Treesearch

Stand treatments were completed as prescribed with an initial calibration cut and five thinnings resulting in eight new regimes for management of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco). Measurements were continued for an additional 14 years to observe stability and yields of stands in a postthinning holding period. Detailed descriptions of each regime based on measurements at each thinning are summarized in stand development tables. Regimes with the most growing stock after the last thinning produced 30 to 38 percent more gross-cubic-volume yield (live and cumulative thinnings...

With more than 16 million acres of commercial timberland, Oregon’s forest products industry is an important part of Oregon’s economy and a major player in the Nation’s wood products market. Despite declining production over the last decade, in 1998 Oregon was still the leading producer of softwood lumber and plywood in the United States, and the timber harvested in Oregon is the major supplier of the raw material used by Oregon’s wood-processing mills. This report traces the flow of Oregon’s 1998 timber harvest through the various primary wood-using industries and investigates the relations...

Field experiments using baited multiple-funnel traps and baited felled trees were conducted to test the hypothesis that semiochemicals from secondary species of scolytids could be used to disrupt spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis (Kirby)) attraction. Semiochemicals from three secondary species of scolytids, (Ips perturbatus (Eichhoff)) [(±)-ipsdienol], Dryocoetes affaber (Mannerheim) [(±)-exo- and (±)-endo-brevicomin], and Polygraphus rufipennis (Kirby) [methyl butenol] were used to disrupt spruce beetle trap catches and reduce attacks on felled trees. Trap catches of spruce beetles...

In this report, multiresource research is described as it has coevolved with forest policy objectives—from managing for single or dominant uses, to managing for compatible multiple forest uses, to sustaining ecosystem health on the forest. The evolution of analytical methods for multiresource research is traced from impact analysis to multiresource modeling, and examples of true joint production of forest products, goods, and services are given. Empirical results from studies related to wood compatibility in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) are compiled. We found that:In most cases, joint...

Key to the long-term success of implementing the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) is adaptive management—the idea of treating management policies as experiments, learning from them, and using them as a basis for changes and adjustments. Although much of the NWFP involves standards and guides that prescribe future management, and restrictive allocations such as terrestrial and aquatic reserves, it also identifies 10 adaptive management areas (AMAs), where managers, citizens, and scientists are encouraged to innovative approaches to identifying problems, conducting research, applying results,...

Changing natural resource policies and new ecosystem management strategies affect the people of the Pacific Northwest. But in what context are these changes happening? How can we measure them? And how are they related to economic and community development activities? When the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented, it included the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, which was designed to mitigate adverse economic change and increase federal, state, local and tribal collaboration. A research team at the Pacific Northwest Research Station has investigated the previous questions and...

Well-intentioned fire suppression efforts during the last 80 to 100 years have altered the structure of low-elevation forests in the interior Northwest. Historically, nondestructive, frequent, low-intensity fires have given way to larger, infrequent, severe, high-intensity fires. Because of altered fire behavior, forests now have increased fuel, and consequently, are more vulnerable to fire. Fire science and its application in land management are needed to work with—rather than against—nature to develop sustainable forests and restore our technological capability to manage fires in these...

Future choices in managing federal and private forest lands in the Pacific Northwest, particularly for commodity production, are partly dependent on how the threatened marbled murrelet responds to the Northwest Forest Plan. Is the plan functioning for this elusive species, and are populations stabilized or increasing? Because the murrelet forages at sea but nests on land in order forests, its condition is affected by many factors: its status at sea, its nesting habitat on land, and the link between the two. Several tools are available to monitor long-term population trends, and studies in...

the "survey and manage" requirement of the Northwest Forest Plan is a challenge for land managers strapped for time and funds to implement it and for environmentalists concerned about its implementation. Its single species management approach raises some interesting questions.What makes these species rare to begin with? And why have they survived? On the one hand, ecological theory predicts that rarity makes a species vulnerable to catastrophes. On the other hand, rare, old-growth associated species do occur in west side forests, which have a long history of natural catastrophic disturbance...

Only a small boby of research addresses the impacts of timber harvesting in the boreal forest of Alaska. The two projects described here began in 1970 and 1980 to develop more reliable methods of regenerating white spruce—the main commercial species in interior Alaska—from seed, and quantifying vegetation and soil responses.A "by-product" of timber harvest is increased moose browse and cover provided by deciduous saplings (birch, popular, and aspen) and brush species such as willow. The importance of moose in the economy of interior Alaska guarantees a major role in the values behind...