Some trees, they are a growin'...

...but others, they are a dyin'!

I took 8 Northern Marianas College students up to the Laulau Revegetation Project site on Saturday afternoon. It was the typical Laulau field trip. I explained how our land use practices affect our marine environment, how burning our savannah kills the coral reefs, and the steps we are taking to revegetate the hillside.

We hiked around the project site and I showed them the three different planting methods we used and pointed out some of the tree species.

Certain trees are doing great, while some trees are doing, well, not so great. The Sosugi tree in this picture was about 12 inches tall in August (5 months ago):

Now it is almost as tall as me. Most of the Sosugi trees we planted are this tall now.

The Da'ok trees (small tree on left side of picture above) are doing very well. Most of them have doubled or tripled in size. The Putting trees (small tree on right) are also doing very well. We planted several Putting saplings, but mostly we just broadcast Putting seeds. As you can see, the seeds sprouted some time ago. It appears that most of them sprouted and are doing well.

Some of the other species, like Banalo, Kafu, and Pago, don't seem to be doing as well. The leaves are small, yellow and in some cases are starting to whither. I don't think they'll make it through the dry season. These observations are unscientific, of course, but I think we have an idea of how to improve on our plantings.

The watershed group will be meeting again soon to go over our plans for 2007.

Click HERE to see photos of some of the saplings back in August