Debbie Maurer's talk this afternoon looked at several oak woodland sites in southeastern Lake County, Illinois. Much of my early amphibian research was done at these sites so they're of considerable interest to me; I also had some limited involvement in the early days of restoration at those sites, ranging from monitoring amphibian response to buckthorn clearing at MacArthur Woods, a USEPA-funded study of amphibian/groundlayer vegetation relationships at several sites, and some preliminary restoration design in northern flatwoods at Ryerson Woods.
Lake County Forest Preserve District has long been out on the leading edge of woodland restoration, so it was good to hear that the tradition continues. They're actually thinning trees on test plots now in hopes of identifying the best way to enhance recruitment of new oaks. This ties directly into some things I've learned in northern California recently; but that's another post, sometime after the conference is over.
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