mike Rudolph has put conservation

easements on substantial portions of hisland. And his brother, Jackie, has as well.He says they may do more. He says hedoesn’t want to see the land “broken up.”

Because of farmers like the Rudolphsand others, the Cacapon and Lost RiversLand Trust has now put into permanenteasement some 10,000 acres — 10,000acres protected from development inperpetuity .

With obvious emotion, Ailes tells thestory of one farmer who was able, withtheir legal advice, to hang on to familyland he’d inherited while saving it fromdevelopment. The day he signed the con-servation agreement he cried tears of joy.

For Ailes, saving the land from devel-opment is the essential first step. Yes, shesays, there are other issues to take on.Fencing streams. Protecting woodlands.Redesigning feedlots. But if the land fallsto development, pushing for better farm-ing and forestry practices will be moot,because this will no longer be farm orforestland.

She estimates that about three quartersof easements here are forested. But howsecure are the forests on these farmlands,especially along the ridges and in thehollows?

They are not completely protected, saysAiles, though the easements spell outstrict requirements for a formal forestmanagement plan before any harvestingcan take place. That plan must have a goalfor maintaining wildlife habitat and for

12 • Chesapeake Quarterly

The View from Above

W hen it comes to forests, Stephen Princetakes the long view. And the high view —

usually about 400 miles up or more. That’s the alti-tude range for polar orbiting satellites like Landsat.The big picture comes in handy when trying to geta handle on the whole Chesapeake Bay watershed— a 41-million-acre chunk of real estate thatstretches from the soggy marshlands of the EasternShore to the flinty highlands of West Virginia andPennsylvania.

Today Prince sits in front of two large computerscreens, looking at the satellite image of a smallpatch of woods. Students wait outside his officedoor. For more than 20 years he’s studied theregion’s landscape and taught geography at theUniversity of Maryland, College Park.

Prince and his colleagues produce maps thatshow where the forests are, and where they aren’t.One map breaks this down by sub-watershed,using color codes (see map at right). Dark greenshows watersheds at least 75 percent forested —where most experts agree that streams have agood shot at ecosystem health. Much of that darkgreen is confined to the western reaches of Vir-ginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

As the map moves toward the metropolitanareas of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Rich-mond, and Norfolk, forest cover drops to less than45 percent and then even less than 25 percent.Along the suburban fringe, where developmentand forests collide, battles over trees can be fierce.

One of those battles has come to College Park, not far from where Prince now sits. The imageon his screen is of a threatened forest right across campus.

Lying alongside busy University Boulevard, this small forest patch looks a little beaten up. Adeadly tornado ripped through in 2001, twisting tree trunks and breaking branches. According tocampus experts, these woods offer a chance to document how a small forest can come backfrom such insults.

Prince refers to this 22-acre patch of forest as “the wooded hillock.” It’s become a bone ofcontention , sparking articles not only in the student paper but in the Washington Post and theBaltimore Sun. Campus planners want to bulldoze almost half the woods so they can movemaintenance facilities and a parking lot away from Route 1, an area designated for more upscaledevelopment .

Students are upset about losing the woods. And so are faculty. Prince, whose accent reveals his roots in the United Kingdom, speaks with some heat. He says

that the woods serve as an outdoor classroom for some 1,300 students a year who study biologyand the environment. He feels that taking down the woods doesn’t fit well with a recent campus-wide emphasis on sustainability or with pledges to preserve natural environments. It doesn’t helpto green the University’s image.

And he thinks the trees play an important ecological role. He points to the image on the com-puter screen. There a green triangle reaches from one patch of woods to another.

Prince says it’s the last remaining connection between the riparian forests along the NorthwestBranch and those of the Northeast Branch — tributaries of the Anacostia and therefore of thePotomac River. Ecologists call these woodland connections “corridors.” And if the trees of thewooded hillock come down, that natural corridor will close.

This battle has special significance for Prince. His academic training is in plant ecophysiology —he studies and teaches the relationship between plants, landscapes, and ecosystems. He uses mod-els with names like “Sparrow” to estimate the impact of impervious surfaces. He estimates theamount of runoff that comes from developed landscapes, and the amount of nitrogen and phos-phorus that flows down streams and rivers into the Chesapeake Bay.

Though nothing like the vast reaches of forest in the Bay’s western watershed, the woodedhillock plays its part in slowing runoff, absorbing nutrients, and providing a wildlife corridor — thelast living connection between the two arms of the Anacostia. As development spreads throughthe suburbs, it’s not the only wooded corridor that’s closing.

— J. G.

