SilviCast
SilviCast is a podcast devoted to silviculture: the science, practice, and art of forestry. We explore current topics in forest management, highlight innovative practices, and interview practitioners and researchers aiming to solve challenges facing today’s managers. The show is tailored for foresters and other land managers, whether it’s listening at the office or in the truck on the way to the field. SilviCast is hosted by Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources silviculturists Greg Edge and Brad Hutnik and produced by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Wisconsin Forestry Center.
Episodes
54 episodes
S.6 Ep.4: My Buckthorn Chia Pet
Buckthorn has been the bane of many foresters and forest landowners throughout eastern North America. This long-lived, woody plant is capable of forming dense thickets, degrading native understory plant communities and impeding tree regeneratio...
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Season 6
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Episode 4
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1:02:58
S.6 Ep.3: Line of Sight
It’s hard to turn around these days without seeing or reading something about UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Drones are becoming an increasingly important tool in many fields, including within the practice of silviculture. On this episode of...
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Season 6
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Episode 3
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1:04:20
S.6 Ep.2: Toast Me Timbers!
Foresters are increasingly aware of the importance of prescribed fire as a silvicultural tool in the maintenance and management of fire-adapted forest ecosystems. At the same time concerns remain over the impact of those fires on the timb...
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Season 6
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Episode 2
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1:00:39
S.6 Ep.1: Acadian Femelschlag
German foresters sometimes named silvicultural systems after the region where the treatment was developed and practiced. So it is with the Acadian femelschlag, a locally developed gap-based system designed to restore species diversity an...
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Season 6
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Episode 1
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1:10:17
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S.5 Ep.12: Practical Wisdom
Foresters need to make decisions every day, and sometimes difficult decisions as we attempt to understand and address the diverse needs of the land, the landowner, and others. Similar to marking a tree, these decisions often require us to walk ...
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Season 5
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Episode 12
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53:45
S.5 Ep.11: Ecological Memory
We’ve all seen it in the field… Aldo Leopold alluded to it… parts of a forest ecosystem are missing or changed. Now the forest doesn’t respond the same to silvicultural treatments that worked in the past. The forest is less predictable. In othe...
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Season 5
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Episode 11
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56:07
S.5 Ep.10: Why Does My Paint Gun Hate Me?
The paint gun is a basic tool of the forestry trade. But what happens when we’re two forties into the woods and our paint gun goes down? This can put a major clog in our day. Maybe the problem with our paint gun is us? Join us on this episode o...
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Season 5
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Episode 10
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57:28
S.5 Ep.9: Forest Farming: Planting the Seed
Most of us enjoying a little on-the-job foraging… some blackberries here, some morels there. But how often do we think about intentionally managing non-timber forest products? Forest farming is an agroforestry practice than involves the i...
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Season 5
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Episode 9
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1:08:47
S.5 Ep.8: Deer, Oh Deer!
If you are a forest practitioner in the eastern forests of North America (and maybe elsewhere) at one time or another you have likely been frustrated by white-tailed deer. Browse impacts on forest vegetation are significant and long-lasting, bu...
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Season 5
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Episode 8
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1:14:30
S.5 Ep.7: Tsuga Science
It’s an all too familiar scenario to foresters…a new pest is introduced into another part of the range and slowly works its way to a forest near you. So it goes with the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) that was introduced into eastern North ...
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Season 5
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Episode 7
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1:05:35
S.5 Ep.6: Green, Red, Dead
If foresters have a super-power, it might just be the power of observation. They notice change in the forest and correlate facts that would otherwise be isolated and missed. As a result, foresters have the unique ability to adapt and find manag...
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Season 5
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Episode 6
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1:06:55
S.5 Ep.5: An Old-New Idea: Cluster Planting
It pays to be observant! Ogijewski, a forest scientist working in Russia in the early 1900s observed that oaks sometimes regenerated in small clusters where wild boars disturb the forest floor. From this simple observation he developed a ...
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Season 5
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Episode 5
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1:04:04
S.5 Ep.4: Putting the B in BDq
It’s not worth saying anything unless it’s worth taking a long time to say, to paraphrase Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings. And sometimes you need to play the long game if you’re a research forester too. Long-term silvicultural studies are su...
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Season 5
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Episode 4
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56:06
S.5 Ep.3: Ash: A Lingering Hope
Sometimes foresters in eastern North America may feel as if they are in a Lemony Snicket novel, with chestnut blight, spongy moth, Dutch elm disease, and emerald ash borer creating a continuing series of unfortunate events. Emerald ash bo...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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1:09:21
S.5 Ep.2: Digging into the Wood Wide Web
As foresters we spend a great deal of time looking up, to evaluate forest composition, structure and growth. The story below ground is equally as interesting however, with complex interactions between soils, nutrients, water, roots, and a host ...
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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1:05:27
S.5 Ep.1: Putting the Old in Old-Growth
No matter how you define it, old-growth forests are scarce as hen’s teeth in the eastern United States. More than 99% of our forests are second growth. While we can’t speed up time, we can speed up the development of old-growth characteristics ...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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1:14:59
S.4 Ep.11: The Art of Silviculture
The official Society of American Foresters' definition of silviculture describes it as both an art and science. Are foresters both artists and scientists? What role does creativity play when developing a silvicultural prescription or setting up...
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Season 4
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Episode 11
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58:48
S.4 Ep.10: White Oak, Whiskey, and Wildlife
If you're a whiskey enthusiast, you are probably aware of a lesser-known federal law that requires all bourbon (an American whiskey) to be aged in a “charred new oak container." And those containers or casks are made almost exclusively from whi...
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Season 4
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Episode 10
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1:22:27
S.4 Ep.9: Vision of Chief Oshkosh
Good silviculture is about using the best available science, along with the experience and local knowledge we accumulate in the field. What if we practiced forestry in an area for not only one lifetime, but for generations upon generations. Ima...
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Season 4
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Episode 9
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1:17:01
S.4 Ep.8: ICO ICO a Nae
They say if you want forest heterogeneity, just get a larger group of foresters to mark the stand. While it is true that not every forester marks the same, it is often challenging if we want to intentionally create spatial variability. Especial...
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Season 4
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Episode 8
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1:03:06
S.4 Ep.7: The Cedar Club
Foresters love a challenge! And one such challenge in eastern Northern America has always been northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis). A both ecologically and commercially valuable tree species that can be slow-growing, tricky to re...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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1:01:03
S.4 Ep.6: Green Side Up
It seems that every young forester may have heard the old adage “green side up" tossed at us half-jokingly while learning to plant our first tree seedlings, almost as if to say "don't overthink this one kid." As experienced foresters we soon le...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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1:06:17
S.4 Ep.5: The Seedling and the Flame
We all know that oak and fire go together like peanut butter and jelly. What we have been missing is the practical knowledge of where, when, and how to apply fire in oak ecosystems. There are few who have contributed more to this knowledge base...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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52:27
S.4 Ep.4: How Now Brown Cow?
Foresters have been warning landowners for years about the potentially damaging impacts of cows in their woods. So it is not surprising that we raise an eyebrow when conversations start about intentionally integrating livestock and forests. In ...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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1:04:48
S.4 Ep.3: Syrup with Saps
Business is booming if you own a commercial sugar bush! As forest managers, this means more and more of us are hearing from landowners interested in starting or maintaining a sugar bush. Unfortunately, if you are like us, you did not learn abou...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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1:01:49
