Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” In the woods around Au Sable in northern Michigan, sometimes you can’t see the forests for the well pads. In the 1970s, energy companies began discovering that the region was rich in oil, and began to drill. Their wells were concentrated in a band approximately 25 miles wide and 110 miles long running through Manistee, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Antrim, and Otsego counties. During this intensive drilling period, royalties from oil production provided up to 30% of the revenue for some of these counties though the mid-80s. To drill in state forests, companies obtained permission to clear trees for the pad site (about 2 acres) to remove and store the oil they would extract. After the oil was removed, the company packed up and left, but was not required to replant the trees they had cut down. Today more than 70% of drilled wells have been vacated.
Not long after Fred Van Dyke became Au Sable’s Executive Director in 2011, he asked one state forester, “What kind of research could Au Sable do that would most help you in managing these forests?” “Find out,” the forester answered, “why these abandoned well pads never reforest on their own.” So began Fred’s work to plan and fund a study to answer this question, eventually building a coalition of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), private energy companies, and the Institute that would generate over $160,000 of support for Au Sable from 2015-2019, employ student research assistants from 10 different colleges and a fulltime Research Coordinator, Susan Wilderman. Over the course of the study, Fred, Susan, and the assistants would document the survival and growth of 4,000 trees of four species planted in four types of soil treatments on well pads across three northern Michigan counties. They would compare soils on pads with soils in surrounding forests, and, in those soils, determine levels of heavy metals and diesel organic compounds, pollutants often associated with oil drilling that could prevent reforestation.
Surprisingly, the problem was not pollution. Pad soils were similar to forest soils in levels of diesel organic compounds and heavy metals, and below levels that would limit plant growth. Among soil treatments, Fred’s team found that disked soils had greater survival for all tree species than soils that were fertilized, fertilized and disked, or not treated at all. Although pad soils were lower in organic matter, moisture and iron, all of which contributed to their lack of reforestation, disking overcame these deficiencies by breaking up and aerating pad soils, producing greater survival. Fred and his co-authors chose the international journal, Restoration Ecology, the flagship publication of the Society for Ecological Restoration, as the best place to present their work, and the best audience to use it. Scientific peer review is tough, but the study received positive comments from the start. As one reviewer put it, “The authors tracked the growth and survival over a refreshingly long interval compared to similar studies. Overall, it is a well-conceived study that I look forward to seeing published.” A second remarked, “… this is a very good manuscript. The topic should be of wide interest, the study is designed well, and the manuscript is well written.”
Nine of 10 research assistants chose to continue as co-authors, working through the long process reading of reviewer criticisms – responding, rewriting, reformatting, and restructuring text and figures, and reanalyzing data. “That’s what it takes to be a co-author,” Fred noted, “and the assistants who are now published authors through this paper have earned their stripes.” One former assistant, Taylor Marshall, now Program Coordinator for the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, put it this way. “Participation in this study was the foundation of my experience in research and has led me to a successful career in conservation.”
But former students are not the only ones affected and inspired by the research. As Research Coordinator Susan Wilderman, explained, "Working on this restoration project was life changing and a great opportunity to use my knowledge to help contribute understanding to the restoration of creation." But the work isn’t finished. As Fred now notes, “From here, we hope to take the research to new efforts that will make restoration on well pads part of sustainable forest management in Michigan.” And if that happens, thousand acres of well pads just might become thousand acres of forests.
Acknowledgments - The study described was written by Fred Van Dyke, Susan Wilderman, Seth Harju, Janay Faulkner, Kirsten Hindy, Patrick Kitzel, Taylor Marshall, Caleb Redick, Dave Rowley, Joseph Tolsma, Victoria Vander Stelt, Anna M. Wolfe, Brian Keas, and Kynan Witters-Hicks and published as Effects of soil treatments and tree species on reforestation of well pads in Restoration Ecology 30 (2022) (doi: 10.1111/rec.13658), a journal of the Wiley Publishing Company. Permission for description and reproduction of portions of the article in this story is graciously granted by Wiley Global Permissions.
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