A patchwork of watersheds knitstogether to create the Chesapeake drain -age basin. Dark green denotes watersheds still heavily forested in 2000. StephenPrince and his colleagues use satelliteimagery to track changes in land cover,including forest cover and impervioussurfaces . SOURCE: MID-ATLANTIC REGIONAL

EARTH SCIENCE APPLICATION CENTER.

promoting the “long-term sustainabilityof contiguous forest.”

Rudolph knows he can harvest histimber if he wants. For him, the trees onhis property represent a “savingsaccount,” an account he can cash in if hehas to. He says that he’d prefer never todo that, because “once you cash in yoursavings, they’re gone.” Besides, he likesthe trees. The farmland around here hasbeen about half working landscape andhalf forest for a long, long time. It’s notlikely to change.

Even so, unless he signs away his tim-ber rights, the trees are his. There are nolaws to protect them. Local limits on landuse are not strict — in fact in this partic-ular county, there is no zoning.

This is one of the key pieces to theforestry puzzle. Farms are currently oneof the most polluting forms of land use,largely because they cover so muchacreage in the Bay watershed. But farms

are also home to many of the Bay’s largepatches of forestland. If farms break upand fall to development — to roads, sub-divisions, schools, churches, shoppingcenters — that will mean more forestfragmentation. And worsening waterquality for rivers like the Cacapon andother tributaries to the Potomac Riverand the Chesapeake Bay.

Nancy Ailes walks Rudolph out to histruck. There is hardly a sound to inter-rupt the silence between them. Theyboth grew up in this ridge-and-valleyterrain. They both formed a bond withthis land long ago. Rudolph climbs intohis pickup and cranks the engine. As hepulls off down the road, Ailes wavesbriefly before heading back inside. A lightbreeze rattles leaves around the house, abreath come down from that forest onthe ridge.

— greer@mdsg.umd.edu

Volume 8, Number 4 • 13

In a disappearing act, the Lost River for much of the year drops beneath a mess of boulders.When it reappears above ground it becomes the Cacapon. Nancy Ailes wants to ensure that thewatershed’s farms and forests don’t perform a disappearing act of their own. PHOTOGRAPH BY JACK

GREER.

For More InformationState of Chesapeake Forests (2006)http://na.fs.fed.us/watershed/socf.shtm

Forestry for the Baywww.forestryforthebay.org

Forest bufferswww.chesapeakebay.net/forestbuffers.aspx?menuitem=14780

Forest stewardship education (UM Extension)www.naturalresources.umd.edu/EducationalWBY.html

Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trusthttp://cacapon.org

Information and handbook onconservation easements:The Trust for Public Land, www.tpl.org

Information on the Potomac River andgreat maps:www.potomacriver.org

Mid-Atlantic Regional Earth ScienceApplication Centerwww.geog.umd.edu/resac/

Save the Wooded Hillock www.savethehillock.com

It would not be rightto call Joe Dickey asentimentalist. With

a doctorate in physics, afull career in Navyresearch labs, and yearsmore of teaching atJohns Hopkins Univer -sity and elsewhere,Dickey has a clear-eyedview of the world.When he and his wifebought this land insouthern Anne ArundelCounty in 2002, theyhad no plans to becomechestnut farmers .

But when they decided to buy theadjacent 22 acres of farm fields to add totheir original 5 acres, they found them-selves on the tax books as farmers. Eitherthat, or they owed the government a lotmore money.

Tall, outdoorsy, and rugged-looking,Dickey liked the idea of becoming a cer-tain kind of farmer. What kind of farmerwasn’t clear, but he ran across an article inScience News that intrigued him. Itdescribed a grand experiment with agrand old tree: the American chestnut.

Most of us, including Dickey, who justturned 70, are too young to rememberthe age of the American chestnut. We do— many of us — know the story of itsdemise.

A Colossal LossThe American chestnut once gracedforests all along the Eastern seaboard,from Maine to Georgia. For thousands ofyears it supplied large brown nuts,wrapped in an uninviting spiky greenbur. The tree fed all kinds of wildlife andthen all kinds of humans. For hundreds of

years it supplied good wood as well, forlog cabins, for furniture, and in the endfor railroad ties, mine shafts, and telegraphand utility poles.

Then in the early 1900s chestnut treesbegan to die. The chief forester at theNew York Zoological Park (now knownas the Bronx Zoo) first puzzled overdying chestnuts in 1904. In 1906 scientistsidentified this new fungus, and at firstthey thought they could control it. Theytried selective cutting and aggressive trim-ming. Infected chestnut trees resembledamputees, until they finally succumbedand were cut down. By 1908 the NewYork Times declared, “Chestnut trees facedestruction.”

In the years following, the blightspread. As early as 1911, the fungus hadfound its way to nearly a dozen states.Some experts continued to argue that aHerculean effort to stay ahead of thedisease could still save many of theAmerican chestnuts that remained, espe-cially the large stands in Virginia and thesouthern Appalachians.

