SilviCast
Episodes
S.7 Ep.4: Down Home Carbon: Climate Solutions from Family Forests
01 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Managing forests for carbon—and navigating emerging carbon markets—can feel overwhelming, especially for family forest owners managing smaller par...
S.7 Ep.3: The Old-Growth Project
01 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us in forestry remember the spotted owl controversy of the 1980s — a pivotal moment that put old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest i...
S.7 Ep.2: The Restoration Forester
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters know degraded forests all too well. You’re out on a woods-walk with an enthusiastic landowner, but your eyes go straight to the poor growi...
S.7 Ep.1: Morticulture
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A dead tree is not truly dead. As trees die, they become snags, downed logs, and eventually return to the soil as organic matter. Along this journey, ...
S.6 Ep.11: How To Love a Forest
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sometime the hardest thing and the right thing are the same. It is true of relationships, and it is true of forests. In this episode, we talk with aut...
S.6 Ep.10: Uneven by Design
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The legacy of the “cutover” has left much of the Lake States—and many other regions—with a dominance of even-aged forest stands. Today, both l...
S.6 Ep.9: River Trees
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Restoring and reforesting floodplain forests is no small feat—these ecosystems are as fascinating as they are complex. While they face many of the s...
S.6 Ep. 8: Bird's Eye View
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes, a simple “silvicultural tweak” can make a big difference in achieving diverse forest management goals. The real challenge lies in knowi...
S.6 Ep.7: Black Gold
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eastern black walnut holds an almost legendary reputation as one of the most valuable timber species in central and eastern North America. A single, h...
S.6 Ep.6: Landscape Change: Dynamic Forest Restoration Blocks
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters are pretty good at stand-level silviculture. But what if we want to make changes to forest vegetation at a much larger scale? Silviculture a...
S.6 Ep.5: To Treat, Or Not To Treat, That Is the Question
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Garlic mustard blooms, panic ensues! Many foresters in the eastern hardwood forests of North America can appreciate this sentiment as they see yet ano...
S.6 Ep.4: My Buckthorn Chia Pet
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Buckthorn has been the bane of many foresters and forest landowners throughout eastern North America. This long-lived, woody plant is capable of formi...
S.6 Ep.3: Line of Sight
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to turn around these days without seeing or reading something about UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Drones are becoming an increasingly ...
S.6 Ep.2: Toast Me Timbers!
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters are increasingly aware of the importance of prescribed fire as a silvicultural tool in the maintenance and management of fire-adapted forest...
S.6 Ep.1: Acadian Femelschlag
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
German foresters sometimes named silvicultural systems after the region where the treatment was developed and practiced. So it is with the Acadian fem...
S.5 Ep.12: Practical Wisdom
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters need to make decisions every day, and sometimes difficult decisions as we attempt to understand and address the diverse needs of the land, t...
S.5 Ep.11: Ecological Memory
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all seen it in the field… Aldo Leopold alluded to it… parts of a forest ecosystem are missing or changed. Now the forest doesn’t respond...
S.5 Ep.10: Why Does My Paint Gun Hate Me?
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The paint gun is a basic tool of the forestry trade. But what happens when we’re two forties into the woods and our paint gun goes down? This can pu...
S.5 Ep.9: Forest Farming: Planting the Seed
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us enjoying a little on-the-job foraging… some blackberries here, some morels there. But how often do we think about intentionally managing ...
S.5 Ep.8: Deer, Oh Deer!
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you are a forest practitioner in the eastern forests of North America (and maybe elsewhere) at one time or another you have likely been frustrated ...
S.5 Ep.7: Tsuga Science
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s an all too familiar scenario to foresters…a new pest is introduced into another part of the range and slowly works its way to a forest near...
S.5 Ep.6: Green, Red, Dead
01 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If foresters have a super-power, it might just be the power of observation. They notice change in the forest and correlate facts that would otherwise ...
S.5 Ep.5: An Old-New Idea: Cluster Planting
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It pays to be observant! Ogijewski, a forest scientist working in Russia in the early 1900s observed that oaks sometimes regenerated in small cluste...
S.5 Ep.4: Putting the B in BDq
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not worth saying anything unless it’s worth taking a long time to say, to paraphrase Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings. And sometimes you ne...
S.5 Ep.3: Ash: A Lingering Hope
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes foresters in eastern North America may feel as if they are in a Lemony Snicket novel, with chestnut blight, spongy moth, Dutch elm disease, ...
S.5 Ep.2: Digging into the Wood Wide Web
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As foresters we spend a great deal of time looking up, to evaluate forest composition, structure and growth. The story below ground is equally as inte...
S.5 Ep.1: Putting the Old in Old-Growth
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
No matter how you define it, old-growth forests are scarce as hen’s teeth in the eastern United States. More than 99% of our forests are second grow...
S.4 Ep.11: The Art of Silviculture
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The official Society of American Foresters' definition of silviculture describes it as both an art and science. Are foresters both artists and sc...
S.4 Ep.10: White Oak, Whiskey, and Wildlife
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you're a whiskey enthusiast, you are probably aware of a lesser-known federal law that requires all bourbon (an American whiskey) to be aged i...
S.4 Ep.9: Vision of Chief Oshkosh
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Good silviculture is about using the best available science, along with the experience and local knowledge we accumulate in the field. What if we prac...
S.4 Ep.8: ICO ICO a Nae
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
They say if you want forest heterogeneity, just get a larger group of foresters to mark the stand. While it is true that not every forester marks the ...
S.4 Ep.7: The Cedar Club
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters love a challenge! And one such challenge in eastern Northern America has always been northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis). A both ecolo...
