FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — As trees begin changing colors this fall, a new generation of red oaks will be planted on 40 acres in eastern Arkansas, just a small part of a project that aims to re-establish 600 acres of hardwood forests in the state over the next three to five years.
Over the next few weeks, a team of researchers will plant various oak species seedlings at the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station’s Pine Tree Research Station in Colt.
By Jenifer Fouch
University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture
Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station
“We’ve completed the spraying, and the next step is mowing. After that, we’ll begin planting,” said Nana Tian, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas at Monticello and researcher with the experiment station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
This initial planting is part of the Restoring Bottomland Hardwood Forests Project, funded by a $3.71 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of its Climate-Smart Commodities program, a nationwide initiative.
The project aims to deliver ecological and economic benefits, helping small, underserved landowners benefit from timber and carbon markets.
“These wetlands provide many important ecosystem services, such as timber products, habitats for wildlife, water regulation and carbon sequestration,” Tian said.
She said the trees will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and revitalize local ecosystems. A portion could later be used for timber products such as furniture, construction materials and paper.
Tian’s research will quantify these ecological and economic benefits by calculating total monetary and non-monetary values.
According to Tian, measuring monetary benefits is relatively straightforward since timber has an established market value. However, calculating the value of the non-monetary functions of trees, like carbon sequestration and water quality, is more complex. To address this, Tian employs data collection and analysis methods such as valuation surveys that determine the public’s “willingness to pay” for ecosystem services.
Oak trees’ role
Tian’s team will plant red oak species of Nuttall and cherrybark oak at the Pine Tree Research Station and any landowner sites where conditions are conducive to their survival and growth. Tian says red oaks are critical to the region’s wetland ecosystem as they provide high-quality timber and crucial food sources for wildlife, particularly waterfowl.
“Red oaks are some of the most important tree species for bottomland hardwood forests,” she said.
Other species being planted include black gum, persimmon, sycamore, and white oak.
Tian’s team will use two planting methods — potted and bare root — allowing them to investigate the ecological and economic trade-offs between the different planting techniques.
“We’ll measure growth and survival rates to compare the outcomes of the two methods,” she said.
The team will visit the Pine Tree Research Station two to three times yearly to monitor the trees’ growth and survival rates. Tian said her team expects about 80 to 90 percent of the seedlings to survive.
Restoring lost forests
Arkansas is home to about 18.8 million acres of forest, covering 55 percent of the state, according to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture 2022 Forest Inventory. That’s about 11.7 billion trees.
These forests include mixes of oaks, hickories and pines, and bottomland hardwoods. The most abundant hardwoods are white oak, sweetgum, post oak, northern red oak, black oak, and southern red oak, according to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture Forestry Division 2023 Forest Health Highlights report.
Michael Blazier, director of the Arkansas Forest Resources Center and dean of the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, is the advisory board chair for the Restoring Bottomland Hardwood Forests Project. Blazier said the loss of bottomland hardwood forests in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley — including Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi — began decades ago as much of the land was cleared for agriculture.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Arkansas lost nearly 20 percent of its forestland, according to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture.
Supporting Arkansas Landowners
Blazier says that trend began to reverse in the mid-1980s when federal cost-share programs provided funds for landowners to replant bottomland hardwoods on less-than-optimal farmland. He said this project expands on that legacy but targets landowners who might have been left out of past efforts, especially smaller, underserved landowners who find it harder to access traditional cost-sharing programs.
“This project’s climate-smart ag practices are taking idle land that is not growing anything all that well because it’s unmanaged and converting it into its native ecosystem,” Blazier said.
Tian and Blazier hope the Pine Tree Research Station site will inspire private landowners by showcasing what their land could become if they join the program.
Landowners who wish to participate must meet a few basic requirements:
- Have a clear title to the land.
- Own 20 to 80 acres.
- Be willing to allow the research team access for planting and monitoring for seven years.
The grant will cover all planting costs — including labor, seedlings, and maintenance. Tian and her team will equip landowners with the tools they need to manage their land and market timber and carbon products independently.
“Marketing climate-smart commodities is another key goal,” Tian said. “We will develop strategies to help landowners market the various ecosystem services.”
Blazier said that participating landowners will eventually have a restored forest “free and clear” once the project is complete.
“This couldn’t have happened without the fact that we had already been engaged for a long time doing research devoted to re-establishing bottomland hardwood forests,” Blazier said. “And it couldn’t have happened without the teamwork involved and the mixture of unique disciplines Dr. Tian pulled together.”
Deep roots
Tian leads a team of six other researchers, each bringing a unique focus to the project.
Doug Osborne, professor of wildlife management, leads the research on waterfowl use of climate-smart plantings. Soil scientist Katy Dick is examining soil carbon quantification. Economist Matt Pelkki is the lead on forest biomass inventory. And Jacob Hackman, assistant professor of forest management and extension, will focus on extension and education.
Other collaborating institutions include the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff with the Keep It in the Family program and Texas A&M University, where co-principal investigator Jianbang Gan leads the research on carbon allocation and economic valuation and analysis.
To learn more about the Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website. Follow us on X at @ArkAgResearch, subscribe to the Food, Farms and Forests podcast, and sign up for our monthly newsletter, the Arkansas Agricultural Research Report. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit uada.edu. Follow us on X at @AgInArk. To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit uaex.uada.edu.
