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Are Your Seedlings Being Buried?

Certain sites are difficult to regenerate after clear cutting or wildfire. Heat and drought are well recognized as limiting factors on many such areas, but another factor affecting regeneration- -gravitational movement of soil and debris on slopes--is seldom considered. Removal of vegetative cover can greatly accelerate soil sloughing on steep sites, and planted or -natural seedlings maybe covered or uprooted. Although downslope movement of soil material and other debris such as rocks, litter, and slash is not as obvious as the gullies and alluvial deposits caused by surface runoff, it may be much more widespread. It occurs during all seasons but is most intense in the summer as dry gravel and in the fall as debris moved by frost heaving and heavy rains. In some areas deer have also accelerated this type of erosion by trampling warm south slopes during the spring.


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Author(s): Jerry F. Franklin, Jack S. Rothacher

Publication: Tree Planters' Notes - Issue 51 (1962)