Shelter Belt Planting in Saskatchewan (2021)

Our organization did some tree planting work in Saskatchewan in 2021 and 2022.  We've been so busy that we're just getting an opportunity to blog about this project now!  But better late than never.  We'll start with a description of the 2021 work in this post.

 

 

Shelter belts are lines of trees (or large shrubs) planted to protect areas, especially gardens and farm fields, from strong winds.  When people think of weather damage, the typical scene that comes to mind is heavy storms (hurricanes, tornadoes) or heavy rains/hail.  But normal strong winds on sunny days can also cause significant damage to crops.  When soil is dry, the wind can easily pick up soil and move it across the landscape.  For freshly planted seeds and young crops, this can be devastating.  Erosion is a significant problem for farmers, and wind erosion can be just as bad as water erosion in some areas.  If a line of strong mature trees grows along the side of a field, the wind is partially blocked by the trees, limiting erosion.

Shelter belts are an important part of agroforestry work, but they can also be useful in terms of energy efficiency.  Residences that are protected from strong winds may require less heating in the winter, and of course are also more protected from property damage.

Here's a photo of a row of spruce trees that are just a few years old, placed just to the right of an existing shelter belt, with the intention of eventually strengthening the existing shelter belt.  You can see a valuable crop field just to the right of the newer part of this particular shelter belt.

 

 

Adam Gruel has been our lead representative on our Saskatchewan projects for the past couple of years.  We don't have a large footprint in Saskatchewan, but we've always enjoyed the work that we've been able to do there.

Here's a photo of Adam on one of the planting sites:

We source our Saskatchewan seedlings from the PRT nursery in Prince Albert, SK.  They've been great to work with, and very accommodating to our logistical challenges.

Adam shared a few reflections with us from one of the many sites he visited during his 2021 planting:

"I had previously made vague plans to host some other tree planters, and thankfully one country gentleman offered to host us while we were planting his shelter belt.  I drove from Birch Hills to Borden Bridge, more via bi-ways than by highways.  I met my companion tree planters on a particularly scenic stretch of country lane with a vista encompassing a wooded slough, several variously hued fields, and a ghostly looking farmhouse.  After a sandwich and initial greetings, we drove to the yard.  As we got out of the car, we gazed towards a landscape populated by free roaming turkeys who gobbled glitteringly towards us from out of a golden beam of light.  We laughed and squinted to see the immensity of their horde engulf our vehicles with the unfortunate screech of talons upon paint.  After a bit of planting, we elected to take a break in the heat of the late afternoon.  I played the role of big-shot fisherman guide, sourcing fishing gear for my friends, although we caught no fish.  I was secretly relieved.  Our paths then diverged, and I got back to work.

Days passed while I planted at this site, shoo-ing turkeys out of the way as I put trees in my bags.  The ground was tough.  My method was to cut and flip the sod towards the south, which, while exhausting, allowed each seedling to occupy a root-free hollow with a durable source of shade, which would hopefully maintain a cooler micro-climate.

Eventually, I was able to completely encircle this property.  Some of the neighbours also had opportunities for additional trees to be planted in various strategic locations, so I ended up helping three of the neighbours out as well.  From these generous people I received cucumbers and fresh corn, and thus picnic'd, I embarked on my trip back to Birch Hills, smacking my lips with the lingering taste of that green gold."

 

Here are a few more photos taken while Adam was working on various sites:

 

 

We want to offer a huge thanks to Adam for taking the lead on these shelter belt projects!  We hope they will eventually offer some significant erosion control advantages on a number of sites throughout Saskatchewan.

You can see more photos from Adam's planting work in our public Planting Photos 2021 folder on Dropbox (in the Prairie Shelterbelts sub-folder).

 

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

 

The White Birch Tree (Betula papyrifera)

Last week we looked at the yellow birch. This week, we'll look at another birch tree which is more well-known: the paper birch. Unlike the yellow birch, the paper birch grows well almost everywhere in Canada, and due to its white bark, it is something of an iconic tree. The white bark is obviously the reason why this species is perhaps more commonly referred to as white birch. In some areas, it is also called "canoe birch."

