Reforestation: It All Starts With A Seed

Dr. Joshua Sloan and Rachael Foe discuss the process of conifer seed selection and harvest for reforestation efforts in the Southwest, from selecting the parent trees and scouting for good cone crops to climbing the trees and collecting cones. Did you know some forest stands only produce a viable seed crop once every decade? Learn how you could help scout for cones through a new app from the New Mexico Reforestation Center.

Relevant links:

Related podcast episode: After-Fire Reforestation: The John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center 

Cone Collector and Observations App and other resources

Seedlot Selection Tool

Info about the New Mexico Reforestation Center

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Transcript

Emile Elias: Welcome to Come Rain or Shine, podcast of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub 

Sarah LeRoy: and the DOI Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, or Southwest CASC, operated by the USGS. I'm Sarah LeRoy, Research Coordinator for the Southwest CASC. 

Emile Elias: And I'm Emile Elias, Director of the Southwest Climate Hub. Here we highlight stories to share the most recent advances in climate science, weather, and climate adaptation, and innovative practices to support resilient landscapes and communities.

Sarah LeRoy: We believe that sharing some of the most innovative, forward thinking, and creative climate science and adaptation will strengthen our collective ability to respond to even the most challenging impacts of climate change in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world.

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as endorsement for any of the products, technologies, or strategies discussed. 

Emile Elias: After the devastating high severity wildfires across the southwest, reforestation efforts are critical. The reforestation process can be broken down into specific steps from beginning to end, often called the reforestation pipeline.

The reforestation pipeline includes conifer seed collection, processing, and storage, nursery production, site selection, preparation, and planting, and finally post planting maintenance and monitoring. Each portion of this pipeline is important to the overall restoration success. We spoke with Owen Burney about nursery production and capacity in an earlier episode.

Today we will start at the beginning with the first step in the pipeline. We're talking with reforestation experts about conifer seed collection, processing, and storage. Dr. Joshua Sloan is the Director of Reforestation Operations at New Mexico Highlands University. And Rachael Foe is Reforestation Coordinator with the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department.

First, I want to talk about seed collection. When we talk about reforestation efforts or tree planting in general, most of us outside of the forestry profession don't really spend much time thinking about where those seedling trees came from. How did the nursery get the seeds and who collected them? And there's a lot to that part of the story.

Rachael, can you share the seed collection process with us? 

Rachael Foe: Yeah, thanks Emile. I, I think I want to start a little bit sooner and say that people even within the world of forestry are a bit unfamiliar with this process and that's because reforestation, while it's not a new field, has become much more needed as we face the wildfire, the extreme wildfires, um, across the west.

Um, before these massive wildfires, um, scorched the earth in hundreds of thousands of acres, we, our big fires out here were 10, 000 acres or less and oftentimes in a low severity so that in that low severity burn pattern you get patches where the trees still survive and the forest can regenerate naturally.

But now we're seeing hundreds of thousands of acres and forests aren't able to regenerate. And so some people I've been asked why, why do we even need the forest? Maybe just let Mother Nature take its course. And to that, you know, we talk about the, the water that comes from our forests, especially in the southwest here in New Mexico, 50 to 75 percent of our water comes from the forests.

And so it's, it's vital that we, we replant and we try to, to reforest, even if it's not reforesting all of those hundreds of thousands of acres. We’re putting trees in ideal locations where they're going to survive, and then eventually we can work at that natural regeneration process where the seeds are able to disperse.

And getting the right trees in the right space so that they do survive in our current and future climate, um, that's connected a lot to the seed collection process. We have to get the right seeds, the right genetics on the landscape, and now I'm coming back to your original question of where, how does the seed collection process happen?

And I've learned so much from Josh Sloan, Dr. Josh Sloan at New Mexico Highlands University and others about how this happens. And it's just incredible. It all starts with finding the seed. You have to go out and scout months before, uh, and because seeds don't produce every year. Um, I think people forget that the trees don't produce the cones every year, and nowadays it's taking up to a decade for a tree crop in a certain location to produce enough cones to collect the seeds.

So you have to have teams of people out there finding where those cone crops are, and then once they're found, you have to monitor them, because even over the course of a couple months or a couple weeks, those seeds could abort for whatever reason, or insects, disease, birds, and a number of things could impact those seeds.

But once, once you're sure that those, those seeds are there and those cones, then you can get your climbers together, send them out, and get up in the trees. And this, this process, you've got to imagine like a, you know, rock climbers with all their gear. And we're sending those kinds of folks, very trained, skilled, fit up in the trees to, to collect cones, which are usually at the very tops of trees.

