Treesearch

A common approach to land use change analyses in multidisciplinary landscape-level studies is to delineate discrete forest and non-forest or urban and non-urban land use categories to serve as inputs into sets of integrated sub-models describing socioeconomic and ecological processes. Such discrete land use categories, however, may be inappropriate when the socioeconomic and ecological processes under study are sensitive to a range of human habitation. In this paper, we characterize the spatial dynamic distribution of humans throughout the forest landscape of western Oregon (USA).

Adaptive management represents a process to use management policies as a source of learning, which in turn can inform subsequent actions. However, despite its appealing and apparently straightforward objectives, examples of successful implementation remain elusive, and a review of efforts to implement an adaptive approach in the Northwest Forest Plan proves the point. Barriers include an institutional and regulatory environment that stymies innovation, increasing workloads coupled with declining resources that constrain learning-based approaches, and a lack of leadership. The time is right...

Let US begin by defining our area of interest: the moist maritime forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Geographically (as shown in Figure 1), this includes western Oregon and Washington (the west side of the Cascade Range, the Coast Range, and the Olympic Mountains), coastal British Columbia (Coast Mountains), and island-dominated southeastern Alaska (as far north as the Kenai Peninsula). Collectively, this is the world's northernmost temperate rainforest (Walter 1985). Although this coastal rainforest zone stretches southward to San Francisco, California, we focus our research northward...

The concept of place is introduced and an orientation to place literature is provided. Following the introduction, an overview is given of the papers in this special issue of Forest Science. The papers included in this issue were presented at the 2000 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management in Bellingham, Washington.

Recently there has been considerable debate on the practice of postfire logging, in which burned forests are entered soon after fire to recover commercially valuable trees. Proponents of the practice argue that postfire logging is part of a 'restoration package' that can be used to control erosion (e.g., contour logging) and can help to mitigate costs of rehabilitation. Opponents argue that postfire logging damages sensitive soils and can lead to excessive erosion and sediment transport. Review of the literature on postfire logging shows that very little direct scientific information can...

Natural resource policy analysis and conservation planning are best served by broad-scale information about vegetation that is detailed, spatially complete, and consistent across land ownerships and allocations. In this paper I describe how a new generation of forest vegetation maps can be used to assess the distribution of vegetation biodiversity among land ownerships and land allocations at a regional scale. The vegetation maps contain detailed tree and stand-level attributes of vegetation composition and structure for each forest land pixel in a regional landscape, which can be translate...

We enumerate the genetic resources for coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. menziesii) in tree improvement programs in the Pacific Northwest USA and evaluate how they contribute to gene conservation of the species. The first-generation programs include over four million progeny from 33,928 selections planted on 999 test sites. Nearly 2,000 of the selections tested in the first-generation have been incorporated into second-generation programs. The first-generation tests serve as repositories for low-frequency alleles of potential future import and for variation in...

We used 135 permanent plots (4 m2) nested within 15 blocks (121 m2) to quantify changes in concentration and spatial variation of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in the mineral soil (0- to 10-cm depth) after logging and broadcast burning of an old-growth, Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) forest. Before harvest, surface soils averaged total C of 7.2 percent, total N of 0.19 percent, extractable NH4 +-N of 5.2 µg/g, extractable NO3 —N of 0.19 µg/g, and pH of 5.3. Samples collected 9 months after burning showed a 26-percent decline in concentration of total C, but a...

Within the Deschutes River basin of central Oregon, the geology, hydrology, and physiography influence geomorphic and ecologic processes at a variety of temporal and spatial scales. Hydrologic and physiographic characteristics of the basin are related to underlying geologic materials. In the southwestern part of the basin, Quaternary volcanism and tectonism has created basin fills and covered and deranged the surficial hydrologic system, resulting in a relatively low-relief lava-covered landscape with runoff emerging largely from extensive groundwater systems fed by Cascade Range precipitat...

This publication documents over 90 years of plant succession on green fescue grasslands in the subalpine ecological zone of the Wallowa Mountains in northeast Oregon. It also ties together the work of four scientists over a 60-year period. Arthur Sampson initiated his study of deteriorated rangeland in 1907. Elbert H. Reid began his studies of overgrazing in 1938. Both of these individuals utilized high-elevation green fescue grasslands in different locations in the Wallowa Mountains for their study areas. Then in 1956, Gerald Strickler returned to the sites previously studied by Sampson...