Treesearch

In our first issue, we describe research that reflects our responsiveness to natural events and our ability to address issues over time. Floods can bring tragedy in the wake of their destruction. Floods also are a natural process that has shaped our landscapes. We hope that our scientific information helps people make wise choices that influence floods associated with forest lands.

How can we maintain biodiversity as human population levels continue to increase at a rapid rate? This issue of Science Findings focuses on southern California, one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the country, and home of 1.5 million people. Pacific Northwest Research scientist Ross Kiester, in conjunction with a cooperative research agreement with Harvard University, developed six models to illustrate how development might impact the area. Kiester's approach was this: rather than focusing on how to keep people out to save biodiversity, how can we keep people in the area with the...

This issue examines research the Station has been conducting on how catastrophic disturbances affect fish habitat. Whereas our February issue discussed the physical dynamics of a flood on a landscape, here we expand to major disturbances in general while narrowing in a fish habitat still at a landscape scale.Our work in this area is unfolding new knowledge about very complex ecological processes. We are beginning to understand how fish are weed like opportunists as they take advantage of natural cycling over long-time scales and large areas.As scientists, one conclusion we have made about...

Examining biophysical and social conditions, trends, and opportunities, the Columbia basin assessment draws a composite picture of the basin with two integrated measures: ecological integrity (the presence and functioning of ecological components and processes) and socioeconomic resiliency (the social and economic adaptability of a geographic area to outside economic influences like reduction of timber supply). The resulting pictures is complex with great variation across the basin. Scientists used these two measures to balance ecological risk, management opportunity, and public choice. An...

Adaptive management is a fusion of science and managment used to improve and care for natural resources. This issue of "Science Findings" centers on how this type of management is used to tame wildfire incidents in northeastern Oregon's Blue Mountain range.The following article considers how adaptive management is being used by the La Grande, Oregon-based Blue Mountains Natural Resources Institute (BMNRI). The institute, with headquaters in the La Grande Ranger District, Wallowa Whitman National Forest, uses adaptive management as part of the Limber Jim project to assess several logging...

A project in western Washington tries to mimic natural disturbance to create forest structure similar to late-seral stages. A model was developed to identify pathways to achieve this structure with four indices: capacity to support vertebrate diversity, forest floor function, ecological productivity based on tree-using rodents, and production of deer and elk.The study found that maximizing biodiversity through intentional forest management reached the goal of old-forest habitat more quickly than other timber-fiber strategies, and it produced significant economic benefit."If we can conserve...

In a unique effort to compare and contrast differing views on future supply and demand for wood, a study found that demand for wood will increase, but there is no evidence of a crisis at the world scale. Opportunities to increase wood production, however, are limited and trade-offs among competing uses of forests are inevitable. A complex of factors determine supply and demand including population growth, increasing income, prices of wood raw material, technological change, institutions and policies, and the nature of ownership and rights to use land.The study displayed the future under...

The information we bring to the table is usually complex. The April issue of Science Findings illustrates this complexity. Scientific inquiry about an individual species and its habitat requires modeling, assumptions, and time. Uncertainty remains after studies are done. Once policy is made, implementation continues to build new understanding, which may present implications not considered in the original policy.Hindsight vision is 20/20 because all the facts are in. Scientific data can not offer 20/20 vision of the future. But despite its imperfections, it offers a powerful look at what...

A financial analysis of a smallscale Gmelina arborea improvement program in Hojancha, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica is described. The program consisted of a clonal seed orchard, made up of ramets of plustrees, and three progeny tests/seedling seed orchards. A 5% discount rate was used. The total discounted/compounded cost of the program was US$25423. The analysis demonstrated that this outlay would be justified at annual planting rates of between 31 ha per year (at 20% genetic gain in volume) to 125 ha per year (at 5% genetic gain) over the 20year life of the orchard. These results...

Guidelines in the form of a six-step approach are provided for estimating volumes, oven-dry mass, consumption, and particulate matter emissions for piled logging debris. Seven stylized pile shapes and their associated geometric volume formulae are used to estimate gross pile volumes. The gross volumes are then reduced to net wood volume by applying an appropriate wood-to-pile volume packing ratio. Next, the oven-dry mass of the pile is determined by using the wood density, or a weighted-average of two wood densities, for any of 14 tree species commonly piled and burned in the Western...