In the end, even these diehard treewarriors threw in the towel. It was a rout.

By the 1920s and 30s,the chestnut blight hadconquered just aboutevery forest in the U.S.Only a few stands seemto cope with the blight,in lower Michigan, forexample.

Here, in ChesapeakeCountry, a few sizabletrees remain. Mostly wehave only old photo-graphs, old tools, oldcarvings. One relic is atotem shaped fromchestnut wood given to

early settlers by Bay-area Indians. It’s keptin the American Portrait Gallery, whereits dark iconographic wood still gleams,handled by many hands.

Old photographs, old stories, a few sur-vivors. But also green shoots — reedysaplings that the stumps of otherwise deadchestnut trees send up year after year.These green scions should be rays ofhope, but after they reach about theheight of a human, the ever-present blightfinds them. And kills them. Researchers tell us that sprouts from theseold chestnut ghosts can’t keep comingback forever.

Race Against TimeThis is where Joe Dickey comes in. WhenDickey decided to become a part-timefarmer, chestnut trees became his crop. It’sa crop he’ll never harvest.

His trees actually belong to theAmerican Chestnut Foundation. Alongwith many others, he’s working with theFoundation to see if he can get chestnuttrees to grow — and survive.

In 2005 they brought nuts to plant, andwhen the time comes they will come and

14 • Chesapeake Quarterly

THE TREE THAT WASSaving the American Chestnut

Jack Greer

take the best of what’s left to propagatethe next generation. This leaves Dickeywith a 10-year commitment and a lot ofwork to do. To begin, he marked out 10-foot centers over large stretches of hisnewfound fields and sweated with fouror five volunteers from the ChestnutFoundation to plant 200 nuts. Each nutrepresented the best offspring from theprevious generation.

With green shoots sprouting in theground, he could have stood back andwatched his crop of chestnuts grow, exceptfor the deer. And the raccoons. The onlything that stopped deer from grazing onhis tender seedlings was a fence made ofmesh some eight feet high — highenough that they wouldn’t leap over it.

The raccoons were more determined,and smarter. Dickey put plastic tubesaround the seedlings, and thought he’dsolved the problem. But the raccoonssimply dug beneath the plastic tubeuntil the sprouting nut dropped into theirhumanlike hands. To stop the digging , helaid large mats of chicken wire over theplantings. That seemed to work.

As the growing season progressed, hehad to keep down all the other thingsthat grow in a field. He had to mow. Andmow. He does this himself, a physicist-farmer on the back of a tractor.

The next year, he planted another 200trees, and the following year he planted200 more. He now has a chestnut orchardof some 600 trees.

These are not ordinary chestnuts. Onlytwo or three percent count as pureAmerican chestnut, and these are almostcertain to die. Most of his trees hold agenetic mix of different breeds, carefullycoded and recorded. This field of dreamsis more like a big roulette wheel. Thewinning number will be the right geneticcombination, the proper mix of disease-resistant genes and good growth.

The lucky numbers for this game comefrom two main sources. First, theAmerican chestnut, with its penchant fortowering trunks and spreading branches— a king of the forest. Second, theChinese chestnut, which is hardy and dis-ease resistant, but lower and bushier thanits kingly cousin.

The object of the game is to haveenough of the first genes to get a treethat resembles the American chestnut ofyore, and enough of the second to keepthat tree from dying.

So far, Dickey says, only the trees thatare mostly Chinese seem able to survive.Good for a garden or backyard, perhaps,but no forest dweller, no towering giant,no source of abundant lumber. Nostoried chestnut tree.

Next spring, in 2010, experts from theAmerican Chestnut Foundation willcome and inoculate each of his five-year-old trees with a particular strain of blight(fungus). Then they’ll wait a year or twoto assess the trees’ health. To continue thisbreeding experiment, this race against

time, they’ll select the ones that are doingthe best. Say 2 or 3 out of 100. They willdestroy the rest. Cut them down andburn them.

“It’s a little sad, isn’t it?” Dickey says, hiseyes looking off beneath heavy eyebrows.Perhaps he can be sentimental after all.

The experiment will go on. There areabout three or four such orchards inMaryland, he thinks. One in the coastalplain (his), one in the Piedmont, and atleast one in the mountains. Each orchardis a roll of the genetic dice. Each tempo-rary chestnut farmer hopes to take breed-ers one step closer to a winner.

For now Dickey’s trees look great, rowafter row. He can pick out the youngtrees that are all Chinese. The leaves arewider, thicker. Many are bearing nuts,carried in those bristly green porcupinecases. Dickey says it’s not likely that anyof these trees have seen the more virulentfungus strains, strains that almost certainlyhover nearby. The blight keeps hangingaround, year after year, decade afterdecade.

