Treesearch

A Landscape Analysis Plan (LAP) sets out broad guidelines for project development within boundaries of the Kings River Sustainable Forest Ecosystems Project. The plan must be a dynamic, living document, subject to change as new information arises over the course of this very long-term project (several decades). Two watersheds, each of 32,000 acres, were dedicated to the effort by the Kings River Ranger District of the Sierra National Forest. Several documents were used to prepare a draft LAP in 1995. Although the plan lays out general guidelines for managing both watersheds, all land and...

The Kings River Sustainable Forest Ecosystems Project, a formal administrative study involving extensive and intensive collaboration between Forest Service managers and researchers, is a response to changes in the agency’s orientation in favor of ecosystem approaches and to recent concern over issues associated with maintenance of late successional forest attributes and species that are closely associated with them, such as the California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis). Planning for the project began in mid-February, 1993. A prescribed burning program was already underway in...

Use of an ecosystem approach at a landscape scale to program and guide accomplishments of multi-resource and social objectives has been discussed between researchers and natural resource managers for many years. Presently, great interest exists in the applicability of uneven-aged management practices for such an approach in conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada of California. The Kings River Sustainable Forest Ecosystems Project involves an administrative study by the Sierra National Forest and the Pacific Southwest Research Station that is providing an opportunity to implement and study...

Abstract - The effects of multiple logging disturbances on peak flows and suspended sediment loads from second-growth redwood watersheds were approximately additive. Downstream increases were no greater than would be expected from the proportion of the area disturbed. Annual sediment load increases of from 123 to 269% were measured in tributary watersheds but were not detected at the main channel gages, implying that sediment was being temporarily stored in the intervening channels. The failure of previous studies to detect increases in large peak flows following timber harvests may be due...

Traditional methods for determining the frequency of suspended sediment sample collection often rely on measurements, such as water discharge, that are not well correlated to sediment concentration. Stream power is generally not a good predictor of sediment concentration for rivers that transport the bulk of their load as fines, due to the highly variable routing of sediment to the channel from hillslopes, roads, and landslides. A method, such as turbidity threshold sampling, that employs a parameter well correlated to concentration, can improve sampling efficiency by collecting samples...

Abstract - The paper discusses an automated procedure for measuring turbidity and sampling suspended sediment. The basic equipment consists of a programmable data logger, an in situ turbidimeter, a pumping sampler, and a stage-measuring device. The data logger program employs turbidity to govern sample collection during each transport event. Mounting configurations and housings for the turbidimeters have been prototyped and tested or deployed at 16 gaging sites in northwestern California. Operational data are presented with examples illustrating storm load estimation.

Abstract - Models are fit to 11 years of storm peak flows, flow volumes, and suspended sediment loads on a network of 14 stream gaging stations in the North Fork Caspar Creek, a 473-ha coastal watershed bearing a second-growth forest of redwood and Douglas-fir. For the first 4 years of monitoring, the watershed was in a relatively undisturbed state, having last been logged prior to 1904, with only a county road traversing the ridgetops. Nearly half the watershed was clear-cut over a period of 3 years, and yarded primarily using uphill skyline cable systems to spur roads constructed high on...

Society is making unprecedented demands on world forests to produce and sustain many values. Chief among them is wood supply, and concerns are rising globally about the ability of forests to meet increasing needs. Assessing this is not easy. It requires a basic understanding of the principles governing forest productivity: how wood yield varies with tree and stand development; the implications of rotation length, utilization standards and silvicultural treatment; and effettive techniques for judging site potential and detecting changes in it. This chapter reviews these concepts and...

The USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection have gauged streamflow, and suspended sediment and precipitation since 1962 in the 473 ha North Fork and the 424 ha South Fork of the 2167 ha Caspar Creek in the Jackson Demonstation State Forest in northwestern California. Within the two Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds there are presently 26 gauged subcatchments

Abstract Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting fall and spring cold-hardiness were identified in a three-generation outbred pedigree of coastal Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga meniziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. menziesii]. Eleven QTLs controlling fall cold-hardiness were detected on four linkage groups, and 15 QTLs controlling spring cold-hardiness were detected on four linkage groups. Only one linkage group contained QTLs for both spring and fall cold-hardiness, and these QTLs tended to map in close proximity to one another. Several QTLs were associated with hardiness in all three shoot tissues...