Cassandra Krul

A Mars High School graduate and current Indiana (Pa.) University biology student is helping with a project to reforest the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville.

Cassandra Krul, 22, this summer helped study the area surrounding the memorial to identify plant life and its growth potential.

Krul, a Cranberry Township native, graduated from Mars in 2011. She is a senior at IUP studying ecology, conservation and environmental biology.

“We’re basically looking for a streamline way to manage these reclaimed mining sites,” she said. “By planting trees and looking at them for survival, that’s one small part of the big picture.”

Krul’s professor, Mike Tyree, is the project investigator for the reforestation study. He said $12,000 was set aside by IUP to study the reforestation progress.

“They did a terrific job. They completed all the data collection,” Tyree said. “Hopefully by October or November we’ll have some summary data that can get generated from their efforts.”

Krul, along with fellow student Ian Forte, collected data on 22 species of trees planted in the immediate area. Through a $5,000 grant from the National Park Foundation, 70,000 trees were planted over the past four years at the site.

Tyree said permanent plots have been established in the area for future studies and that Krul and Forte’s work has been “tremendous.”

“They were extremely independent on this. The data collection is really them,” he said.

Krul said their findings concluded that factors like encroaching plants, poor soil conditions and deer eating the plants do not threaten the trees’ growth despite the trees being smaller than anticipated.

“I was expecting to see bigger trees. When we were looking it looked like there was much until we went into the field,” she said. “We didn’t realize the trees were a lot smaller than we anticipated.”

Another aspect of the reforestation project is saving the American chestnut tree. There are 1,300 chestnut trees in the area that were crossed with Chinese chestnut trees to eliminate a fungus blight that has nearly devastated the American species.

“The American chestnut tree used to dominate many forests around the area. It’s very important around here,” Krul said. “The hope is to bring it back into the area, even though it won’t be a true American chestnut tree.”

The overall goal is to have 150,000 trees eventually planted on the site by volunteers. Krul said more than 1,000 volunteers have helped in the past four years.

The study will end sometime in late September or early October.