Ecosystem-based management treatments

Abstract

At Lick Creek, from 1906 until the 1980’s carefully guided harvesting had selectively removed large trees, retaining vigorous ones but allowing unmerchantable small trees to proliferate. The small trees were occasionally thinned by hand, but this was expensive and generated hazardous slash fuels. In contrast, for hundreds if not thousands of years prior to 1900, frequent low-intensity fires had shaped the forest by killing most of the small trees and maintaining a low level of fuel loadings (Agee 1993; Arno and others 1995, 1997). Thus, the silvicultural activities evaluated by Gruell and others (1982) contrasted with the pre-1900 natural forest succession in having no counterpart or substitute for frequent low-intensity fires.

Parent Publication

• Eighty-eight years of change in a managed ponderosa pine forest

Citation

Arno, Stephen F. 1999. Ecosystem-based management treatments. In: Smith, Helen Y.; Arno, Stephen F., eds. Eighty-eight years of change in a managed ponderosa pine forest. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-23. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 22-26