Ash Die Back- A post-apocalyptic landscape.

greysides

John Boy stool my thread title, 'Life after Chalara'.

His question focused on what to do with a plantation once Chalara had been dealt with. My question is more to do with the landscape.

Ash are a dominant plant on our roadsides and in our field hedgerows around here. Are they eventually all going to succumb and die? Over what time span?

Are we going to be left with swathes of trees looking as if they're permanently in winter mode, in the midst of a green summer hedgerow?

Once they fall or are felled, what species will naturally replace them?

Are the Ash likely to regenerate from stumps or seed in 1-2 decades? Will the Chalara spores ever be gone to allow them rise again?

How has this type of event played out in the past?

SILVAMAN

Dutch Elm Disease.
Millions of elm wiped out in 1970s, but the trees persist as suckers until they reach a critical thickness of stem, whereupon the infection takes hold again and the plant dies back, only to resprout and so on.
The pollen record shows a sudden drop in elm about 5000 years ago, and over time a gradual recovery of elm until disease struck again. It seems to be a cyclical thing.
What to put into the landscape to replace ash? Huge hedgerow plantings of varied species such as oak,lime, cherry, maple, sycamore, walnut, beech, aspen etc. There's a wonderful choice out there to repopulate the hedgerows.

Danzy

I've planted about 200 Oak, some cherries, a few poplars, apple and beech trees for the impending denudation.

Hoping it will not happen but I grew them from seed so it costs nothing.

I was wondering why the Elm was coming back there are trees here that are dead for a very, very long time, that seemed to come back, all fading again last fall.

Danzy

One thing i'd say is that if there are Ash Trees that are resistant they will fill gaps in quite quickly, relatively speaking,

timfromtang

I was a boy at the time
whilst the elms declined
I recall the sadness
the gaps in the landscape

the ash may be similar
gaps in the skyline
but tis a vigorous plant
and many like me

are carefully managing
to try and see
if resistant ash
can be encouraged quickly

we are taking a big financial hit
on our recently planted bit
to manage the disease
hopefully 1-10% of these 14,000 plants
will prove resistant

ash regeneration is vigorous
those resistant plants should spread quickly
unlike the elm
it may take only 2 or three generations
until resistant ash
have again colonised our landscape

woodworkers too
a bonanza will see
loads of lovely ash
available for cheap

but as i walk the farm
the tears they roll
as i see venerable trees
loved by me
suffering

tim

tabby aspreme

Standing mature elm are scarce now, in summer time I still keep a lookout for there leafless skeletons in the hope of getting them for planking , and not letting them end up as firewood, I have some regenerated elm here up to 40 ft high and 16" in diameter, usually they are the last trees to shed their leaves in the autumn

Oldtree

With Dutch elm disease it seems to me that the vector, the beetle, ran out of nesting sites ie the elm stems and thus had a crash in beetle numbers effectively bringing about an end to the disease until there were enough elm stems around to support another huge increase in beetle population in a relatively short space of time, thus the cyclic nature of that disease over time. I have a small number of wild elms that appear to have regrown from suckers, but the beetle flies at about 2 meters off the ground so anything above that height with a bit of girth is fair game for it, so I worry, but they are surrounded by other trees so I'm hoping the beetle if it's around, dosn't smell them.

Much like a fire I think is how ash dieback will run its course, no ash trees no disease. but I feel that as we manage our landscape into the future there won't be a cyclic nature to this disease as we just won't plant enough resistant ash in the future for a resurgence of the disease, or a varient of it, to have a similar impact in the modern managed landscape, much like elm it won't be trusted.

In my native wood I can see sycamore taking over very easily if there is any gaps, to the detriment if the native flora.

Aspen, willow, alder and birch would be my choices to move forward with, but I would try to stick to native trees with local provenance.

99nsr125

I don't think the beetle nests exclusively in Elms, one of our mature ash dropped a branch several years ago and upon checking why it was dropped I found beetle channels.

Needless to say I nearly had a heartattack as all I could think of was The Emerald Ash Borer however the channels were 90 degrees in the difference but exactly like the Elm Beetle.

I have pictures if I ever find them I'll post them

Oldtree

Most bark beetles are host specific. The mother galleries with the juvenile holes (channels) exiting them can look very similar, as the procreation process is the same.

I've seen the galleries you mention on ash and on other tree species too, and they all look very similar, depending on the size of the beetle involved.