Winter 2004

People Who Are Taking Nature's Pulse
By Katherine Millett | Photography by Rob Warner
> Overview

Scott Kobal: The Data Changed Us
Scott Kobal travels the forest preserves of DuPage County wearing an official shirt and glasses that turn dark in the sun. One of his boots has no lace, the other an orange string with knots, yet he moves with meticulous care as he plies the simple tools of his trade: a tape measure, a handful of marker flags, and a small "quadrat" frame he made from plastic pipe.

With 25,000 acres under his care, Kobal moves constantly. He is the only staff person dedicated full-time to monitoring plant growth and distribution in the county's grasslands, woodlands, and wetlands.

Kobal uses the flags and tape to mark areas 16 meters square, which he selects at random when he studies a preserve. He interprets each plot as a "snapshot" of the forest and its condition. By tallying woody plants higher and lower than one meter, he appraises the forest's current health and future prospects. In healthy woods, he says, several generations of trees grow at once.

Using the little quadrat, barely larger than one square foot, Kobal frames plants in the understory, identifying and recording each one. During a recent session at Danada Forest Preserve, he quickly identified more than a dozen species. A healthy understory, or ground layer, he explained, should contain blooming flowers from April through October.

Kobal receives invaluable assistance from volunteers, who clear brush and monitor plant and animal species, and from two mentors. He often seeks the counsel of Gerould Wilhelm, co-author of the fourth edition of Plants of the Chicago Region, and Wayne Lampa, Kobal's predecessor as DuPage plant ecologist.

During his 13 years on the job, Kobal has benefited from the carefully kept records of the previous generation. In 1979, for example, Lampa studied a control area and found 52 white oaks and 12 black cherry trees. Twenty years later, Kobal found only 40 white oaks and 142 black cherries on the same ground. Kobal is troubled by the shift, because it is happening rapidly, creating darker forests that stifle regeneration of oak ecosystems.

Kobal hopes his data will help educate people about when and why the Forest Preserve District needs brush control and controlled burning. "It contradicts what we all grew up believing — Smokey the Bear, and all that — but we've learned that woody plants can overwhelm forests. We're actually making the areas healthier."

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