Wind River Experimental Forest

Climate

The nearby Columbia River Gorge affects the valley’s climate, contributing to strong winds in any season and cool, wet weather in the winter. Average annual precipitation is about 2,540 mm annually, occurring as rain or snow during fall, winter, and spring. Summers are warm and dry. Cold air draining into the valley can bring frosts almost any time of year.

Soils

Soils are primarily volcanic in origin with some colluvial and glacial till.

Vegetation

The Wind River is best known for its old-growth forests of Douglas-fir and western hemlock. Other tree species in the forest include western redcedar and Pacific silver, grand, and noble firs. Understory trees include Pacific yew, vine maple, Pacific dogwood, and red alder. Western white pine used to grow in the forest, but most trees have been killed by white pine blister rust. Much of the forest consists of stands more than 400 years old. Younger forests include stands that were established after burns in the late 1840s and then again after the 1902 Yacolt Burn. Numerous plantations have been established following timber harvest into the late 1980s.

Many shrubs grow in the forest understory, including salal, Oregon-grape, red and big huckleberries, and west coast rhododendron. Dozens of plant species grow on the forest floor, including queencup beadlily, vanilla leaf, bracken fern, beargrass, twinflower, trillium, and little pipsissewa. Huckleberries and beargrass are particularly abundant at higher elevations.

The Wind River Experimental Forest is located in the southern Cascade Range of Washington State, within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It lies approximately 60 km (37 miles) northeast of Vancouver, WA, near the town of Carson, WA in Skamania County.

Lat. 45° 50' N, long. 121° 54' W

Address

USDA Forest Service
Wind River Work Center
1262 Hemlock Road
Carson, WA 98610

Research, Historical & Present

The earliest concerns at Wind River were how to prevent and control wildfires, regenerate burned and cutover Wind River Experimental Forest (Washington) lands, and grow seedlings to revegetate large areas of denuded forest land. The Wind River Arboretum was established to study which tree species from all over the world would grow best in the area. Permanent growth and yield plots, spacing studies, pruning, fertilization, and thinning studies, along with work on the autecology of Douglas-fir, provided the most complete body of knowledge on the management and silviculture of Douglas-fir-western hemlock forests in the Pacific Northwest prior to World War II. After the war, work continued at Wind River, but there was an increased interest in working in younger stands and in laboratories. Although the older studies, residue use, and thinning continued to be studied at Wind River, the late 1960s and 1970s saw a waning of traditional forestry work. One exception in the late 1970s was the Trout Creek Hill study, which continues to look at growth of different species mixtures with an eye toward managing for diversity, not only of species but for different management objectives. In the early 1980s, use of Wind River increased, with more ecosystem-oriented studies, including pollutant monitoring, nutrient cycling, decay of coarse woody debris, and forest gaps. The forest also became one of two focal sites for the USDA Forest Service’s Old-Growth Forest Wildlife Habitat Program, whose objectives were to define old-growth Douglas-fir forests, identify wildlife species associated with these forests, and determine their biological requirements and ecological relationships.

In 1995, a standard construction canopy crane was installed in the old-growth forest of the Munger RNA to study processes operating at the interfaces between vegetation and the atmosphere and belowground. The major research emphases of this facility are forest carbon and nutrient cycling, biological diversity and ecosystem functioning, forest health and protection, monitoring of climate and climate variability, ground validation and testing of new remote sensing technology, and tree physiology and growth. Many studies within these broader categories are taking place in the old-growth forest, but also in the younger stands and plantations throughout Wind River. The arboretum, heredity, spacing, permanent plots, and the Trout Creek Hill studies are ongoing.

Long-term data from the spacing study, some of the thinning studies, the arboretum, and the heredity study are available, but not all are in digital form. Data for permanent plots in the Munger RNA (from 1947 on) are digital. Long-term weather data have been published. 

Related Datasets:

• Response of overstory trees and understory regeneration to a green-tree retention harvest as part of the Spearfish Timber Sale, Wind River Experimental Forest
• Tree survival and growth as well as soil characteristics resulting from logging residue levels and site preparation treatments on Trout Creek Hill Units 1-3, Wind River Experimental Forest