Brown Bag focuses on Bailey Woods

Kathleen Hillman

Steve Brewer, assistant professor of biology, gave a presentation about "Bailey Woods and the Historic Forest" at yesterday's Brown Bag luncheon, held at the University of Mississippi Museums.

"I want to introduce you to the idea of what forests used to look like," he said.

The lecture included perspectives on Coastal Plain Forests of Mississippi, a comparison of early 19th century and current oak-hickory forests in central Lafayette County, and management options and restoration of oak-hickory forests.

According to Brewer, the Bailey Woods in central Lafayette County is a very diverse area.

In his discussion of fire suppression, he explained that some plants depend on fire for flowering, and in the summer one can see some rapid responses. Many plants are very tolerant of fire.

"Summer burns will kill a lot of the big, weedy annual and biennial species and kill the trees that are intolerant of fire," Brewer said.

He said that Bailey Woods has changed over the years. There is a large amount of tree diversity, but not much ground diversity present. "You can see some older trees scattered through," he said. "The forest is changing over time. Even in these oak-hickory forests, you can look at what role fire plays."

Brewer said that the main reason that the forests look nothing like they use to is fire suppression. In the past people and surveyors were seeing a result of burning, but since there have been no fires in Bailey, it looks nothing like it used to long ago.

He presented a comparison of many of the topics being discussed. He compared the tree species composition of Bailey, a mature upland forest, tree species composition of uplands in central Lafayette County in the 1830s and tree species composition in river valleys in the 1830s.

Brewer said the 1830s is the closest time to what virgin forests looked like as far as tree species composition.

Also, he presented the goals of management of oak-hickory forests. They include silviculture, which involves growing trees for money, management of the game species, and maximizing biodiversity.

"We have to decide what we want from the forest," he said.

In an explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of upland closed canopy forests, He said the advantages conclude that they are relatively easy to implement, require hands-off management and removing exotics. The disadvantage was that the "pay off" in terms of diversity may be small.

Of the advantages of an open oak-hickory woodland or savanna, he said they included the creation of habitats that are currently here but were historically common and the creation of habitats that are favorable for rare/declining oak-savanna endemic species.

He said that in a species abundance ranking made in Bailey Woods, the three most abundant were the sweet gum, the southern red oak and the cedar.

"Bailey is a much more diverse forest than what we see historically," Brewer said.

In changing Bailey Woods from a closed-canopy forest to a savanna, he said restoration efforts are not going to be an easy thing. The transition would take a long time and may not be worth it to try.

Among the research that he performs, he also researches plant ecology and the salt marshes on the Mississippi coast. "Everything I do is in Mississippi," he said. "I study oak-hickory forests, and I'm interested in conservation."

Of speaking at the luncheon, Brewer said he was hoping to tell people something that they weren't aware of, what the forests looked like and how they didn't look anything like what people see today.

"I'm interested in teaching people about these things and doing research," he said. "I'm particularly interested in Mississippi because there are some remarkable areas of diversity here."