Treesearch

In September 1995, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) held its Annual Meeting at the University of Washington in Seattle. The meeting included two dozen conferences and several symposia and field trips dealing with various aspects of applying ecological restoration on both site-specific and landscape scales. More than a thousand scientists, educators, land managers, and others interested in issues relating to ecosystem-based management attended. The keynote speaker, Professor Daniel Botkin of George Mason University, exhorted the assembly to think of the natural landscape as an...

The Klamath Province, straddling the Oregon and California border along the north Pacific coast, roughly forms a square between Coos Bay and Crater Lake, Oregon, to the north, and Eureka and Redding, California, to the south. It is recognized as geologically unique (Dott 1971; Orr 1992) and is the most floristically diverse province in the western United States (Whittaker 1961).

Fire is the single most important ecological disturbance process throughout the interior Pacific Northwest (Mutch and others 1993; Agee 1994). It is also a natural process that helps maintain a diverse ecological landscape. Fire suppression and timber harvesting have drastically altered this process during the past 50 to 90 years. Natural resource specialists generally agree that the forests of the interior Pacific Northwest are less healthy, less diverse, and more susceptible to larger and more destructive wildfires as a result of this human intervention (Everett 1994). Analysis of...

Ecosystems and landscapes change over time as a function of vegetation characteristics and disturbance regimes, including fire. Interactions between disturbance events and forest development (succession) create patterns of vegetation across landscapes. These patterns result from, and change with respect to, species compositions and structures that arise from disturbance events interrupting successional pathways at ditlerent points during forest development. Vegetation patterns and disturbance regimes are modified by the effects of topography on the biotic and abiotic processes that drive...

During the last 2 years, many people from numerous government agencies and private institutions compiled a scientific assessment of the natural and human resources of the Interior Columbia River Basin (Jensen and Bourgeron 1993). This assessment is meant to guide the development of a coarse-scale Environmental Impact Statement for all 82 million hectares comprising the Interior Columbia River Basin (fig. 1). A myriad of spatial data products has been generated from this immense effort, including a wide variety of coarse-scale GIs data layers that describe historical, current, and fbture...

Stand replacement prescribed burning has been applied in Alaska on several occasions. Based on that experience, perspectives can be provided, issues can be discussed, and keys to success can be identified that are applicable to stand replacement prescribed burning activities in areas outside Alaska.

Many of the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) mixed conifer stands in the Methow Valley of north-central Washington have developed understories of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga rnenziesii) as a result of fire exclusion. Most of the forest floor has not yet become cluttered with dead woody fuel. Instead, the live biomass has increased and created more ladder fuels (branches near enough to the ground to carry a surface into the crowns). Consequently, crown fires can be initiated by fires of lower intensity. There is an increase in dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobiurn spp.), root rot, and other associated...

Fire has influenced both the morphology of species and their distribution for millions of years. Prescribed fire may be necessary to meet ecological restoration objectives, but reintroducing fire is a complex task. Fire may have undesirable effects if it is reintroduced outside of its "historical range of variability," or where the ecosystem has undergone major shifts in species composition or structure due to fire exclusion. Oregon white oak or Garry oak (Quercus garryana) woodlands and their associated prairies are a good example of this problem (Griffin 1977).

The Oregon Coast Range supports some of the most dense and productive forests in North America. In the pre-harvesting period these forests arose as a result of large fires-the largest covering 330,000 ha (Teensma and others 1991). These fires occurred mostly at intervals of 150 to 300 years. The natural disturbance regime supported a diverse fauna and large populations of anadromous salmonids (salmon and related fish). In contrast, the present disturbance regime is dominated by patch clearcuts of about 10-30 ha superimposed on most of the forest land with agriculture on the flats near...

For thousands of years fire has been a major, natural disturbance in the forest landscape from the Cascade Range westward to the coast in Oregon and Washington (Agee 1993; Brubaker 1991). Viewing the landscape of the central western Cascades in Oregon from a high point, one can see that fires of variable intensity and areal extent have created a complex mosaic of forest patches (Morrison and Swanson 1990).