So it's, it's people that are, you know, haven't just been through one training but have practiced because that's when you get the speed in order to get lots of cones in those burlap sacks and, and hopefully, collect plenty of bushels for, for the amount of seed that is needed because we're in, we're in quite a seed crisis.

We need more seed to do all the reforestation that is needed. 

Emile Elias: Great. Thanks, Rachael. So Josh, can you walk us through a day in the life of a cone collector? What does the process of cone collection look like, starting with planning your day all the way through transporting and storing cones? 

Josh Sloan: Sure, Emile, that's kind of a big question, and as Rachael alluded to, there's a lot of seasonal variation in those day to day activities involved with the collection process.

So, like she mentioned, early in the season, you know, she started with talking about the scouting to identify where those crops are. I could actually back up a step earlier because there's a lot of planning of course that, that even gets us to that point before we're sending the scouts out. And a lot of this, a lot of those early planning stages wouldn't necessarily be the work of the same people that are going out and doing the scouting and collection.

But it would be the big picture behind the scenes support work, which really makes sure we're getting the right seed to grow those trees to put them in the right spot for climate resilience. And so, you know, starting usually in spring, we'll have kind of a core team that's working with our agency partners, tribal partners, our NGO partners to identify what those most urgent seed needs are.

And what would be the most appropriate and valuable seed sources to meet those needs on the landscape. And so that kind of gets us to basically a shopping list, you know, that wish list for the seed sources species we want to collect that year. And that's when we start conversations, probably around May in most years, working with the scouts that may or may not be the same folks that do the collection down the line, but we start working with the scouts.

To give people routes and areas. And that's when we deploy the scouts. And it's, it's still in most cases very, very manual, a lot of driving around with binoculars to identify where those crops are grown and, and we do that in a couple of ways, sometimes working with agency partners, with foresters that are you know, out in the woods anyway for, for their own day to day work.

You know, we might be able to work with them so they can just add that scouting and let us know when they see those crops developing. But we also employ a lot of dedicated scouts that we send out. I think our in house scouting crews last year covered about 25, 000 miles just in New Mexico alone, um, scouting.

So pretty, pretty intensive, pretty rigorous travel schedule. And a lot of that has to do with those cone crops in many years being very localized. And not necessarily easy to find. And then especially if we're looking for a really particular seed source from a particular species for use in the reforestation of a particular burn scar or part of a burn scar, that can be a really challenging and time consuming process to find just that right seed source.

So, so day to day on the scouting side. Whole, whole lot of driving around the mountains, the forest, eating your lunch in a car, looking through binoculars, and a lot of, a lot of record keeping, a lot of mapping to keep track of where those crops are developing. Once we move through that scouting into the monitoring process, when we get into monitoring, that's really when we've kind of picked out those best crops that we've found.

That are going to be the most valuable to try to collect that year, and at that point we need to shift from trying to find the cones to monitoring the development of that cone crop to make sure that we had good rates of pollination, that we have Plenty of seeds per cone, that those seeds are developing well, that the embryos are healthy and maturing properly, that we don't have a lot of insect infestation.

So during that monitoring period, we're going back and revisiting those cone crop sites that are under consideration for collection, and we're pulling sample cones down out of those trees and cutting them. And so we'll, we'll usually cut right down the middle of a cone to be able to, to look at those exposed cut seeds in the face of that cut cone.

And that will give us a lot of information about how healthy and how productive that cone crop is likely to be. And so in New Mexico, that, that monitoring window usually runs from mid to late July, right up until we're actually pulling the trigger to send climbers up the tree, which would typically be September and oftentimes mid to late September.

So, that monitoring window in terms of kind of the travel schedule is pretty similar to the scouting in that we have, you know, crews, folks running around all over the place making those visits and assessments and once we get through that, that helps us winnow that collection site list down even further until we decide exactly where those collections are going to happen.

So, as that's happening, that's when we're communicating with the actual climbers. The actual collection crews that we're going to be working with. And we get into kind of the, the logistical scheduling madness of figuring out, okay, who's, you know, who's available, when to go where, and what's everybody's work schedule looking like, you know, who's got climbers, who's got ground crew, who has trucks, all that good stuff.

And. Then hopefully, and this is, this is actually kind of what we're doing right now, is starting to line up all those logistics, all, all those folks that are actually going to do the climbing, uh, and then come collection time, you know, as Rachael mentioned, um, almost all of our collections are done with actual tree climbers, because we, we have a really short window.

