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Green Earth, Inc
Long Forestry teamed
up with Green Earth, Inc. in 2008 to help
care for their 5 properties that are
preserved for preservation, wildlife, and the
enjoyment of Carbondale area residents.
We have adopted two of Green Earth's trails
and have volunteered at all 4 of their
nature preserves providing forest and land
management services.
Below we have
chronicled our history and projects with
Green Earth, Inc. |
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Green Earth I
and IV Trail Adoption - Oct '08 |
Fernlands |
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Chautauqua Bottoms Burn - GE III - Nov '08 |
Trail Maintenance
- Green Earth I - Dec '08 |
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Trail
and Bridge Maintenance - GE1 - Feb '09 |
Broken Tree -
Green Earth II - April '09 |
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Erosion
Control - GEI - April '09 |
Autumn Olive Control - Oct '09 |
Green Earth Inc.
Trail Adoption
Green Earth I and Green Earth IV |
In Autumn of 2008
Long Forestry and Lumberjack Tree
Care adopted 2
nature preserve owned
 by
Green Earth Inc. in Carbondale, IL.
The properties are called Green
Earth I and Green Earth IV, also
know as the Fernlands. Fernlands is located south west of
Carbondale off Union Hill Rd and contains a .6 mile
trail system, while GEI resides on
the east side of town on Park St.
GEI contains a 1 mile loop through
Oak/Hickory hardwoods and a
Sycamore/Ash bottom.
Our responsibility to these preserves is to keep the
trail brochures stocked, the trails
clean and clear, the trash picked
up, and to report any problems to
the Green Earth leadership team. |
Long Forestry also
has additional management goals for
the GE properties. For example, we
will initially concentrate on
invasive species control and
wildlife management.
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Please
 visit Green
Earth's website at
www.greenearthinc.org
and you
can contact Green Earth for
information about the properties,
how to donate or volunteer, or for
other information via email at
director@greenearthinc.com |
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Fernlands
Green Earth IV
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The sign at Green Earth's entrance
was created and donated by Green
Earth board member Chuck Howe. |
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| Erosion is an issue at Fernlands
and the landscape of the woods is
changing fast. As
drainages grow larger the trail is
often relocated. |
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One of many sitting benches located
along the path of Green Earth's Fernlands. |
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Green Earth's Fernlands is equipped
with footbridges to cross drainages,
thanks to the work and donations of
Green Earth supporters. |
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Chautauqua Bottoms Burn
Green
Earth III |
Long
Forestry helped out the SIUC Firedawgs this
past week on an 2 acre burn Green Earth in Carbondale,
Illinois. The prescribed burn was
highly publicized because it was in the city
limits of Carbondale and in close proximity
to several neighborhoods. The
objectives of the burn were to decrease the
woody stems and to maintain the open
grassland found in the bottoms. The
Chautauqua Bottoms site is unique in the
area and is maintained as a lowland wetland. Dennis Carill and Dr.
Charles Ruffner acted as burn bosses while
Long Forestry's Chris Long acted as
holder/interior photographer on the project.
The burn was s great success, with a
crowd of Green Earth personnel, members of
the press, and interested spectators.
When we arrived around 12:30 the weather was
perfect, with the main factor being a
Northwest wind, which blew away from the
surrounding neighborhoods. However, by
the time the burn was to start the wind had
shifted to the Southwest, putting the
project in jeopardy. Dr. Ruffner
proceeded with the pre-burn conference and
we headed to the field for a test fire.
By this time we had Northwest winds again.
We took the opportunity given to us and
started the fire on the southeast side of
the unit.
Chautauqua Bottoms
before the burn. You can see
the invading ash trees in the
grassland. |
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Dr. Ruffner checks the weather
before lighting the test fire. |
Dennis Carril lights the test fire
to check the behavior of the smoke.
The smoke is traveling south,
allowing the burn to proceed. |
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The first line of fire is laid down. |
The fire burned hot and controlled
the entire project. |
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Thick smoke produced by the high
moisture content of the bottoms. |
Green Earth board members and the
press watch from a distance. |
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Fire Dawg Lewis Reed holds the east
line, the hot and smoky side. |
Grass fires can burn hot and high. |
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Section 1 is complete. After
no houses burnt down the press left
before burning Section 2. |
Lighting the line on section 2.