S.4 Ep.6: Green Side Up
01 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It seems that every young forester may have heard the old adage “green side up" tossed at us half-jokingly while learning to plant our first tr...
S.4 Ep.5: The Seedling and the Flame
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that oak and fire go together like peanut butter and jelly. What we have been missing is the practical knowledge of where, when, and how t...
S.4 Ep.4: How Now Brown Cow?
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters have been warning landowners for years about the potentially damaging impacts of cows in their woods. So it is not surprising that we raise ...
S.4 Ep.3: Syrup with Saps
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Business is booming if you own a commercial sugar bush! As forest managers, this means more and more of us are hearing from landowners interested in s...
S.4 Ep.2: Climate Castaways
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Trees have had to migrate for millennia due to changes in climate. However, the pace of climate change today is far greater than historical tree migra...
S.4 Ep.1: The King's Pine
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Eastern white pine is an iconic tree of cultural and historical importance to eastern North America. The “great pineries” in this corner of the wo...
S.3 Ep.10: Ecological Silviculture - A Natural Model
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most interesting aspects of silviculture is that our understanding keeps growing. We look to old approaches, new research, and field practi...
S.3 Ep.9: Woodlot Assassins
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Interfering vegetation, be it native or invasive, is a real headache for foresters. Sometimes we wind up wishing for one more tool in the toolkit wh...
S.3 Ep.8: Scratching the Surface
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Remember the natural regeneration triangle? Natural regeneration needs a seed supply, an environment conducive to seed germination, and a suitable see...
S.3 Ep.7: The Chess Match
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wildlife habitat is the primary goal for many forest landowners, and in particular forest bird habitat. Silviculture treatments have great potential...
S.3 Ep.6: The Carbon Cycle Won't Leave Me Alone
29 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this second episode of our two-part series on forest carbon, we explore ways to enhance carbon storage and sequestration through silviculture. Wh...
S.3 Ep.5: Carbon, WHAT?!!
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In forestry school we learned about photosynthesis; the process by which trees use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to form sugars and oxygen. Bu...
S.3 Ep.4: Fly on the Slash Wall
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Necessity is the mother of invention, even in silviculture. Foresters in the eastern US often struggle with regenerating trees due to severe deer br...
S.3 Ep.3: Reading the Bark
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Fine hardwood veneer logs represent the pinnacle of log quality and timber value, with prices up to 10 times the price of grade 1 sawlogs. However, ...
S.3 Ep.2: Forests in Motion: Woodland and Savanna Silviculture
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Savannas, woodlands, and other open forest systems once occupied vast areas of North America where fire disturbance, at least in part, shaped their st...
S.3 Ep.1: Stocking Charts on Napkins
28 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A conversation with Dr. Susan Stout, Emeritus Research Forester and Project Leader at the USFS Northern Research Station, who has conducted applied si...
S.2 Ep.11: What's on your Mind?
03 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Silviculture is important work! Nobody has all the answers. So that is why each month on SilviCast we try to bring you a diverse set of guests, fr...
S.2 Ep.10: Climate Change Help Desk
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to climate change, we all have questions. As foresters some of our most fundamental climate change questions deal with how trees will ...
S.2 Ep.9: Above the B-line
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For many of us, one of our first experiences handling a paint gun is while learning to tend a pine plantation. It all seems very straight forward…...
S.2 Ep.8: Sugar Sand
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is a forester to do when your soils are almost always dry and sandy and low in nutrients? Skip the black walnut for sure and embrace the sand…...
S.2 Ep.7: NHC 2021 Special
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Forest practitioners and researchers recently “gathered” virtually for the Northern Hardwood Conference 2021 (NHC 2021), the first range-wide conf...
S.2 Ep.6: Silviculture's Secret Sauce
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lowland forests have always been a bit of a mystery to us foresters and silviculturists, at least here in the Lake States. Disturbance regimes are n...
S.2 Ep.5: Where Have All the Seedlings Gone?
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happened to the days when regenerating sugar maple was easy as falling off a log? Unfortunately, foresters from across the range of northern ha...
S.2 Ep.4: Right Tree, Right Place, Right Time
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There may be nothing more satisfying than planting a tree. Artificial regeneration of hardwoods in particular however can be a challenge. Trees ar...
S.2 Ep.3: The Green Wall
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A conversation with Ralph Nyland, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who has conducted ex...
S.2 Ep.2: Weed Wizards: Demystifying Forestry Herbicides
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Silviculture is all about managing forest vegetation, but sometimes that vegetation does not want to be managed! Whether that is controlling invasiv...
S.2 Ep.1: Betu-love it!
15 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Let's talk paper birch! There are few tree species that have such a rich and diverse relationship with the inhabitants of North America, being ...
S.1 Ep.6: It's OK to be Irregular
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters love terminology. In fact, foresters have a long history coining detailed words to describe their forest management, dating back to German...
S.1 Ep.5: The Kitchen Sink
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Foresters often encounter stand trees that have been “degraded” by past land use practices, whether that is destructive cutting, over-grazing, inv...
S.1 Ep.4: Oak, Cheeseheads, and the Dirt Forester's Toolkit
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, we discuss all things oak with Dan Dey, a research forester with the US Forest Service Northern Research Station. Nationally, Dan i...
S.1 Ep.3: Red Pine, Fire, Oh My!
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we sit down to have a chat (virtually that is) with Jed Meunier, a research scientist with WDNR – Division of Forestry, to discuss h...
S.1 Ep.2: Is This a Deer Thing?
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to regenerating a forest in eastern United States, most foresters know that deer browse will often be part of the equation. But assess...
S.1 Ep.1: One Plot to Rule Them All
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ensuring forests regenerate well following a harvest is a basic element of sustainable forestry and that is why good monitoring is so important. In ...