Basically, we're looking for a closed cone on the tree, so a lot of our conifers, the seed is wind dispersed. So when the seeds mature, those cones open and the seed just blows away. And that of course would make it really hard to go out there and and collect all those seeds from all over the place. So what we're looking for are closed cones in which the seeds have matured.

So most of our southwestern conifer species, there's a one to two week window where those seeds have fully matured in the cone and will have good high germination rates. They'll, they'll be useful for, for growing up seedlings in the nursery, but the cones are still closed. And so that's one of the big goals of that monitoring process and why we invest our time and effort into that.

Is to identify that narrow window on a given site when those cones are ripe and ready to collect and a lot of times collectors will be helping with that also and then you know when we get right down to that wire and we've identified that the cones are ripe and good to go that's when we send those collectors up and you'll see them up in the tops of those trees.

You know, hanging out sometimes for hours at a time, picking those cones off the trees, putting them in burlap sacks, and sending them down to the ground crews. And, and then I guess the, the final, the final piece, which, you know, kind of in the same way that, that the seed part of the reforestation pipeline is often a little bit hidden and behind the scenes, a little bit less visible.

Another piece of, of all of this scouting, monitoring, and collection process that helps us get the seed we need is really the record keeping. And that's, of course, the least glamorous part of the whole thing, but is also super important because as Rachael mentioned, we need to be, you know, sure that we're putting the right tree in the right place and, you know, for it to be successful in helping with the reforestation and restoration of a site.

And that really hinges on having the right seed source for that. And so in our case, we actually, actually keep records of the coordinates and details of every parent tree we collect from, the seed lot that that went into. So if, if there's ever any question about a seed transfer or, or propriety of a seed match, we can go back to those records and, and I can, I can point to the forester.

We're like, you know, take them out there and, and all right, these, these 23 trees, those are the mother trees that we got cones from for that seed plot or however many trees it was. So that's, that's kind of the rundown of that typical process, um, and it's, and it's about a five to six month window out of any given year that we're involved in that collection process.

Emile Elias: That's fascinating. I didn't realize it was a, all this work goes into one to two week window where you're trying to collect the seeds. I'm curious in New Mexico, about how many people serve as seed collectors during that few week window. Is there, do you have an estimate for that? 

Josh Sloan: Uh, so last year we had about 40 people in total involved in collections in New Mexico.

And between those, those 40 individuals we had working on our collections, we were able to bring in about 3. 8 million tree seeds for reforestation last year. Yeah, so we're, we're hoping to get more involved. We're, we're holding some more climber trainings and collector trainings this year. Um, and so we're, we're working on building that up.

And, but, you know, realistically we'll probably be looking at, at 40 to 60 collectors in any given year. 

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thanks. And that leads well into my next question, which is, um, we'll start with Rachael. How did you learn how to collect seeds? 

Rachael Foe: Well, I took the training last year. It was a four day intensive training where the first day many of us knew, knew nothing about climbing and by the last day I was 80 feet up in a tree collecting cones and that was, was very exciting and I was actually 10 weeks pregnant when I went on that training, but, you know, told myself that if ever I feel unsafe, I don't need to do it, but I felt very safe the whole time.

There were some, uh, trainers from across the U S and even from Germany, from different parts of the world. Um, so we were in very good hands and I learned a lot about the process just from being out in the field and talking to people that have experience with that. 

Emile Elias: Great, that sounds um harrowing and exciting.

Josh, the same question to you. Did you learn to collect cones on the job or at school? How did you learn? 

Josh Sloan: So when I was in forestry school at Purdue University, this would have been 24 ish years ago, I was working in a reforestation lab and so I actually got into seed collection and then the climbing for the seed collection separately.

So the seed collection for a lot of species in the Midwest, we were dealing more with broad leaves, and we were actually doing a lot of acorn collection for, for oak reforestation. And, and so the acorn collection, those are, are actually way easier because they, they just conveniently fall off and, and don't go too far.

They just kind of drop. And so those we'd be able to go, you know, go out, collect from under the trees. But at the same time, I took an arboricultural practices course at the university as part of my forestry education. And that's where I learned to climb trees, started working as an arborist. And it was after I was already working as an arborist and had been hired by the university to train other climbers that I started getting contacts from folks that needed assistance with conifer collections or with collection from other species that needed climbers.

