Treesearch

According to the records compiled by the supervisors of the national forests in the northern Rocky Mountain region, lightning has been responsible for a greater number of fires, more burned area, more damage, and more expense of suppression in this territory than all other causes of forest fires combined. Smokers, campers, brush burners, incendiarists, lumbering operations, and railroads combined start annually an average of 379 fires on these 23,000,000 acres of Federal forest land, but lightning is credited with an annual average of 824 fires during the 10-year period, 1919 to 1928. In...

The purpose in this report is to describe the natural forest types of the northern Rocky Mountains in Montana and northern Idaho, to point out their natural distribution and chief silvical characteristics, and to show in what degree they are controlled by differences in topography and climate. Such information may be useful in laying the foundation for later, more intensive silvical investigations and practices in a region rich in forest resources.

Forest planting in the northern Rocky Mountain region is largely confined to areas that have been burned over twice, the second burning occurring during recent years. Planting crews can operate on these "double burns'' with relative ease because the fires have removed shrubs and other obstructions. Unfortunately planting activity on forest lands is not keeping pace with the accumulation of areas denuded by fire, and as time passes these lands rapidly revert to shrubby growth from the uninjured roots of the original bushes and from wind-borne seeds. Released from competition, other than...

The quadrat method, first introduced into ecological studies by Pound and Clements in i898, has been adopted by both foresters and ecologists as one of the most accurate means of studying the occurrence, distribution, and development of vegetation (Clements, '05; Weaver, '18). This method is unquestionably more precise than the descriptive method which it superseded. Nevertheless, the results obtained are subject to certain types of experimental error in common with all methods of sampling in which it is necessary to picture conditions over large areas from representative fractions....

Foresters have recently begun to seek a more intimate knowledge of the natural, successional stages by which forests regain terrain lost by extensive fires or other pronounced denuding agencies. Studies in this field lead to a closer understanding of the factors which control the distribution, composition and density of the present forest, the silvical requirements of the various species which compose the existing forest and of the soil building or soil deteriorating influences which are operative after large fires. It is the author's privilege in this paper to record certain observations...

It is obvious that seedlings grown in dense stands can not develop so well as those grown without crowding. Nurserymen naturally wish to avoid injury to their stock from crowding, but they also desire to utilize their soil space as fully as possible. The optimum density of stand for each species and age class of nursery stock can be determined within reasonably close limits only by detailed experiments employing plant measurements, weights, root examinations, and observations of survival in the field. Such experiments were conducted at the Savenac nursery in western Montana. Preliminary...

It is not necessary herein to quote statistics on the areas and values of timberland destroyed each year in the United States. The losses are sufficiently large to attract attention and to present problems in forest management as well as in forest research. The situation is here and every forester must meet it, be he manager or investigator. This paper is an attempt to present the problems of the investigator whose job is to furnish certain information on reproduction of burned over forest land to the forest manager.

During late July and early August, 1926, the Kaniksu National Forest in northern Idaho experienced its most severe fire damage since the advent of the white man in that region. About 125,000 acres were burned as a result of the conflagrations. The destroyed forests consisted largely of western white pine (Pinus mionticola), western larch (Larix occidentalis), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga taxifolia), lowland white fir (Abies grandis), western red cedar (Thuja plicata), and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). The ground cover, typical of the western white pine type, had as key species Linnea...

Except in unusually moist years the survival of planted stock in the northern Rocky Mountains, even on favorable slopes, has not been satisfactory. On good and poor sites alike, the principal cause of the unusual degree of mortality has been the combination of dry soil and dry winds during the hot days of July and August. The results have made it clear that the most important consideration in forest planting in this region is not the choice of a favorable site for planting, but the kinds of planting stock that are best suited to survive the unusually dry conditions, regardless of site.

In most of the forest regions of the United States the fire problem is the greatest forest problem. Wasteful methods of logging and lumbering may result in the loss of a large proportion of the remaining forest growth, but the land will usually produce a new crop of timber without undue delay, unless fire occurs.