Let's start with a photo of a semi-mature tree, so we can get a good look at the bark. If you go back to our yellow birch post, you'll see that the colour difference is fairly obvious on your computer screen, but you may not find this to be the case in the field.  Sometimes, a yellow birch will appear to be a lot more pale in colour, or a "white" birch might appear slightly creamy-coloured, which can really confuse observers.  A better way to improve your identification skills is to look carefully at the composition of the bark, and the way that it flakes or peels off the trunk.  Strips of paper birch bark are generally thicker than that of yellow birch bark.  Even more telling is the outward appearance.  While the yellow birch flakes in many small curls, paper birch usually peels off in much larger sections.  In some instances, on mature trees, you might almost be able to peel off a piece that is about the size of a piece of photocopy paper.  There is almost universal agreement that the paper birch is a very "pretty" tree.

Despite the very white bark on mature and semi-mature trees, the bark of juvenile paper birch trees is actually quite red!  This is the case from the time that the tree is just a germinant or whip until the diameter of the truck is thicker than an inch or two.  Here's a photo.  Take a close look at the tiny white marks all over the red bark, which help clarify that these trees are paper birch:

Unfortunately, the paper birch is not as healthy as the yellow birch.  A mature paper birch may only live about half as long as a yellow birch, as most only survive for about a hundred years.  Incidentally, paper birch trees that live in colder climates tend to live longer than specimens in the southern part of their range.  On a positive note, a single birch tree can release more than a MILLION tiny seeds (samara) in a season, so one mature tree can help generate a huge number of eventual successors.

Paper birch supposedly grows to be slightly smaller than yellow birch at maturity, but we've found that the two species are quite similar.  We have a number of mature birch of both species on some of the properties that we manage, and many of the paper birch trees are around twenty meters (seventy feet) high, with a DBH (diameter at breast height) of about 60 cm (two feet).  This is similar to the size of mature yellow birch in this region.

Here's a range map of the paper birch, courtesy of Wikipedia:

 

Fun fact:  The paper birch is the provincial tree of Saskatchewan.  It's also the state tree of New Hampshire.

Let's get back to examining the paper birch in more detail.  Have you ever walked through the woods and found a rotten piece of paper birch on the ground, and discovered that while the bark is still intact, the wood inside has completely rotted away?  This happens fairly often.  This is because the bark of the paper birch has a very high oil content, and is very waterproof.  This helps ensure that it is more resistant to rot than the wood in the core of the tree.

Paper birch trees are "monoecious."  This means that an individual tree has both male and female flowers, called catkins.  The catkins tend to develop in May or June.  Female catkins are greenish, and are smaller than the brownish male catkins.  By early fall, the seeds have matured and begin to fall.  Seeds continue to fall throughout the winter.  Most people wouldn't be able to describe a birch seed when asked, because they are fairly tiny and not at all obvious to someone taking a walk through the woods.  However, next time that you're walking through a stand of birch trees with snow on the ground, take a close look at see if you see a lot of small brown specs on the surface of the snow.  These may be birch seeds!

To see a good illustration showing how small birch seeds are, check out this short YouTube video from someone who is demonstrating how to grow silver birch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zcyYRqe9-g

Ok, it's time for some more fun facts about paper birch!

1.  If you're planting both paper birch and black walnut on the same property, don't plant them close to each other!  The roots of the black walnut secrete a chemical (juglone) which is very toxic to paper birch trees.

2.  Although paper birch bark is a staple food for moose, it is full of lignin which is hard to digest.  For this reason, moose need to eat many other types of plants in combination with the birch.  Incidentally, deer also love to eat the bark of the paper birch, especially once the snow cover gets deep and ground forage is hard to get to.

3.  The leaves of the paper birch often appear in pairs.  They have toothed edges which are called margins.

Birch trees are an important part of the mix of hardwoods that we plant on the properties that we manage.  We have to think about carbon sequestration and longevity, so we tend to plant a greater number of yellow birch than paper birch.  However, paper birch are very attractive so it would be a failure not to include them.  As a forest reaches a steady state maturity, with old trees being gradually replaced by young trees, a mix of yellow and white birch is beneficial.  Having said that, paper birch is more of a pioneer species than yellow birch, which means that it thrives better than yellow birch in openly disturbed forests with lots of exposure to sunlight.  In the long term, we feel that yellow birch (a shade-tolerant successional species) has a bit of an advantage over paper birch for a mature forest with lots of shade.  Here's a photo of some of our white birch seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.