Our project was to remove Chinese Tallow from a state park on the north end of Lake Pontchartrain. It's not an indigenous tree and it caused lots of problems, pre-Katrina. Katrina came in and wiped out over 80% of the trees, especially the oaks and pines. That single event changed the ecological classification to something like scrub-shrub something. Bottom line: oaks and pines were felled, and without their canopy, the weed trees took over, creating their own (lower) canopy, blocking sunlight for newer oaks and pines and also robbing the soil of precious nutrients.
In this picture there is a pine in the background, of which only the top ten feet has green. This may be difficult to see because of the Chinese Tallow in the foreground. (I was in some pretty dense foliage and my angles were limited.) To the left is the bare trunk and branch of another Katrina victim.
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