The two sections were divided by a
trail in the middle of the burn. |
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Dennis puts in a flanking line
behind the original fire line. |
Wet bottomlands produce a lot of
smoke. |
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Some survivors, here we see
aggressive fescue grass. |
A good example of 100% consumption. |
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The Green Earth Chautauqua Bottoms
fire is complete. The fire
burned hot and consumed most of the
bushes and grasses, but the site
will need future burns to gain a
higher mortality rate on the
saplings that are invading the site. |
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Trail Maintenance at Green Earth I |
On December 6, 2008 Chris and Caroll Long
worked to re-establish the center trail at
Green Earth I. This trail meanders
through the center of property and cuts the
trail roughly in half. The trail has a
bridge and erosion bars installed, but lack
of use has made it nearly invisible.
On
this project, we used a leaf blower to clear
the trail and used chain saws to cut a path
through a white oak that had fallen across
the trail. |
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Above you can see the white oak top crossing
the trail on the left. With the bridge
already in place we could not re-route the
trail.
On the right is the trail curving
through the top of the white oak. We
made as few cuts as possible to leave the
tree as intact as we could. Some other
bent or broken trees and piles of debris
where cut up closer to the ground for
aesthetics. |
Below Caroll uses a Stihl BR 600 to
uncover the forgotten foot path. |
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Chris cuts the top of the white oak that is
blocking access to the bridge. |
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Bougs and Darling help rehab the trail by
putting some wear on it. |
The erosion bars were found buried under the
leaf litter. It took a curvy path to
find them all. |
Little Darling would take her last walk in
Green Earth I with Caroll before she left us
in early January
We love and miss you Darling
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Broken and
Hazardous Tree at Green Earth II |
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Lumberjack Tree Care was notified by the
Green Earth director, Stephanie Eichholz, about a
broken tree that hung over the trail and rested
in another tree. These trees are
considered highly hazardous due to broken and
falling branches, pressures pushing on the tree,
and their potential unpredictability. |
Chris
starts by assessing the tree. He
determines how the tree will be brought down
before he makes his first cut. |
First he takes off the limbs that are not under
pressure, followed by the limbs that are under
pressure |
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he
puts the back cut into the tree, always watching
above his head in case the break comes loose. |
 The
tree was well balanced as it is easily pushed it
over. |
 This
technique is called fence posting and is often
used in TSI to bring down trees that are hung up
in the woods. |
The tree top hung in another tree
on the other
side of the trail. |
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Erosion Control and Stump Removal at Green Earth
I |
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Lumberjack Tree Care did some trail mulching,
erosion control, and stump removal at Green
Earth I at the end of April. Our primary
concern was the erosion where the trail splits,
close to the trailhead. We used a truck
load of mulch created from a sweet gum stump we
removed earlier that day. |
The stump grinder makes great wood mulch, and a
couple of small stumps creates a lot of
material.
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We spread some mulch near the trailhead to cover
some muddy areas and to show off the trail guide
box. |
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This area was our primary objective for the
project. You can see the exposed roots and
level of drop
due to disappearing soil. |
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| We put the mulch
in place and will wait to see how the project
turns out. We hope the new barrier will
slow down the soil loss and even build it back
up as it decomposes. |
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| We took out an
old stump while we were here as well. |
Our hats off to the Green Earth volunteers who
built this walking bridge in April.
We
don't know who you are but it looks great. |
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Autumn
Olive Control at Fernlands |
| On October 28, 2009 Chris Long
and Long Forestry employee Andy Berg traveled to
Green Earth's Fernlands to start battling the
autumn olive infestation on the east side of the
preserve. Our long term goal is to
eradicate autumn olive from the site using
multiple types of treatments over a period of
time. Today we began by taking out all the
large, old growth plants, and medium size plants
to make room for native plants to grow. We
used the cut and stump treatment method, which
will insure the cut plants will not re-sprout
and continue their cycle. |
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You can see that the autumn
olive in this picture has taken over the
understory, crowding out all native trees,
shrub, forbs, and grasses. |
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| Chris cuts down
the bushes while Andy follows behind and sprays
the stumps with herbicide. Since it is
autumn the plants are pulling nutrients back to
their roots, which makes the herbicides more
efficient. |
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This is an area that has
been cut and treated. The amount of
sunlight that is now reaching the ground has
increased many fold.
Future
treatments are required for plants that are too
small to cut with a chainsaw. |
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Bougs
is ready to work on this small red oak that fell
in the soft soil and broke a foot bridge.
The
bridge has been broken and destabilized on the
left. 