Disturbance regimes and their relationships to forest health.

Abstract

While planners deal with landscape issues in forest health, silviculturists deal with the basic units of the landscape, forest stands. The silviculturist manipulates small-scale disturbances and needs appropriate management indicators. Disturbance agents and their effects are important to stand development and are therefore useful as management indicators. More studies are needed to improve our understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns associated with various agents. We propose use of a disturbance profile to quantify small-scale disturbance regimes.This multivariate descriptor can assist making decisions on where, when and how to mimic, promote, suppress or tolerate natural disturbance.

Parent Publication

• Forest health through silviculture: Proceedings of the 1995 National Silviculture Workshop

Citation

Geils, Brian W.; Lundquist, John E.; Negron, Jose F.; Beatty, Jerome S. 1995. Disturbance regimes and their relationships to forest health. In: L.G. Eskew, comp. Forest health through silviculture: proceedings of the 1995 National Silviculture Workshop, Mescalero, New Mexico, May 8-11, 1995. Gen. Tech. Rep. RM-GTR-267. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station: 67-73