Treesearch

The Blue Mountains Natural Resources Institute held three types of meetings to obtain public and scientific input into the development of strategies and recommendations for addressing forest health issues in the Blue Mountains of Oregon and Washington. Seven strategies are proposed: (1) plan and implement management activities on a landscape level; (2) enhance training and education on natural resources and forest health; (3) facilitate public involvement in planning, decisionmaking, and implementing solutions to natural resource problems; (4) develop a framework and implement an operationa...

This report summarizes a 1990-91 timber resource inventory of Washington east of the crest of the Cascade Range. The inventory was conducted on all private and public lands except National Forests. Timber resource statistics from National Forest inventories also are presented. Detailed tables provide estimates of forest area, timber volume, growth, mortality, and harvest.

Side-by-side comparisons were made in an operational-sized, replicated experiment, installed in 1980-81 on four areas in the Coast Ranges of Oregon, to determine the effects of six methods of site preparation on the subsequent survival and growth of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) and associated vegetation. A decade later, tree survival, total height, and stem caliper were significantly greater after site preparation by broadcast burning, slashing and burning, spraying Tordon 101 and burning, or aerial spraying of glyphosate than for manually pot-clearing vegetation at...

Vegetation biomass tables are presented for the Tanana River basin. Average biomass for each species of tree, shrub, grass, forb, lichen, and moss in the 13 forest and 30 nonforest vegetation types is shown. These data combined with area estimates for each vegetation type provide a tool for estimating habitat carrying capacity for many wildlife species. Tree biomass is reported for the entire aboveground tree, thereby allowing estimates of total fiber content.

This proceedings is a compilation of 23 papers that were presented at the regional meetings of the forest and conservation nursery associations in the United States in 1995. The Western Forest and Conservation Nursery Association meeting was held in Kearney, NE, on August 7-11, 1995, and the Northeastern Forest Nursery Association Conference was held in Mitchell, IN, on August 14-17, 1995. The subject matter ranges from seed collection and processing, through nursery cultural practices, to harvesting storage and outplanting.

Photographs taken before 1925 were compared with photos taken as recently as 1992 to interpret changes within ecosystems in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. For discussion purposes, 10 ecosystems were aggregated into seven broad landscape systems. Nearly all systems exhibited some degree of conversion from herbaceous to woody forms of vegetation. Nonforested ecosystems improved markedly except in the riparian-aquatic habitats. Forested ecosystems were stressed from stand stagnation, conversion from pine to fir, serious insect infestations, and crown fires. This project shows how these...

This report describes a program, FRAGSTATS, developed to quantify landscape structure. FRAGSTATS offers a comprehensive choice of landscape metrics and was designed to be as versatile as possible. The program is almost completely automated and thus requires little technical training. Two separate versions of FRAGSTATS exist: one for vector images and one for raster images. The vector version is an Arc/Info AML that accepts Arc/Info polygon coverages. The raster version is a C program that accepts ASCII image files, 8- or 16-bit binary image files, Arc/Info SVF files, Erdas image files, and...

A classification of forest vegetation is presented for the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington State. It is based on potential vegetation with the plant association as the basic unit. The classification is based on a sample of approximately 229 intensive plots and 282 reconnaissance plots distributed across the forest from 1980 to 1983. The hierarchical classification includes 5 forest tree series and 39 plant associations or community types. Diagnostic keys are presented for each tree series and plant association or community type. Descriptions include information about...

We compared the potential fire behavior and smoke production of historical and current time periods based on vegetative conditions in forty-nine 5100- to 13 5OO-hectare watersheds in six river basins in eastern Oregon and Washington. Vegetation composition, structure, and patterns were attributed and mapped from aerial photographs taken from 1932 to 1959 (historical) and from 1981 to 1992 (current). Vegetation with homogeneous composition and structure were delineated as patches. Each patch was assigned a potential rate of spread, flame length, fuel loading, and smoke production from...

Vertebrate herbivores can be effective agents of biological weed control in certain applications. I compared the use of domestic geese for weed control in an agricultural field with the herbicide hexazinone and with hand control. Newly planted spruce seedlings acted as a prototype crop that would be unpalatable to the geese. Trampling by geese led to as much as 47% tree seedling mortality during the 1st yr; this was reduced significantly by either limiting the amount of time the geese spent in the plots or surrounding seedlings with small wire fences. When compared with plots with no weed...