Forest Health Protection

“Forest health” is a concept that became popular in the 1980s and remains popular even though its precise meaning is open to debate. Often, damaging populations of forest pests are indicators of other predisposing factors such as overcrowding, overmaturity, floods, drought, fire, or off-site plantings. Any analysis of the health of the forest reflects not only the well-being of the ecosystem, but also the human expectations for that forest.

Appalachian Mixed Hardwood

Proper management is an important tool that implements planning, prevention and control of forest pests. Forest pests can take many forms. Forests may contain insect stressors such as the southern pine beetle or hemlock woolly adelgid. Insect mobility often can make containment difficult. Diseases can stress forests and may gain strength by first attacking weaker trees. Though not as mobile as insects, the damage can be devastating; the chestnut blight nearly eliminated the American chestnut species. Often the forest stressors are nonnative species that can procreate rapidly due to a lack of native predation. Native forest species must often compete with exotic and invasive plants. Paulownia is an exotic tree whose leaves can grow extremely large resulting in the shading of native trees, shrubs, and ground cover. Oriental bittersweet competes by having brilliantly colored fruits that attract foraging wildlife, who then deposit seeds great distances through their waste. This vine can also become strong and woody, strangling the very trees it climbs. Finally, abiotic stressors must be considered. Climate changes and fluctuating weather condiitons can weaken forest species making them more susceptible to the aforementioned biotic stressors.

This section has been divided into five subsections from the point of view of stressors to Forest Health: Integrated Pest Management, Insect Stressors, Disease Stressors, Invasive Exotic Plant Stressors, and Abiotic Stressors. The geographic scope of this section in the thirteen states that make up the southern United States.