After a century of hope and struggle,modern breeders like Dickey are bettingtheir money, sweat, and labor on a winner— a survivor that could bring toweringchestnuts back to the forests of the Baywatershed and beyond.

For more about chestnut trees, see SusanFreinkel, American Chestnut:The Life, Death,and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, University ofCalifornia Press, 2007.

Volume 8, Number 4 • 15

In a field of dreams, chestnut trees selected from different genetic pools (above left) soak in the southern Maryland sun. Physicist Joe Dickey(opposite page) never thought he’d be a chestnut farmer. An accidental expert, he points out the heart-shaped stipule on a mostly Chinese chestnut tree(above right). Nutri tious brown nuts (below) once sustained both wildlife and mountain folk. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACK GREER.

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Harbor Dredging StudySediments dredgedfrom Baltimore Har-bor shipping chan-nels may be suitablefor a number ofinnovative uses,according to a newreport. These usesrange from construc-tion materials to

nonagricultural soil amendments. The 110-page report, Sediment in Baltimore

Harbor: Quality and Suitability for InnovativeReuse, results from a year-long effort by anindependent technical review team. Itspurpose is to provide the Port of Baltimore,citizen stakeholders, and other interestedparties with an objective approach for han-dling and using sediments from the harbor .

The review team found that sedimentdredged from some locations is of sufficientquality for a variety of innovative reuseoptions, such as fill for mines and for sandand gravel pits, and components in cementfiller and lightweight aggregate materials. Alimited number of locations meet Marylandcriteria for residential reuse, which includessuch uses as manufactured topsoil (notmeant for cropland). Soil from a few sites isunsuitable for any reuse.

In its report, the team lays out a step-by-step protocol to help determine reuseoptions available for given dredging proj-ects. This guidance recommends that beforedecisions are made regarding dredging andinnovative reuse, any specific location besubject to case-by-case, site-by-site testing,risk assessment, and monitoring.

For additional information, including adownloadable copy of the entire report, aswell as a four-page layperson’s summary,visit the web at www.mdsg.umd.edu/dredging.

Request for Proposals Maryland SeaGrant is seekingresearch pro -posals for aspecial one-yearfunding cycle.Projects will

run from February 1, 2011-January 31,2012. Prepro posals are due in February2010, and final proposals will be due inJune 2010. To learn more about the focusof this year’s RFP, visit the web atwww.mdsg.umd.edu/programs/research.

Fellowship OpportunitiesCoastal Management Fellowships,NOAA Coastal Services Center. Thesetwo-year fellowships, currently available for2010-2012, provide on-the-job educationand training opportunities in coastalresource management and policy for post-graduate students and project assistance tostate coastal zone management programs.The fellowships are sponsored by theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-istration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center.

The deadline for submitting applicationsto the Maryland Sea Grant office is January29, 2010. For more information, visitMaryland Sea Grant at www.mdsg.umd.edu/programs/education/fellowships/, orNOAA at www.csc.noaa.gov/cms/fellows.html.

Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowships, National Sea Grant Col-lege Program. Applications are sought forthese one-year (February 2011-January2012) graduate fellowships, funded by theNational Sea Grant office and administeredthrough individua l state Sea Grant programs.

Knauss Fellows spend ayear in marine policy-related positions in thelegislative and executivebranches of the federalgovernment.

Applications are due atthe Maryland Sea Grant office February20, 2010. For application details, visit theMaryland Sea Grant web site atwww.mdsg.umd.edu/policy/knauss. Forinformation about the fellowship programnationally, visit the National Sea GrantOffice at www.seagrant.noaa.gov/knauss.

Research Experiencesfor Undergraduates(REU). Maryland SeaGrant is currently seekingstudents for the summer2010 REU program.Funded by the National

Science Foundation, the program pairs stu-dents with marine scientists at the HornPoint Laboratory (HPL) in Cambridge orthe Chesapeake Biological Laboratory(CBL) in Solomons to conduct academicresearch projects for twelve weeks (May 23-August 15). The labs are part of the Univer-sity of Maryland Center for EnvironmentalScience (UMCES).

To be eligible, students should be under-graduates who have completed at least twoyears of study towards a bachelor’s degreeand still be undergraduates in the fall of2010. Preference is given to stu dents whoare rising seniors. Those from underrepre-sented groups and institutions with limitedresearch opportunities are especiallyencouraged to apply.

Applications are due Feb ruary 17, 2010.To apply, visit the web at www.mdsg.umd.edu/reu.

Maryland Sea Grant Opportunities