Consortium to Preserve, Study Ancient Forests Holds First Meeting

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Researchers and conservationists will gather together for the first time to discuss research in and preservation of the Cross Timbers, a vast tract of old growth forest that stretches from Kansas through Oklahoma into Texas.

The Ancient Cross Timbers Consortium will hold its inaugural meeting from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. April 30 in the Vista Room at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla. The meeting is free and open to the public.

"The idea is to promote the ecological significance of this region," said David Stahle, University of Arkansas professor of geosciences and founder of the consortium. "People rush through Oklahoma on Interstate 40 and don’t realize that they are seeing a landscape that is practically unaltered by humans since prehistoric times."

At the meeting, researchers from universities, non-profit conservation organizations and government agencies will discuss the forest ecology, geology, wildlife, botany and soils of the Cross Timbers. David Schmidly, president of Oklahoma State University and noted wildlife biologist, will speak about wildlife in the Cross Timbers at lunch time.

In the afternoon, the Cross Timbers advisory board will meet to discuss the non-profit group’s mission, which will include education, preservation and research.

"We do hope to advance a research agenda," Stahle said. A large cooperative effort like the consortium will make research groups competitive for funding.

But top priority will be given to preservation and education, because even as Stahle and his colleagues have discovered vast tracts of old growth forest dotting the hills and plains, these trees are in danger of disappearing.

"We have seen thousands of acres of old growth up for sale or in danger of imminent destruction," Stahle said. The ancient post oaks and blackjack oaks survived because the stunted, gnarled trees grow on steep hillsides that were not fit for logging, but today’s technology includes machines that can grind the trees up for use by chip mills.

The Cross Timbers cut across eastern Oklahoma from north to south, extending into Kansas, Texas and western Arkansas. Scraggly looking trees populate the hilly landscape, most never reaching heights of more than 30 feet.

The forests were largely overlooked until the early 1980s, when Stahle decided to examine some of the trees. He found that some of the tree cores he collected in a random sampling dated back more than 300 years.

Using geographic information systems and information gathered on the ground, Stahle and his colleagues estimate that up to 500 square miles of old growth forest exist in the Oklahoma Cross Timbers alone. The old growth discovered includes Oklahoma landowner Irv Frank's tract, which through his generosity and the efforts of others has become the Keystone Ancient Forest Preserve near Sand Springs, Okla.

In addition to its value as an old growth forest, large areas of the Cross Timbers can serve as a living model for the natural processes of undisturbed watersheds, a potentially important research tool relevant to water quality issues.

When UA graduate student Krista Clements Peppers began examining the Cross Timbers in Texas, she heard people say that there was no old growth to be found. She has used satellite imagery to predict where old growth may still exist, and field studies have shown that tracts of old growth forest still dot the landscape of north Texas.

"We have an important part of the historical forest still remaining in the south-central United States," she said. "It’s a gold mine for people researching just about any kind of ecological question."

Stahle, Peppers, Matthew Therrell of the University of Iowa and Alynne Bayard of the Canaan Valley Institute, W.Va., have dated and mapped areas of the Cross Timbers and discovered vast tracts of forest containing trees that date back 400 to 500 years. These represent some of the oldest specimens in the country, and they also hold a highly sensitive record of rainfall in their rings.

This research and research on other topics within the Cross Timbers will be presented at the meeting. People from the University of Arkansas, Austin College, Oklahoma State University and the University of Iowa and representatives from the US Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Oklahoma Wildlife, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands and the Conservation Fund will be speaking at the meeting.

"We’ve tried to cast a broad net to our colleagues," Stahle said. "The more organizations we have involved, the louder the message is that the professional community believes that this is an important ecosystem—and an overlooked ecosystem."

Please see http://www.uark.edu/misc/xtimber/ to learn more.