Um, and there, there wasn't a whole lot of that going on back then, so it was like, sure, we can, we can figure this out, and, and so working with, you know, others that had more background in conifer seed, um, really just built up from, from having that arboricultural climbing background and into operational climbing for seed collection.

Emile Elias: And Josh, you mentioned some training opportunities. Rachael, you mentioned that's how you learned to be a cone collector. Can you tell us a little bit more about the training opportunities for people who want to learn about this? 

Josh Sloan: Yeah, so a lot of times we'll, we'll run different trainings depending on the group that we're working with and depending on their particular training needs, because we're relatively early in the process of figuring out what, you know, workforce development and education for reforestation is going to look like in the Southwest.

A lot of the workshops and trainings we still, we do, are still fairly targeted and, and, you know, a lot of times we'll have a group that, you know, be it part of an agency or a non profit, non governmental agency that might have interest in participating in a particular part of that seed collection part of the pipeline.

And so we'll work with groups to develop tailored trainings around scouting or monitoring or collection, but we usually break those up. And so a lot of times we'll do specific planning and seed needs assessment trainings for groups. So we help Forest Service with some of their seed needs assessment planning, tribal, other, other agencies.

And then we'll separately usually do trainings for scouting and monitoring. And so that's, that's the one where there's probably the most opportunity to, to get the public and citizen scientists widely involved is in that scouting especially. Working with American Forests, we actually just developed and released a cone scouting app for New Mexico.

Um, so, so if you're interested, we can, we can share a link with you for, for that that you can get out there. And, and basically, and the app's pretty straightforward, but we'll hold workshops to get people out in the field together and, you know, get people experience looking at, at you know, what a healthy cone crop looks like for different species.

Familiarize people with the development process for cones in these different species, and to sort of calibrate them as to what they're looking at for crops. And, and so it's kind of that, that middle stage there, that scouting, where I think we could really use the, the most help from folks at large. And, and so I, I didn't mention it earlier, but, uh, that scouting and monitoring process, kind of those, those middle steps where we put all that time and effort in.

That is actually just as expensive as the collection itself. So about half the cost of a total collection is often from that scouting and monitoring. And so, you know, as, as we start getting this app rolled out, as we start getting the help of, of citizen scientists and, and partners among the public and helping us get that scouting data, that's, that's going to drastically increase the efficiency of these collections.

When we get to the actual climber part, at that point, we often need fewer people in terms of numbers. And just because of, of the, the technical and, and, you know, potentially risky nature of that. On that end for the training, we typically target those training opportunities to individuals that are that are already in the arborist profession, that already have that tree climbing background, or that are already working with an NGO partner or an agency that that it makes sense.

So we do have courses that we run here at Highlands University. I actually taught a technical tree climbing course last spring semester. That's one that, that we're probably going to keep up for the foreseeable future. We'll probably run one technical tree climbing course per year. That one would be more accessible to folks that are, you know, just wanting to get out there.

But, yeah, so that's, I mean, that's kind of an overview of those different, different training opportunities that we break up by area. 

Emile Elias: Excellent, because there are so many opportunities for a variety of different people to be involved. So I did not anticipate trainings for the different stages. Uh, that's great.

And we will be sure to put that scouting app in the episode notes. So, if anyone's interested in using it, it will be there. I'm curious, Josh, how do you identify seed shortages and decide which cones to collect at a given time for a given location? Like it's, maybe, maybe you don't have as much freedom as, as I thought before we started this episode, but how do you identify or prioritize which seeds you focus on?

Josh Sloan: Yeah, it, it can be tricky and, and we're working with kind of two processes in parallel. So to your question on the one hand, we do have a needs assessment process that we usually work people through. And so we're in the process right now actually of developing the first state and region wide seed needs assessment.

We expect to have a draft of that ready by the end of the 2024 calendar year. But basically on the needs assessment side, we have, you can think of roughly two types of needs. You can think of existing needs and then you can think of anticipated future needs. The existing needs, we look at where those fires have occurred.

We look at which portions of those fire footprints or other disturbances that have happened resulting in a reforestation need. And to identify those acreages that need reforestation, and then based on that, that location, based on the historic forest cover type that occurred there, based on what would, would be usually the, the early successional, um, composition of that community that, that would, you know, kickstart succession after a disturbance like that on that site.

We'll come up with, with what would be the most likely, um, appropriate mix of species that would go into a reforestation prescription, and then by looking at acreages, by looking at, at what we expect the planting density to be for how many seedlings per acre we're going to need, then working backwards.

