200 Years of Forestry in Kansas

Ryan Armbrust, the rural forestry program coordinator with the Kansas Forest Service, gave this talk on October 25, 2024. He leads district and field foresters who deliver technical assistance to landowners. Previously, he served as the forest health coordinator for the forest service from 2013 through 2021. While his M.S. (K-State, '20) is in natural resources, and his B.S. (Nebraska, '11) is in horticulture plants science, he did manage to obtain a minor in history along the way and has always been fascinated by digging into the past to better understand the present.
His describes his presentation as an ongoing project that seeks to build a better context for the interactions of trees and people in the region, based on primary historical sources including journals, maps and early photographs in Kansas and the Great Plains region. Included in the presentation are everything from evidence of fossilized hackberry seeds in limestone buildings, detailed maps of the Santa Fe Trail woodlands, photos of early Kansas Territory sawmills and riverboats, film clips of CCC tree-planting crews, photos of Eleanor Roosevelt in a Kansas windbreak, and more.
Ryan is introduced by Jude Kastens, associate research professor in the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing (KARS) program at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research.