|
The Management Impacts on Forest Vegetation Research Team's
emphasis is to develop a better understanding of the impact of forest
management practices on the composition, structure, and growth
of forest vegetation.
The need to balance resource use with future forest health and
sustainability calls for improved understanding of the effects of forest
management practices. Forest composition, structure, and growth can be
significantly altered by manipulating early spacing, competing vegetation,
fertilization, and stand density (thinning). The research base for describing
the relationships between forest management options and silvicultural practices
for forest trees and stands is well developed. Similar support and the research
data base for tree response to competing vegetation and development of all
vegetation components, whether in response to silvicultural practices
or by natural processes, is in its infancy. Also, uncertainty exits as
to how common silvicultural practices affect biodiversity and ecosystem
sustainability.
More specifically, we need more information on the species
composition of the plant community that ensues after natural and human-caused
disturbance. The autecology of many shrubs, forbs, and grasses, and their
density, development, phenology, onset of seed production, and frequency
and magnitude of seed crops is virtually unknown. The developmental dynamics
of native California hardwoods is especially lacking.
Societal interest in maintaining and increasing late successional
habitat for wildlife and aesthetics has added new goals and objectives
for silviculture. Our knowledge of the response of vegetation to silvicultural
practices designed to enhance timber production leads us to believe that
imaginative use of the same practices can help manintain existing late successional
forests and can accelerate the development of late successional chacracteristics
in young-growth forests. On-the-ground examples of such silvicultural strategies
do not exist. Particularly absent are intermediate term (20-60 years)
data on plant composition and dynamics as well
as methods necessary to attain desired amounts of vegetation and its structure
for codominant and intermediate crown classes.
Emphasis is placed on the effort to quantify conifer, hardwood, shrub,
forb, and grass density and development in different disturbance regimes
and tie these results to early, intermediate and late successional stages. Other areas of research include:
- Testing methods to maintain and enhance existing late
successional stands. Various partial harvesting schemes are being tested
along with prescribed fire in the Blacks Mountain Interdisciplinary Research
Project (link) in eastside pine.
- Determining how to accelerate development of stand structures
in young forests toward late successional characteristics. An interdisciplinary
study on the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area (link) is testing
three pathways to late successional attributes in 80-year-old mixed conifers.
- Model growth dynamics for forest components other than
commercial timber trees, such as shrubs, non-commercial species of trees,
snags, and partial harvests on a landscape scale.
- Development of models for traditional growth and yield
projection systems for ponderosa pine and true firs based on existing data
from long-term permanent plots in managed stands. Significant improvements
are expected because existing simulators based on temporary plots in unmanaged
stands do not accurately project observed responses to many silvicultural
treatments.
Research Scientists
Martin W. Ritchie, Biometrician & Team Leader
William W. Oliver, Emeritus Research Forester
Phillip M. McDonald, Emeritus Research Forester
Jianwei Zhang, Research Forester
Research Staff
Todd A. Hamilton, Forestry Technician
Brian M. Wing, Forestry Technician
Research Projects
Blacks Mountain Ecological Research Project
Little Horse Peak (Goosenest AMA) Research Project
Growth and Yield Simulation (CONIFERS) |
|
