Two decades of learning about thinning in the ecosystem management era

Abstract

Adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, USDA and USDI 1993, 1994) in the early 1990s signaled a major shift in forest management on federal lands in western Oregon and Washington. The Plan refl ected composite concerns raised by various resource managers, conservation groups, scientists, and the general public about the sustainability of production-oriented forestry as practiced from the early 1900s. Specifi cally, the plan addressed concerns regarding clearcutting, the harvest of old-growth trees and loss of related habitat, and threats to more than 1,000 potentially sensitive species (Th omas et al. 1993; USDA and USDI 1993), including regionally iconic salmonids and the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). As new objectives such as ecosystem function and biodiversity became higher priorities, federal land managers strove to defi ne new silvicultural practices that would provide ecologically sustainable alternatives to clearcutting and old-growth harvest while still providing for wood production and economic benefi ts. As a result, partial overstory removals—mostly alternative thinning methods—have replaced clearcutting as the predominant form of harvest on federal lands over the past two decades.

Parent Publication

• Density management in the 21st century: west side story

Titles contained within Two decades of learning about thinning in the ecosystem management era

• Community structure of vascular plants, arthropods, amphibians, and mollusks in managed forests of the Pacific Northwest (USA)

Citation

Anderson, Paul D. 2013. Two decades of learning about thinning in the ecosystem management era. In: Anderson, P.D.; Ronnenberg, K.L., eds. Density management in the 21st century: west side story. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-880. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 1–7.