HTIRC

Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service | Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University
Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center

Research

Improvement

Featured Publications

Highlighted Projects

Walnut tree stand.The HTIRC’s tree improvement program seeks to improve the genetic quality of seed provided to nurseries in Indiana and across the Central hardwood Forest region. Improved breeding populations of black walnut, black cherry, red oak, and white oak are selected for superior timber quality characteristics. The HTIRC is also developing populations of American chestnut and butternut with enhances disease resistance to chestnut blight and butternut canker respectively.

Strategic objectives for our Improvement program include:
– Understand the influence of genetics in hardwood trees as it relates to desirable traits.
– Explore the potential for biotic resistance in some important hardwood tree species.
– Address the current lack of improved seed / propagule sources for important hardwood tree species in the Central Hardwood Forest Region (CHFR).

For more details view: HTIRC Strategic Plan.

Affiliated Scientists and Staff:

Vikram Chhatre, Anna Conrad, John Couture, Aziz Ebrahimi, Shaneka Lawson, Carrie Pike, Jim Warren, Caleb Kell and Douglass F. Jacobs.

Walnut tree stand.Pike, C., Koch, J., Nelson, C.D. 2021. Breeding for Resistance to Tree Pests: Successes, Challenges, and a Guide to the Future. Journal of Forestry 119(1): 96-105.

Pike, C., Williams, M., Brennan, A., Woeste, K., Jacobs, J., Hoban, S., Moore, M., Romero-Severson, J. (2020). Save Our Species: A Blueprint for Restoring Butternut (Juglans cinerea) across Eastern North America. Journal of Forestry 119(2): 196-206.

Pike, C. 2020. New Seed Collection Zones Are a Mid-Level Descriptor of Seed Origin for the Eastern United States. Tree Planters’ Notes 63(2): 78-9.

Pike, C., Potter, K.M., Berrang, P., Crane, B, Baggs, J., Leites, L., Luther, T., (2020) New Seed-Collection Zones for the Eastern United States: The Eastern Seed Zone Forum. Journal of Forestry 118(4): 444–451.

All Research Publications

Young planted trees with tags.Integrating Morphology, Genotype and Chemotpye Based Methods to Support HTIRC Butternut Conservation and Resistance Breeding Efforts
Project objectives: HTIRC researchers are using the network of existing butternut research plantings established over the past 20 years within the HTIRC tree improvement program. Four main objectives of this project: 1) Determine the pedigree of trees in HTIRC’s butternut tree improvement collection. 2) Determine the relative accuracy of morphology, genotype, and chemotype methods. 3) Assess disease incidence and severity among genotypes in HTIRC’s butternut tree improvement collection. 4) Determine potential for spectral-based data to assess disease incidence and severity.

Black walnut seedlings in lab.

Better Black Walnut by Breeding Without Breeding
Project objectives: To achieve our overall objective of improved black walnut breeding at HTIRC, we propose two related objectives: (1) determine a SNP genotype (DNA fingerprint) for all 242 parents in the HTIRC black walnut breeding program and for 2,750 seedlings in progeny trials to determine their paternity, genetic diversity, and relatedness, and (2) use modern statistical methods (GBLUP) to identify superior black walnut parents for height growth, diameter growth, and straightness on a range of sites, describe their benefits in an Extension publication, and make them available for propagation to the Indiana State Tree Nursery Seed Orchard and other seed orchards.

Observing the tree stand.

A New, Faster, Cheaper, And Easier Way to Measure HTIRC Plantations
Project objectives: The long-term goal of this project is to develop a Low-cost Optical Gauging System (LOGS) for efficient forest inventory and data management. LOGS will allow HTIRC scientists to obtain accurate, up-to-date data on all the trees in their breeding program.

For more details about HTIRC projects view our Annual Report.

Management

Featured Publications

Highlighted Projects

Dr. Mike Saunders adding markers for research, silvicultural plantations.Successful, reliable regeneration of native hardwood stands with high-value tree species continues to elude stakeholders throughout the CHFR. Likewise, many plantations in the CHFR are reaching an age where thinning and other mid-rotation treatments should be applied. Tests of new approaches to silvicultural management of both native stands and plantations will be installed. Regeneration success of the fine hardwood tree species in the HTIRC portfolio will be realized through application of both genetics and modeling to better develop refined management prescriptions.

Strategic objectives for our Management research include:
– Refine silvicultural methods to improve oak regeneration in natural stands.
– Demonstrate early- to mid-rotation management practices in plantations and natural stands.
– Improve establishment practices of hardwood plantations.

For more details view: HTIRC Strategic Plan.

Affiliated Scientists and Staff:

Jingjing Liang, Lenny Farlee, Songlin Fei, Liz Jackson, Doug Jacobs, Mike Jenkins, Mike Saunders and Mo Zhou.

Dr. Mike Saunders adding markers for research, silvicultural plantations.Carpenter, J., Jung, J., Oh, S., Hardiman, B., Fei, S. 2022. An Unsupervised Canopy-to-Root Pathing (UCRP) Tree Segmentation Algorithm for Automatic Forest Mapping. Remote Sensing 14: 4274.

Williams, L.J., Cavender-Bares, J., Townsend, P.A., Couture, J.J., Wang Z., Stefanski, A., Messier C., Reich, P.B., (2021). Remote spectral detection of biodiversity effects on forest productivity. Nature Ecology and Evolution 5(1): 46- 54.

