Treesearch

Many stands of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) near coastal areas of Oregon and Washington are heavily infected with the foliar pathogen causing Swiss needle cast (SNC) disease, and yet there is very little research on the resulting wood quality. Modulus of elasticity(MOE), modulus of rupture (MOR), microfibril angle (MFA), wood density, latewood proportion, and sapwood moisture content were examined in 20- to 28-year-old trees from 15 stands that were infected with varying intensities of SNC. SNC severity was quantified by measuring needle retention, the number of...

Nonnative plants have tremendous ecological and economic impacts on plant communities globally, but comprehensive data on the distribution and ecological relationships of individual species is often scarce or nonexistent. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of vegetation type, climate, topography, and management history on the distribution and abundance of eight selected nonnative plant taxa in forests in western Oregon. These eight taxa were selected as being reliably detected by a multi-resource inventory of 1127 systematically placed plots on nonfederal forest lands...

The composition, diversity, and structure of vascular plants are important indicators of forest health. Changes in species diversity, structural diversity, and the abundance of non-native species are common national concerns, and are part of the international criteria for assessing sustainability of forestry practices. The vegetation indicator for the national Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program, USA, was designed to assess these issues. The objectives of this study were to: (1) assess the repeatability and practicality of the vegetation field techniques using independent measuremen...

Post-fire Pezizales fruit commonly in many forest types after fire. The objectives of this study were to determine which Pezizales appeared as sporocarps after a prescribed fire in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, and whether species of Pezizales formed mycorrhizas on ponderosa pine, whether or not they were detected from sporocarps. Forty-two sporocarp collections in five genera (Anthracobia, Morchella, Peziza, Scutellinia, Tricharina) of post-fire Pezizales produced ten restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) types. We found no root tips colonized by species of post-fire...

The Forest Service has relied on a single forest measure, timber volume, to meet many management and planning information needs in southeast Alaska. This economic-based categorization of forest types tends to mask critical information relevant to other contemporary forest-management issues, such as modeling forest structure, ecosystem diversity, or wildlife habitat. We propose the joint distribution of tree density and mean tree diameter as a more comprehensive set of forest measures. Focusing on those measures, we build a predictive-mapping model by using existing geographic information...

We review results and implications from recent wildlife studies that followed from the 1997 Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP) and identify information needs and directions for research, development, and application. Sustained population viability of wildlife species was identified as a major issue in the TLMP planning process. Several species were identified as management indicator species, and research was conducted to determine their potential sensitivity to forest management. Southeastern Alaska was found to be a region with an especially high degree of endemism in its small mammal...

I review the current state of knowledge about dynamics of understory vegetation in postlogging succession and responses to silviculture treatments in southeastern Alaska, and I derive implications for future research and development. The classic Alaback [Ecology 63 (1982) 1932] model of postlogging succession has dominated ecological thinking in the region for the past two decades. Understory vegetation is believed to increase dramatically immediately after logging but decrease to near-zero levels as the young stands attain conifer canopy closure. Depauperate understories are believed to...

This is a review of research findings from silvicultural studies that addressed information needs identified during the revision of the Tongass National Forest land management plan. A central concern of resource managers is balancing tradeoffs among habitat concerns, wood production, wood-product quality, and operability on the Tongass. This paper provides a historical overview of forest management in southeast Alaska and examines issues--and recent discoveries--related to the management of old- and young-growth forests for multiple-resource values. The studies reviewed here include a...

We aggregated road, vegetation, and inchannel data to assess the condition of sixth-field watersheds and describe the distribution of the condition of watersheds in the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) area. The assessment is based on 250 watersheds selected at random within the Plan area. The distributions of conditions are presented for watersheds and for many of the attributes that contribute to the condition of watersheds by land use allocation. Under the Plan, management activities were implemented in a way to promote positive changes in the condition of watersheds. This assessment...

After 6 years of intensive study, all the research studies designed to answer the information needs identified in appendix B of the Tongass land management plan have ended, with their results published or in press. The knowledge generated from these studies not only informs the ongoing process of regional natural resource management in southeast Alaska, but also helped to define future directions for research. Topics still needing additional study include issues related to wildlife, aquatic systems and salmon habitat, silvicultural options for forest management, wood products utilization,...