Successional Forests

    Our forests are one of Lutherlyn's most important resources.  The Lutherlyn Environmental Education Program would certainly be much different if we didn't have such a great forest resource.  Lutherlyn contains somewhere in neighborhood of 300 acres of forest and, as you hike the trails, it feels like that forest has been here for centuries.  For the most part, that is not actually the case.
     Three hundred years ago, the area that would become Lutherlyn, like most of Pennsylvania, was almost entirely forested.  Much of Pennsylvania was covered in White Pine and Eastern Hemlock forests, although there were also plenty of oak and chestnut trees, too.  By 1920, the lumber industry had finished devastating Pennsylvania and moved on to other states.  In the last 100 years, much of this land has returned to forest through a process called succession.
     Succession is a natural ecological process whereby disturbed areas naturally return to climax communities.  In our region, the climax community is a forest ecosystem, but oaks and hemlocks do not spring up from large areas of bare ground.  Succession is a process.

Chapel Hill from Main Camp ~ 1952

     One area at Lutherlyn particularly intrigues me when thinking about succession.  The forest between main camp and Terra Dei Homestead has changed a great deal over the past 60 years.  Here is a picture taken from main camp shortly after Chapel Hill was constructed; its probably from the summer of 1952.  Notice that there are very few trees between the craft cabin and Chapel Hill.  If the camp staff had stopped mowing that area, small trees would have moved in within 3 years, but they would have been hawthorns, crab apples, sumac, and locust - not what most people at that time considered "good" trees.

    Evidently, though, a forest was desired because the picture below, from 1954, shows that rows and rows of Scots Pines have been planted in the area.  Pines were planted in many camps at that time.  They were fast growing, so it didn't take long to get a forest and they could be thinned periodically and used to build cabins or sold for lumber.  This area was never thinned, however, and the Scots Pines have continued to grow for the last sixty years. 

      Sixty years ends up being the natural life expectancy of most Scots Pines, but during the last six decades those pines have sheltered many young trees that have grown up to take their place.  So this process of succession continues with Red Maple trees now taking over the forest that was planted to be pines.  Some Norway Spruce trees have also made their way into this forest from those planted nearby.  The picture below was taken early this fall.  Notice the Scots Pines falling over, while the Red Maples and Norway Spruce rise up to take their place.

     This forest is not done changing.  The process of succession is on-going.  As the maples mature, they will shelter oaks and hickories that could become the climax forest community.  Alternatively,  in a hundred years or so, these trees could be out-competed by White Pines and Eastern Hemlocks, but there aren't many of those close by to provide seed for that future forest.  If we are looking 100 years down the road, we also have to wonder what our forests will look like once our climate has warmed.  Whether Lutherlyn's forest is going to reach a climax community may have more to do with what you and I do as stewards of this planet than what trees start to grow.