Pine forest study aboard Lejeune to have impact beyond base

December 13, 2010 8:55 AM

HOPE HODGE

 

Camp Lejeune’s 15,000 acres of longleaf pine trees will soon fall under the scrutiny of the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station.

The base is one of three U.S. military installations selected for a five-year, $2.4 million study commissioned by the Defense Department’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, which will examine the way the conifers, known for their dense wood and longevity, store and retain carbon dioxide. Scientists hope the results of the study will help both landowners to better manage their forested land and use trees to offset carbon emissions.
Kurt Johnsen, a plant physiologist based in Durham’s Research Triangle Park and SRS’s principal investigator on the study, said the study would not only benefit defense installations.

“What we want to do is have a fairly complex model that land managers can then use to manage their forests,” he said. “We’ll take this fairly complex information and distill it into tools for the managers.”

The study, he said, will involve site work at Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Polk., La., as well as Camp Lejeune. Researchers will meet with base environmental personnel at each location this summer to discuss how to proceed with the work. Later, they will isolate certain tree stands to study.

Collaborating on the study are researchers from Auburn University and the University of Florida.
Lisa Samuelson, director of the Center for Longleaf Pine Ecosystems Auburn and this project’s leader, said the military bases provide a uniquely pristine environment to conduct an extensive study of this sort.

“They have very good records, and they’ve been planting long leaf pine for awhile,” she said. “Not only military but the private landowner will be able to use these models when we finish them.”

According to researchers, the three bases were selected to survey as wide a climate variation possible among longleaf habitats in the southern U.S.

Since only three million acres of the once-plentiful pines remain in the south, the roughly 15,000 stable acres of longleafs on each of the bases is also significant.

Camp Lejeune environmental officials said they will support the study while not taking an active role.
“We believe your research will be of benefit to MCB CamLej and will support and facilitate access to research sites on the base,” Lejeune Environmental Management director John Townson wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to Samuelson.

But, Townson wrote, no scheduled military training or natural resources management activities would be disrupted on account of the researchers.

At any rate, it will be several years before work begins in earnest aboard Camp Lejeune. The analysis of the trees — which will include study of root structure, decomposing taproots, and carbon in the soil — will move forward at the rate of one base per year beginning in March. Fort Benning is expected to be the first base studied.
Samuelson said she looked forward to seeing the results, expected to be presented to DoD officials in 2016.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “It hasn’t been done before and it’s a really useful project.”

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