Step #2 Determining Your Starting Point

Interested landowners face two distinct but related tasks in their efforts to restore longleaf to their lands. One, the establishment of the trees themselves, is challenging but there are tested and reliable strategies for most situations. The second, restoration of the entire longleaf forest community, or at least enough of it to provide all of the functions necessary to provide the benefits that make it unique, is considerably more difficult and may be very expensive. It will certainly be a long term effort.

To keep the process simple, we have identified 10 forest conditions common to the longleaf region today and suggest ways in which a landowner might begin the restoration process. These situations, in general order of the level of difficulty in restoring ecosystem structure and function from most to least difficult, include: (1) agricultural fields and pastures; (2) "off-site" upland hardwoods; (3) mixed hardwood-pine or pine-hardwood forest; (4) abandoned cutover forest land; (5) pine stands without longleaf in the overstory and no fire history; (6) pine stands without longleaf in the overstory and a history of fire; (7) mixed pine stands with a longleaf BA of at least 20 sq. ft. per acre in the canopy and no history of fire; (8) mixed pine stands with a longleaf BA of at least 20 sq. ft. per acre of longleaf in the overstory and a history of fire; (9) longleaf stands with no history of fire; and (10) longleaf stands with a history of fire.

Although longleaf pine is an essential component in the restoration of this system, it is only one piece of the puzzle. Many landowners are beginning to understand the value of native groundcover plants and the resultant continuity of fuels they provide. Depending on the landowners objective, a quick conversion in overstory cover at the expense of groundcover is not always the most effective means to reach the end objective. At the present time, the restoration of native ground cover is costly and seed-source is often uncertain. Until the technology catches up and costs go down, it makes the most sense to try and maintain targeted groundcover species prior to disturbance from site preparation rather then trying to restore it after the fact.

The prescriptions are summarized in tabular form in Appendix I.

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