Treesearch

Hydraulic redistribution (HR) occurs in many ecosystems; however, key questions remain about its consequences at the ecosystem level. The objectives of the present study were to quantify seasonal variation in HR and its driving force, and to manipulate the soil-root system to elucidate physiological components controlling HR and utilization of redistributed water. In the upper soil layer of a young Douglas-fir forest, HR was negligible in early summer, but increased to 0.17 mm day-1 (20-60 cm layer) by late August when soil water potential was approximately -1 MPa. When maximum HR rates...

This paper synthesizes information on the development of natural pure red alder stands and dynamics of mixed alder-conifer stands. Early research on red alder growth and yield focused on developing stand volume and normal yield. tables for alder in the Pacific Northwest. Recent site-index estimation and height-growth curves were developed on a 20-year site base age. These height-growth and site-index curves were a significant improvement over earlier work and are widely used today. Red alder exhibits rapid early height growth with much more rapid height growth than for conifer associates....

Most individual-tree based growth and yield models use a 5- to 10-year time step, which can make projections for a fast-growing species like red alder quite difficult. Further, it is rather cumbersome to simulate the effects of intensive silvicultural treatments such as thinning or pruning on a time step longer than one year given the highly dynamic nature of growth following treatment. The goal of this project was to provide preliminaly annualized individual tree diameter and height growth equations for untreated red alder using a technique that can incorporate data with varying remeasurem...

Forest-land managers use price data and market analysis to form expectations and make informed management decisions. There is an abundance of price data for sawtimber, but for nonsawtimber, the availability of price data is limited. This constrains the ability of forest-land managers to form reasonable price expectations for stands that contain both sawtimber and nonsawtimber. In this paper, I show that export chip prices are a reasonable proxy for nonsawtimber prices in the Pacific Northwest. This conclusion is supported by evidence of arbitrage between the chip export market and three...

Participatory (collaborative, multiparty, citizen, volunteer) monitoring is a process that has been increasing in popularity and use in both developing and industrialized societies over the last several decades. It reflects the understanding that natural resource decisions are more effective and less controversial when stakeholders who have an interest in the results are involved in the process. An adequate number of such projects have now been organized, tried, and evaluated such that sufficient information exists to recommend a comprehensive approach to implementing such processes. This...

It has been 10 years since the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) came into being at the direction of President Clinton. This report synthesizes the status and trends of five major elements of the Plan: older forests, species, aquatic systems, socioeconomics, and adaptive management and monitoring. It synthesizes new science that has resulted from a decade of research. The report also contains key management implications for federal agencies. This report is a step in the adaptive management approach adopted by the Plan, and there is the expectation that its findings will lead to changes in...

In this chapter, we describe the recent federal stance on restructuring the Columbia River federal hydroelectric system to aid salmonid recovery actions as outlined in the National Marine Fisheries Service's 2000 Biological Opinion and related documents. We also place these documents and the actions they call for within the context of recent (2001) energy and water shortages, exacerbated by the region's widespread drought conditions. We describe how these actions and approaches fail to incorporate key critical information related to salmonid life history and ecology, and therefore, why...

Economists increasingly face opportunities to collaborate with ecologists and other scientists in multidisciplinary research involving landscape-level analyses of socioeconomic and ecological processes. A common goal of such analyses is to describe potential changes in ecoysytem processes and conditions resulting from forest policies and management actions addressing timber, wildlife, and wildfire objectives (e.g. Spies et al. 2002; Haynes et al. 2004).

This guidebook describes the High Peak/Moon Creek Research Natural Area, a 617.5-ha (1,526-ac) tract of coniferous forest containing stands dominated by 100-to 150-year-old Douglas-fir, a small old-growth (500+ years) Douglas-fir stand, and riparian vegetation within the western hemlock zone of the Coast Range in western Oregon.

This report examines socioeconomic changes that occurred between 1990 and 2000 associated with implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) in the Olympic National Forest in western Washington. We used a combination of quantitative data from the U.S. census and the USDA Forest Service, historical documents, and interviews from Forest Service employees and members of three case study communities—Quilcene, the Lake Quinault area, and the Quinault Indian Nation. We explore how the Plan affected the flow of socioeconomic benefits associated with the Olympic National Forest, such as...