Think about how many seeds it would take at the nursery of that species to grow that many seedlings, um, because it's not a one for one. You know, a lot of times for, for rough math, we can figure it, you know, we'll take on average one and a half to two seeds to produce one seedling that's ready for planting.

And so then that works us back to a number of seeds we need. And then based on the species, we know approximately how many seeds per pound. And then we translate that into bushels, and then that gets us into the language that a collector is going to, going to talk in terms of. That, that gives us to, all right, you know, we've, we've got our shopping list and we need X bushels of cones for this species from this area to meet this particular need.

And so that's, that's kind of the, the rough workflow on the needs assessment side. And then you imagine doing that for every fire footprint across the landscape, that gets you to basically your seed plant to meet existing needs. And then forward looking, we would add to that a projection based on our, you know, fire trend, our, you know, high severity burn acreage trend within those fires.

And so we can, we can roughly model out where those, you know, and again very roughly on the landscape, where those future large fires and seed needs are going to be and add that onto the list of seed needs. But then of course like you alluded to and like Rachael mentioned earlier, a given seed source might only, and when I'm saying seed source I'm talking about like a particular geographical source of seed on the landscape, a particular group of trees or stand in one area, that stand might only produce a collectible cone crop once per decade. And so a great example right now is some of the Douglas fir seed sources we've been looking for here in New Mexico. I started looking for some particular Doug fir seed sources back in 2015, and in some cases I'm still looking because they have not produced a good, healthy, collectible, abundant crop in, in that last nine years.

And so, while on the one hand, we can have this pretty tidy, well quantified plan of what our seed needs are, on the actual collection side, that's where those scouting data come into play, and so for a given year, we look at how those available seed sources, those current year crops that we've identified through scouting match up with the needs in the plan, and then in conversation with our partners, depending what our collection resources available personnel look like for that year, we will prioritize those collections accordingly based on what cone crops are developing on the landscape, who's positioned well to collect those, and what identified needs those would need.

Emile Elias: Rachael, did you have anything to add? 

Rachael Foe: I just wanted to say that the amount of logistics that, and planning that goes into all of this is just amazing. And the fact that as smart as we are, we still can't predict when these cone crops are going to produce. You know, it's just an example of, of having to work with nature and, and do the best we can.

And it's just so interesting to me. 

Emile Elias: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It's a very complicated process and there are a lot of things that need to fall in place that maybe we have limited control over, is what I'm hearing. And so my next question I think is, is, would add another level of complexity to this, but I'm going to ask it anyway, but I think to do this would be a big challenge, and it is, I'm wondering about if climate projections play a role in which seeds you collect for a given area, and I'm wondering how that factors in, in terms of, like do you collect seeds for planting in a microclimate where they're currently found, or do you try to collect from areas that might more closely represent, um, projected conditions in a location.

And it seems like that would add another layer of complexity, but I'm curious to see what you have to say about it. 

Josh Sloan: Yeah, and, and that absolutely does. When we're, when we're thinking about stocking a seed bank that, you know, is needed for reforestation right now, you know, we're, we're already seeing massive effects of, of climate change driving these megafires that, that we're trying to restore the landscape after.

But when we think of the fact that we need seed sources that will produce seedlings that will survive on those harsh post fire sites today, under current climates, but which will still be able to survive and thrive on those same sites, You know, 50 years down the line, 100 years down the line, that's definitely a challenge in figuring out what the best seed sources are likely to be.

And so we, we kind of look at that on two ends of the reforestation and seed spectrum here. So on the front end, when we're making those collection decisions, one of the things I tell people and I tell our scouts is that we're looking for the best trees on the worst sites. In the sense that, that those are likely to be some of the most interesting, most resilient seed sources.

You know, when, when we're driving around, you know, scoping stuff out. I'm, I'm looking at those scraggly old ponderosa pine and bristlecone pine trees that are, you know, just growing out of a cliff face in a canyon somewhere. It's like, all right, like those are the winners. Let's, Let's try to get some seed from those and get that in the mix.

So on the one hand we're definitely trying to collect from those parent trees which have been, have shown themselves to be successful under already stressful conditions, stressful climates, on already harsh sites. With the expectation that those seeds are likely to perform well on other sites and in that seed zone.

But then the other side of it is the seed transfer guidelines we're working with. So, you know, some of the listeners might be familiar with the concept of a seed zone, which is basically a geographic area within which seed transfer from point A to point B is likely to be successful for a given species within those geographic boundaries.

