This thesis examines forest history of a portion of the Douglas-fir Region: Soap Creek Valley, a 15,000 acre sub-basin of the Luckiamute River in northern Benton County, Oregon. The primary reasons for the research were to test oral history methodology, document sub-basin scale forest cover pattern changes, and determine basic...
Fires set by Native Americans were important in shaping and maintaining Willamette Valley prairie plant communities. With fire exclusion after Euro-American settlement in the 1840's, composition of the remaining prairies shifted toward shrub and tree dominance with a concomitant decline in endemic prairie plant populations. I hypothesize that by restoring...