Loblolly pine is by far the most important forest tree species in the South, with over 1 billion seedlings planted annually by forest industry and non-industrial private forest landowners (McKeand et al. 2003). Genetic gains from tree improvement programs have been large, since geographic and within-provenance variation for growth and adaptive traits in loblolly pine is very large. General tren...

Intensive forest management led to elevated losses of nitrogen from a recently harvested loblolly pine plantation in North Carolina. Measurements of nitrogen-15 retention in the field demonstrated that microbial uptake of nitrogen during the decomposition of residual organic material was the most important process retaining nitrogen. Management practices that remove this material cause increase...

The national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program requires protocols for monitoring soil carbon contents. In a pilot study, 30 FHM plots loblolly shortleaf (Pinus taeda L./Pinus echinata Mill.) pine forests across Georgia were sampled by horizon and by depth increments. For total soil carbon, approximately 40% of the variance was between plots, 40% between subplots and 20% within subplots. Re...

Performance of longleaf (Pinus palustris Mill.) and loblolly pine (P. taeda L.) were compared 15–19 years after outplanting on 10 different sites in the sandhills of South Carolina. The study was established from 1988 to 1992 with bareroot seedlings artificially inoculated with Pisolithus tinctorius (Pt) or naturally inoculated with mycorrhizae in the nursery. A containerized longleaf pine trea...

Across much of the globe, fire is a major disturbance agent of forest and grassland communities. The removal of fire from previously fire-maintained ecosystems, which has occurred in many areas, changes species composition, favoring later less fire tolerant species over fire-adapted ones. A recent measured increase in the rate of hybridization between the fire-adapted shortleaf pine (Pinus echi...

A major ice storm struck Georgia and the Carolinas in February of 2014, damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of timber worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Losses were particularly severe in pine plantations in west-central South Carolina, including many on the Savannah River Site (SRS). An array of paired, mid-rotation loblolly (Pinus taeda L.) and longleaf (Pinus palustr...

The natural range of shortleaf pine encompasses 22 states from New York to Texas, second only to eastern white pine in the eastern United States. It is a species of minor and varying occurrence in most of these states usually found in association with other pines, but it is the only naturally occurring pine in the northwestern part of its range in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over the whol...

Comparison of the root system growth and water transport of southern pine species after planting in different root-zone environments is needed to guide decisions regarding when, and what species to plant. Evaluation of how seed source affects root system responses to soil conditions will allow seed sources to be matched to planting conditions. The root growth and hydraulic conductivity of three...