But of course, a lot of the seed zones we have are retrospective. They're drawn based on historic climate matches and historic transfer compatibility for that seed. But then one of, one of the really cool tools that, that the USDA has actually come out with is, you might be familiar with the Seedlot Selection Tool.

Which is, you know, a tool that users, anybody, can go online and of course folks can can just search USDA Seedlot Selection Tool and it'll pop up and you can play with it. It doesn't hurt to play with it. And it's a way that users can input some basic assumptions about what future climates in an area are likely to be and it can be used two ways.

It can be used to say, okay, I have this seedlot that was collected from point A. Under these climate predictions, where would that seed be likely to be successful for reforestation under these predicted future conditions? So that's one way to use it. And then the reverse way would be for people that need seed for reforestation.

They can basically plug in coordinates for a reforestation site, plug in the climate assumptions, And it will produce a map of areas predicted to be good seed sources for reforestation in that area based on those projected climate variables and it's really is tricky, both on the collection planning side and then once we have that seed in hand working with partners to help identify what are, what are likely to be the most successful seed sources, both now and into the future for, for their properties. But I mean that's, that's kind of how we think about it, is we, we think about it on the collection side, trying to get the most resilient possible seeds from those most resilient survivor parent trees and and then at the same time work as we're deploying that seed and and the seedlings for reforestation to make sure we get that seed on a site that that it's likely to be successful under both current future climates.

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thanks. That's a great answer. It's fun to think about those stellar resilient trees out there that you're looking for on really bad sites. So this next question is a little bit of a shift. It's about wildlife, and you alluded to competition with wildlife being a challenge when, when collecting seeds.

But on the flip side, do we know if seed collection has any impacts on wildlife? 

Josh Sloan: So the way we do seed collection today. With tree climbers collecting from the trees, typically we don't have any particular wildlife impacts. One of the things we do when we're scouting, you know, we look for what might be potential conflict.

We avoid nest trees. We avoid, you know, areas that might be critical habitat for endangered, threatened, or species of concern. And so in that way, you know, we avoid those. Predictable conflicts during the planting stage. And usually in the years we're collecting, we're usually collecting from pretty heavy crops.

And it's not like we're, we're picking these trees clean because, you know, like we mentioned, we, we have a seed plan that, you know, we're, we're usually collecting to meet certain amount targets, bushel targets for the different seed sources. And so we'll usually collect a smaller amount for a large, from a larger number of trees to make sure we get that diversity in the seed lot that we don't over collect from a stand.

So, so with current collection practices, I don't know of any wildlife conflicts that we've had in the Southwest. Historically, a different collection practice which we no longer use, which the New Mexico Reforestation Center doesn't and hasn't used, but other collectors have in the past and still use in other regions, you often hear referred to as squirrel cache collection, uh, which is exactly what it sounds like.

So, you know, certain small mammals, some species of squirrels included, will clip cones and basically hoard them into a, into a larder, into a cache to serve as, as a stored up winter food source. And especially in the Pacific Northwest, historically, and, and some of 'em still do, cone collectors would, would go out and try to hunt down those big squirrel caches and raid those for, for cones with good seeds in 'em.

And, and so that, that's an example where in other regions, other times, there, there is that potential for, for conflict. But that's, that's not something we, we do here. And, and there are also good reasons from a seed bank perspective to not do that because, you know, if you go with that squirrel cache collection, you're not, you know, being the forester.

The forester is not making those parent tree selections. The forester is, is not making those decisions about, you know, what to collect from which parent trees in order to maximize diversity in that seed lot. They're really leaving that selection to the squirrels in, in that case, which I, you know, I personally, like I'm, I'm sure they have great taste in cones and seed, but, usually, usually rather pick them out myself, I think. 

Emile Elias: Yeah, the squirrels might be looking for something different. Um, so you're both involved with the New Mexico Reforestation Center. Rachael, can you tell us a bit about the role you and the New Mexico Forestry Department plays with the Reforestation Center?

Rachael Foe: Yeah, so The New Mexico Reforestation Center is a way for, for us to address all of these, the issues of the, the reforestation pipeline from seed, to the nursery, to outplanting, and monitoring, and kind of every step in between along the way. And all of those pieces of the puzzle were addressed in our 2020 Forest Action Plan that the New Mexico Forestry Division, which is under our Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department, put forward back in 2020.

