A research team led by Richard Lankau, associate professor of plant pathology, recently received funding for a project titled “Capitalizing on the ‘early life experiences’ of tree seedlings to enhance restoration success in changing climates” through NIFA AFRI’s Renewable Energy, Natural Resources, and Environment: Agroecosystem Management section. It was among 14 projects that shared nearly $9 million in funding.

Project description (from CRIS website): Large scale reforestation is a promising climate change mitigation strategy, and governments have set ambitious targets for tree planting in coming decades. However, the reforestation pipeline in the US is not sufficient to meet these targets. Major bottlenecks are the production of sufficient, high quality tree seedlings from nurseries, and the survival and growth of transplanted seedlings, especially in post-agricultural settings. We aim to investigate whether the environmental conditions at tree nurseries in the Midwest US, including both physical conditions, weather factors, and microbial communities, can be used to produce seedlings with enhanced tolerance to environmental challenges in reforestation sites.We will develop a network of public nurseries in the Midwest to determine the relative importance of nursery conditions versus tree genetics in predicting transplant success, and determine the extent to which nursery pre-conditioning occurs through physiological responses of seedlings or development of persistent microbial associations. At one focal nursery, we will test whether alternative management can enhance this pre-conditioning via physiological and microbial pathways. We will measure the effects on transplant success, tree growth and two ecosystem services (carbon sequestration and soil biodiversity) in forested and post-agricultural restoration sites.Ultimately, we plan to increase the efficiency, and lower the cost, of tree planting projects in the Midwest US by capitalizing on existing variation among nursery locations to produce tree seedlings better prepared to survive in harsh environmental conditions. Additionally, we hope to develop nursery management practices that can also pre-condition tree seedlings for success in restoration projects, especially in sites with environmental stress (for example, increased drought) and sites with compromised soil microbial biodiversity (for example, in ex-agricultural land).