Redick, C.H., McKenna, J.R., Carlson, D.E., Jenkins, M.A., Jacobs D.F. (2020) Silviculture at establishment of hardwood plantations is relatively ineffective in the presence of deer browsing. Forest Ecology and Management No. 15 article 118339..

Schempf, W., and Jacobs, D.F. (2020) Hardwood species show wide variability in response to silviculture during reclamation of coal mine sites. Forest 11(1), 72.

Buongiomo, J., and Zhou, M. 2020. Consequences of discount rate selection for financial and ecological expectation and risk in forest management. Journal of Forest Economics 35(1): 1-17.

All Research Publications

Students measuring tree trunk at FNR property, research includes genotype and chemotype based methods.Eforester: AI-Assisted Smartphone App for Automated Tree Inventory
Project objectives: (1) Develop a device containing several RGB cameras and LiDAR cameras to reconstruct the accurate 3D geometry of target trees; (2) Measure the orientations, diameters and heights with contactless method; (3) Classify the sorts of trees based on the vein and size information.

Image of Graft-union.Testing Efficacy of Underplanting and Enrichment Plantings for Stand Regeneration In Hardwood Forests
Project objectives: This project will create a more comprehensive knowledge of the longer-term responses of underplanting and enrichment plantings by: (1) Revisiting and assessing long-term (> 10 years) performance of hardwood underplantings and enrichment plantings across the full network of available FNR trials and attempt to link success or failure to site conditions, silvicultural treatments at establishment, and/or subsequent management regimes; (2) Evaluating hardwood tree responses to competition release for a subset of trials that are at the appropriate developmental stage and have sufficient stocking; (3) Establish and maintain a network of demonstration trials to be used as a resource for HTIRC/Purdue FNR Extension field days.

Nut Plantation

Economic Analysis of Growth & Yield and Thinning Decisions on Hardwood Plantations
Project objectives: This project aims to provide sound scientific evidence and user-friendly tools to help promote better forest management decisions on hardwood plantations of black walnut. A model of optimal stand establishment was developed previously and then dovetailed with a spatially explicit thinning model. Utilizing the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) with these early-stage growth data, different scenarios of planting densities, site productivities and percentages of veneer sawlog were integrated to quantify the growth and profitability from the mid rotation until the final harvest.

For more details about HTIRC projects view our Annual Report.

Protection

Featured Publications

Highlighted Projects

Tree trunk stressed.Forests throughout the CHFR are threatened by ever-increasing herbivore populations, invasive plants, pests, pathogens and climate change. Active research to quantify the impacts of these agents on regeneration, health and productivity of CHFR forests is critical to maintaining the economic and ecological services derived from these forests.

The primary strategic objective for our Protection research is to develop and demonstrate strategies to address existing and emerging threats to hardwood forests.

For more details view: HTIRC Strategic Plan.

Affiliated Scientists and Staff:

John Couture, Matthew Ginzel, Brady Hardiman, Douglass Jacobs and Michael Jenkins.

Tree trunk stressed.Williams, G.W., and Ginzel, M.D. 2021. Competitive advantage of Geosmithia morbida in low-moisture wood may explain historical outbreaks of Thousand cankers disease and predict the future fate of Juglans nigra. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 4.

Ethington, M.W., Hughes, G.P, VanDerLaan. N.R., Ginzel. M.D. 2021. Chemically-mediated colonization of black cherry by the peach bark beetle, Phloeotribus liminaris. Journal of Chemical Ecology. 47 (3): 303-312.

Mason, C.J., Walsh, B., Keller, J., Couture, J.J., Calvin, D., Urban, J.M. 2020. Fidelity and timing of attack patterns of spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) in ornamental trees in the suburban landscape. Environmental Entomology 49: 1427-1436.

All Research Publications

Using Remote Sensing to Characterize Stress Epidemiology in Hardwood Forest Stands
Project objectives: The main objective of this proposal is to integrate multi-spatial and temporal scale Remote Sensing (RS) products with forest management scenarios. Specifically, we will focus on three areas of forest management: 1) tracking insect pest and pathogen incidence, severity, and spread, 2) early detection of drought stress-related symptoms, and 3) optimize RS acquisitions to determine the number of collections appropriate to make an informed management decision.

Characterizing Abiotic and Biotic Tree Stress Using Hyperspectral Information
Project objectives: We had three objectives in this project: 1) determine the ability of hyperspectral data to provide information related to tree status in response to abiotic and biotic stress, 2) assess the reliability of hyperspectral information to scale from leaf, to tree, to stand level measurements, and 3) evaluate the validity of hyperspectral data to characterize stress responses over different spatial scales in different geographic locations.

Understanding and Manipulating Plant-Soil Feedbacks to Manage the Invasive Shrub Lonicera Maackii
Project Objectives: The overall objective of this research project is to determine the role of pathogens and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in driving or inhibiting Lonicera invasion in hardwood forests. Our specific objectives are: (1) Predict soil biotic characteristics that favors bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) invasion; (2) Determine the sharing of belowground pathogens and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi between bush honeysuckle and native plant species; (3) Measure nutrient transfer from bush honeysuckle to native seedlings as a function of season of treatment.

For more details about HTIRC projects view our Annual Report.

HTIRC

  • Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center
  • 715 W. State Street West Lafayette, IN 47907
  • (765) 496-7251
  • htirc@htirc.org