The author in 2006 while serving with the Mormon Lake Hotshots of Flagstaff Arizona. By Michael B. Dunn | Brandywine Forest The push to repeal the Roadless Rule and sell or transfer public land threatens forests, watersheds, wildlife habitat, public access, and the ability of future generations to experience these places for themselves. I spent much of my early career as a wildland firefighter and hotshot defending public lands. I learned what those words meant through the wo

Brandywine Forest Field Notes An old oak stands on a dry slope above a Chester County stream, its lower limbs long gone, its bark thick and fire-blackened at the base by nothing more recent than lightning or a long-ago brush pile. A woodland nearby has an oddly open understory, a scattering of warm-season grasses at its edge, a meadow that seems to resist the forest's advance. It is easy to read scenes like this as untouched — a wilderness that existed in some pure, static fo

Every arborist has stood at the base of a tree that makes a client nervous. A hollow trunk. A dead limb hanging over the driveway. A cavity big enough to put your head in. The instinct — often the client's, sometimes the arborist's — is to clean it up: prune the deadwood, fill the cavity, or take the whole tree down before it becomes a liability. But a growing body of European forestry science, decades of British veteran-tree management practice, and a newer school of America

We assessed a three-acre forest fragment in Chadds Ford earlier this year. The canopy was in decline from beech leaf disease, the understory was stiltgrass and browse line, and there was essentially nothing coming up to replace what was dying. Three acres is not much of a forest. But the failure sequence on that site is the one I keep seeing across Bucks, Delaware and Chester counties, and it's worth laying out, because the order of events matters. Beech is one of the species

Walk a Centre County sand barren or a Pocono ridgetop a few weeks after fire and the bear oak looks finished. The stems are black. The leaves are gone. Ninety to ninety-seven percent of the shrubs in Pennsylvania scrub-oak communities are top-killed by those burns. Then the root system answers. New sprouts come on so thick that researchers have counted 50,000 to 100,000 stems to the acre after fire or cutting. That is not fire resistance. That is fire dependence, written in a

A landowner can have a written burn plan, a qualified prescribed burn manager, landowner consent, and the required 25-working-day notice to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Protection — and still be told no. The reason is rarely Harrisburg. It is the local burning ordinance. The Prescribed Burning Practices Act (Act 17 of 2009) opened a statewide path for planned fire. It did not rewrite township, borough, or city codes.

Walk into almost any mature woodlot in Chester, Delaware, Bucks or Montgomery County and you'll likely see a lot of tulip poplar, red maple, and American beech crowding the understory — and very few young oaks. That's not a coincidence. It's the visible signature of a slow, century-long process called mesophication, and it's quietly reshaping the character of southeastern Pennsylvania's forests. What Mesophication Actually Means The term was coined in 2008 by forest ecologist

For more than a hundred years, Pennsylvania has treated forest fire as an enemy to be stamped out on sight — and by that narrow measure, the strategy has worked. Wildfire acreage fell from over 340,000 acres a year in 1915 to roughly 4,500 acres by 2014, one of the most successful fire-suppression records of any state in the country. But a growing body of ecological research — and a longer view of Pennsylvania's own history — makes clear that total suppression has quietly cre

If you drive through rural Pennsylvania and spot a pickup truck with a small badge on the door or a neighbor who seems to always know before anyone else that smoke is rising over the ridge, there's a good chance you've encountered a Forest Fire Warden. For more than a century, this quiet, largely volunteer network has been one of the most effective — and least talked about — pieces of forest protection infrastructure in the Commonwealth. A Program Born From Crisis Pennsylvani

Prescribed fire is one of the most effective tools available for restoring and sustaining upland oak forests in Pennsylvania, particularly where decades of fire exclusion have reduced oak regeneration and favored more shade-tolerant competitors (Schweitzer & Dey, 2023; Stambaugh et al., 2022). For landowners and land managers, a well-planned burn can improve forest health, support wildlife habitat, reduce hazardous fuel buildup, and guide long-term stand development in a more

In southeastern Pennsylvania, forests rarely exist as large, unbroken systems. Instead, they persist as fragmented patches—woodlots behind neighborhoods, stream buffers, institutional lands, and remnant stands tucked between development. These landscapes are often undervalued, yet they present some of the most important opportunities for ecological restoration and long-term stewardship. At Brandywine Forest, we focus on managing these spaces through the lens of urban silvicul

Katsura Tree is the latest edition of Climate Resilient Canopy!

Another edition of the Climate Resilient Canopy series featuring Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera).

Nyssa sylvatica Black gum or Black Tupelo is a widely distributed species with its native range extending from southern Ontario and Maine...

This edition of the Climate Resilient Canopy Infographic Series features Atlantic White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides).

This article investigates how trees survive winter.

Another installation of the Climate Resilient Canopy series featuring Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum).

Climate Resilient Canopy: Boxelder

Southern red oak, or Spanish oak, is a rare native tree to Pennsylvania. There are only fifteen populations located in the extreme...

This is an infographic about Blackjack Oak within the Climate Resilient Canopy online series.