Something strange, any explanations?

[Ichneumon]

Whilst taking a walk in the New Forest a friend and I came across what you see in the pictures. I large area of mostly dead or denuded oak trees. It was almost 100 metres across and at least 400 metres long. It was in a sea of perfectly healthy oak trees. There was absolutely no sign of burning - our first thought. The trees had not been bark ringed and because the edges of the area were so clear-cut we did not think disease was a likely culprit. Anybody got any idea of the cause?

 

[Nice65]

It does look like disease. But it may also be a low spot where water has stood for a long period of time. It may even be a combination of both, trees under stress are far more likely to succumb to disease than happy trees.

 

[ozzy1977]

I was going to say localised flooding.

 

[Goatboy]

Any signs of fungal fruiting bodies? Things like honey fungus can kill this way, often getting started due to a campfire leaving way for fungal entry into the ground then radiating out with it's bootlace rhizomes. (where it gets it's other name bootlace fungus)

 

[JonathanD]

I've come across that. It's eerie. Like graveyard. No idea what caused it though.

 

[Ichneumon]

Definately very eerie! There was no sign of fungal fruiting bodies. Best explanation so far is localised flooding. Strange that the trees had developed healthily for many years only to be killed off by flooding though.

 

[StuMsg]

A place I go to often sounds a lot like your describing.

It is a birch forest, 400m x 1000m in size, and half of it is dead. If cut a piece you can see black lines (2mm wide) through the wood - it looks like some sort of infectious bug eating through the tree, and every dead tree we cut has the same thing.

The most alarming thing is that it was bad last year but returning this year it has gotten visibly worse (a lot more dead trees).

 

[HillBill]

Thats called spalting, and usually happens after the tree has died.

A place I go to often sounds a lot like your describing.

It is a birch forest, 400m x 1000m in size, and half of it is dead. If cut a piece you can see black lines (2mm wide) through the wood - it looks like some sort of infectious bug eating through the tree, and every dead tree we cut has the same thing.

The most alarming thing is that it was bad last year but returning this year it has gotten visibly worse (a lot more dead trees).

 

[HillBill]

Possible explanation....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_ramorum
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/EPAversion3.pdf/$FILE/EPAversion3.pdf

 

[ammo]

I think your right Mark. SOD, does seem to fit the profile. Never heard of it before, very interesting.

Possible explanation....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_ramorum
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/EPAversion3.pdf/$FILE/EPAversion3.pdf

 

[HillBill]

Is the ground around the dead trees particularly mossy at all?

 

[rancid badger]

I've no idea what the cause is.

However, I'll ask Tom Dearnly, the FC ecologist for Kielder District, if he's got any ideas when I get the chance.

In the meantime, please be careful and wary of "widow makers" or dead branches, coming down without warning, it happens all the time and is one of the more dodgey aspects of spending time in any woodland, particularly broadleaf areas.:yikes:

It was one of the big issues I had to deal with when running my courses for the FC/FoCW in Chopwell wood and elsewhere. I had to have set routes and areas for foraging and material collection and they had to be checked and rechecked for potential deadfalls.

Stay safe.

Steve