Treesearch

Research underway at the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest near White Sulphur Springs will provide insights on how to sustain lodgepole pine forests and water flow patterns over large areas. Lodgepole pine dominates a high percentage of forests in the northern Rocky Mountains. including the Bitterroot National Forest. About half the stands at Tenderfoot are two-aged, resulting from previous fires of mixed severity. However, nearly 110 years have passed since the last major fire. Many of the trees are aging and becoming increasingly susceptible to damage from strong winds, winler kill...

We sampled 19 isolated headwater populations of westslope cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi in Montana to provide estimates of fecundity, longevity, sex ratio, and age at sexual maturity. Fecundity was estimated for 31 fish collected from two streams in the upper Missouri River drainage. Females smaller than 149 mm fork length (FL) were generally immature and their fecundities could not be estimated. Mean fecundities (SD) were 227 eggs (41.1) for 150- 174-mm fish, 346 eggs (85.6) for 175-199-mm fish, and 459 eggs (150.8) for 200-mm and larger fish. A linear regression model (two...

We are developing new management treatments for regenerating and sustaining lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) forests through emulation of natural disturbance processes. Lodgepole pine is the principal forest cover on over 26 million hectares in western North America. While infrequent, stand replacing fires following mountain pine beetle outbreaks are common to the inland form (var. latifolia), more frequent nonlethal and mixed severity fires also significantly affected stand development and landscape patterns. This diversity of fire regimes resulted in spatially complex forests with a...

Water production from mountain watersheds depends on total precipitation input, the type and distribution of precipitation, the amount intercepted in tree canopies, and losses to evaporation, transpiration and groundwater. A systematic process was developed to estimate historic average annual runoff based on fire patterns, habitat cover types and precipitation patterns on the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest. A fire history study in the Little Belt Mountains of central Montana indicates much of the experimental forest watershed burned in the 1700's and 1600's. Fire scars and existing...

Snow accumulation in forested watersheds is controlled by climate, elevation, topographic factors and vegetation structure. Conifers affect snow accumulation principally by intercepting snow with the canopy which may later be sublimated. Various tree, stand, species and canopy densities of a subalpine fir habitat (ALBANASC) in central Montana were studied to determine if there was a response of snow accumulation to vegetation. Tree canopy cover, basal area, age since stand initiation, and species composition were measured at several sites with minimal topographic differences. Peak snow...

The Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF) was established in 1961 to investigate effects of timber harvest on water yield and quality in a subalpine forest of the Northern Rockies draining east of the Continental Divide (Fames et al. 1995; Figure 1). Prior to 1991 the only management activity within the TCEF was the construction of an access road to install stream measurement flumes (Fames et al. 1995). These flumes were not installed until 1992 and 1993 (Fames et al. 1995). The Montana Cooperative Fishery Research Unit was contracted by the USDA Intermountain Research Station (INT...

Methods for the quantification of coarse woody debris volume and the description of spatial patterning were studied in the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest, Montana. The line transect method was found to be an accurate, unbiased estimator of down debris volume (> 10cm diameter) on 1/4 hectare fixed-area plots, when perpendicular lines were used. The Fischer Photo Guide (1981) for woody fuels did not quantify large down debris as precisely as the line transect method on 1/4 hectare plots. Chi-square tests found that down debris had a clumped spatial distribution in 23% of the tests....

Data compiled from eight decades of incipient motion studies were used to calculate dimensionless critical shear stress values of the median grain size, T*c50. Calculated T*c50 values were stratified by initial motion definition, median grain size type (surface, subsurface, or laboratory mixture), relative roughness, and flow regime. A traditional Shields plot constructed from data that represent initial motions of the bed surface material reveals systematic methodological biases of incipient motion of the bed surface material values determined from reference bed load transport rates and...

Pressure pumping at the Earth's surface is caused by short-period atmospheric turbulence, longer-period barometric changes, and quasi-static pressure fields induced by wind blowing across irregular topography. These naturally occurring atmospheric pressure variations induce periodic fluctuations in airflow through snowpacks, soils, and any other porous media at the Earth's surface. Consequently, the uptake or release of trace gases from soils and snowpacks is a combination of molecular diffusion and advection forced by pressure pumping. Using model-estimated fluxes, this study attempts to...

Atmospheric ozone concentrations have been monitored at a subalpine forest ecosystem site, 3180m above mean sea level (msl), and at a 2680m msl forest-steppe ecotone site 15km to the southeast. Ozone concentrations were monitored at three heights above the ground on a 30m tower at the higher elevation site, and on a 10m tower in a large meadow downwind of this site. The research reported here concentrates on the data for the first six months of 1990-1994. The diel amplitude of ozone concentrations is very small in winter, increasing as the seasons advance to June. Following snowmelt in...