Season 7 | Episode 3
The Old-Growth Project
March 1, 2026
Many of us in forestry remember the spotted owl controversy of the 1980s – a pivotal moment that put old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest in the national spotlight. But what’s less often told is how that same moment sparked a wave of old-growth research here in the Lake States, launching more than three decades of work to better understand how old-growth northern hardwood forests differ from those we actively manage. In this episode of SilviCast, we sit down with Julia Burton, Associate Professor of Silviculture at Michigan Technological University, to explore what we’ve learned from that research — and how those insights are shaping the future of northern hardwood forest management.
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Guest On This Episode
Julia I. Burton, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Silviculture at Michigan Technological University
Julia teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in Silviculture, Ecological Silviculture and Forest Vegetation Dynamics. Current research links the traits of tree species to population, community and ecosystem dynamics in unmanaged old-growth forests and climate adaptation experiments in northern hardwood and pine forests, and developing and evaluating strategies of managing multi-cohort pine forests with natural regeneration using prescribed fire. She holds a B.S. from UW-Stevens Point, and M.S. from University of Minnesota, and Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Silviculture & Forest Ecosystem Dynamics at Michigan Tech
Effects of forest canopy gaps on the ground-layer plant community depend on deer: Evidence from a controlled experiment. Burton et al., Journal of Vegetation Science (32)1. Nov. 2020.
Experimentally linking disturbance, resources and productivity to diversity in forest ground-layer plant communities. Burton et al., Journal of Ecology 2014, Vol. 102: 1634-1648.
The roles of environmental filtering and colonization in the fine-scale spatial patterning of ground-layer plant communities in north temperate deciduous forests. Burton et al., Journal of Ecology 2011, Vol. 99: 764-776.
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