So my position was created to help implement and move that forward and I I believe I started in 2022. And so I'm, my role is to kind of be the glue between all of our partners in this process. That's how I see it. And there are, we have a memorandum of understanding or agreement and we, we work together with New Mexico Highlands University, which is where Josh Sloan is currently running our seed operations and is, is working really hard on that and getting a lot done.

And then we, we also partner with New Mexico State University. Which is where Dr. Owen Burney, who you spoke with earlier, is really working on the nursery side of things. That's also where the planned New Mexico Reforestation Center, the bigger facility, is going to be at their property up in Mora. And then our last partner that we're really intimate and close working with is University of New Mexico, and they're working a lot on the climate modeling that will enable us to really get those seedlings in the right place for the 2100 climate, because that model will tell us where are the best places to plant those seedlings.

And everyone's doing sort of research on reforestation kind of in between and currently right now. So I get to help them in any way that that is needed and then keep us moving forward. I get to work with our state forester, Laura McCarthy, work with policymakers to help the center get funded.

And we're, we're on our way and it's, it's looking really good for, for us to break ground on the Reforestation Center here pretty soon. 

Emile Elias: Excellent. I am excited to see how that rolls out. Josh, it's, I really have the same question for you. Can you tell us a bit about the role you and New Mexico Highlands University play with the New Mexico Reforestation Center?

Josh Sloan: Yeah, so, so New Mexico Highlands University's role in this is really twofold. On, on the one hand, as Rachael mentioned, we're the lead for the state on all of the seed collection side of the reforestation pipeline. So out of Highlands, we run basically all of the seed needs assessment. We run the scouting and monitoring programs.

We run the seed collection programs, coordinate all that. And we actually are about two weeks away from opening our extractory. So basically a seed extractory is when we get those cones collected in the field, they go to a place we usually refer to as an extractory that, you know, will get those cones open, get the seed out, process it, get it into storage and ready to use.

And so we actually over the last year just invested in getting the state's first dedicated extraction processing and storage facility up and running that'll be in place here until we get all of the new construction for the reforestation center up and running. So all the seed parts right now are, are run out of here, have a, have a lot of partners, but this is kind of the hub for it.

And then our, our other big responsibility with the Reforestation Center is facilitating workforce development and training and education. And really building that awareness and the capabilities among partners and among the public that we're going to need to really pull all these moving pieces together across the whole pipeline to be able to successfully reforest these disturbed landscapes in the southwest.

So, run a lot of trainings, you know, I'm, I'm on the road probably, you know, week and a half, two weeks out of, any given month running trainings and workshops for one group or another and then in between that or, you know, or also just the regular university courses. This is something that we're in the early stages of, but, but trying to figure out what makes sense in the way of, of university programs and kind of regular courses for, for building a workforce pipeline and education pipeline to meet the reforestation needs of the Southwest.

So those are, those are kind of the two main roles of Highlands in this partnership. 

Emile Elias: I know the center is focused on New Mexico, but also the Southwest and, and providing seed stock for the region. But I'm curious if people ever share conifer seeds across regions or even across countries. So for example, would we be able to send seed to Canada?

Josh Sloan: So there, there are kind of layers to an answer to that. But in, in brief, we do share a lot of seed. Most of that is, is not as far as Canada. So, so most of the seed transfer we would do from the sources that, that we're collecting in the Southwest, you know, we have some seed sources that, that we've worked with partners to move up into Colorado, where, where different groups, um, different land managers felt that particular seed sources of particular species we collected down here would be good matches for future climate on their sites and wanted to get that in their planting mix. Um, we have seed transfer between Arizona and New Mexico and in certain cases, but it's really when we're thinking of operational transfers like that, it's really very much driven by the climate match.

And so in that case, we're, as I mentioned earlier, we're going mostly based on, um, the seed zones that are, that are in force for any given species. And then also kind of informed by climate predictions from tools like the seed lot selection tool. When we're looking at those longer distance transfers, in some cases there are regulatory barriers to those international transfers, but there is international seed transfer.

Most of that actually is for urban trees, for landscaping trees, less so for operational reforestation use, but most of the international seed transfer that we actually, I think all of the international seed transfer we've been involved with has been exclusively for research use. Really just for, for common garden studies and similar performance studies to, to figure out, okay, if we make this kind of drastic seed transfer, how is that seed going to respond?

Because in a lot of cases, you know, we, we don't necessarily know yet. And so we're kind of in those early stages where we're still doing the research. We're still doing those common garden studies to figure out, you know, what a responsible climate resiliency seed transfer would, would look like. What kind of distances are viable?

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thank you. We like to ask all the experts we get to talk with what gives them hope for the future. So Rachael, we'll start with you. What gives you hope? 

Rachael Foe: As you can tell by this podcast, just the seed part of this reforestation pipeline is complex and takes a lot of logistics and we have an expert here who's not only understands all of that, but is is really instrumental and in implementing and getting a lot done.

And so that's just one example, but I get to work with people from the Forest Service and different universities, like I mentioned earlier, and within my own agency, who are working so hard on all of this, and not just reforestation, but a number, number of different issues related to forestry, but the reforestation world is really small, and small and mighty.

And it's, it's just incredible to me to work with such amazing people, smart people that, that know the full impacts of climate change now and into the future. And, and they're just you know, still here working hard to make a difference and to implement their research and get things done that they know will, will be important for, for now and into the future.

So, the people I work with really, really inspire me. 

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thank you. Josh, the same question to you. What gives you hope? 

Josh Sloan: I, I think what gives me hope is the knowledge and experience that we can overcome these reforestation challenges. You know, we've got the research coming together. We've got, as Rachael mentioned, a lot of really smart, knowledgeable, capable folks coming together to pull all the pieces together and figure this out and build a functional reforestation pipeline.

And that's something we're actually really far along on in the Southwest, more so than a lot of other regions and areas. And we're already seeing this on some of our earlier study sites. When we take a whole reforestation pipeline approach, and when we plan it out from, you know, collecting the right seed for use on a particular site, and we plan out the right stock type, and we can drought condition those stock types in the nursery.

And when we have appropriate storage and handling and transport processes for those seedlings going out to the field and when we plant during the right season and we use the right planting tools and techniques with the right site preparation and follow up. Those study sites that, that we started putting in as we've been filling out and figuring out these, you know, basically chunking out and looking at and studying these different pieces of the reforestation pipeline so that we can then pull it all back together into an operational scalable whole for use on the landscape in the Southwest.

Our sites, we're looking at, in most cases, 80 to 90 percent survival, which is a drastic, huge improvement over the historic average of 25 percent seedling survival on a lot of the older reforestation projects in New Mexico. And, and so, you know, over the relatively short time that we've really been focusing on, on building this reforestation pipeline and solving these problems, uh, we've already made a lot of progress.

And so we're, we're just in a really great position, to, to be able to address this. And, and that for me, I I'd say is what gives me hope is seeing us in a position where we have all of those necessary pieces falling into place for us to be able to do this. 

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thank you so much. If there was just one thing that people remember from this conversation, what would you hope that that would be?

And or did I miss anything that you wanted me to ask you? You can use the time either way. Rachael, we'll start with you. 

Rachael Foe: Oh gosh, there's so much. I hope people will take away that there is, although there's a lot of nuance to reforestation, it's not just planting trees, um, and there's, there's even more from beyond the seed world that, like Josh said, it's, we're, we're having success, and, and that, that people are working hard, and that New Mexico is, is a real leader in this space, and that's something to be really proud of, and, and to be excited about for the future of our, our region.

Emile Elias Excellent, thanks. Josh, same question. 

Josh Sloan: So I think if I had to give folks one take home from this is, is really just, you know, reforestation requires seed. It's obvious, but it's one of those things that a lot of folks, sort of miss. They get really excited about baby trees and, and planting baby trees and, and that side of things and, and a lot of times people overlook the, you know, that, that seedling, that little baby tree they're putting in the ground on a fire scar, that had to come from a seed.

And that seed probably, you know, took a whole pretty massive crew of folks and a lot of time and dedication and effort to get that cone out of the tree that held that seed for that baby tree. So I'd say that's, you know, that's the one thing that I like to help keep top of mind for people is, you know, that, that seed's important and right now that's one of our biggest limiting resources when it comes to our reforestation capacity is, is the lack of sufficient seed in our seed banks to, to meet the needs on the landscape.

Emile Elias: Joshua Sloan, Rachael Foe, thank you so much for speaking with us today. 

Josh Sloan: Thank you, Emile. 

Rachael Foe: Thank you.

Emile Elias: Thanks for listening to Come Rain or Shine, podcast Southwest Climate Hub

Sarah LeRoy: and the USGS Southwest CASC. If you liked this podcast, don't forget to rate or review it and subscribe for more great episodes. A special thanks to our production crew, Skye Aney and Reanna Burnett. If you want more information, have any questions for the speakers, or would like to offer feedback, please reach out to us via our websites.