The forests of the Oregon Coast Range have been both the principal
natural resource, and for many years, the primary economic base of the region. In the past thirty years, changing social and economic factors have created new visions for these forests, leading to conflict over the appropriate management of...
Western society's ongoing cultural shift toward quality of life values and associated increased public participation expectations affects forest managers. The rapid urban growth experienced by the U.S. is increasing both the area of the urban-forest interface zone and the number of residents residing in that zone. The study site of...
Forest management requires classification of forest stands into groupings or types based on structural similarities, even when structure varies continuously along gradients. Managed, mixed-species, multi-aged forest stands often display complex structures containing extreme variation in trees size, density, and species composition, and as a result have diverse canopy structures. A...
Using the historical range of forest conditions as a reference for managing landscapes has been proposed as a "coarse-filter" approach to biodiversity conservation. By emulating historical disturbance processes, it is thought that forest management can produce forest composition and structure similar to the conditions that once supported the native biota....
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CHAPTER 3: Historical Disturbance Regimes as a Reference for Forest Policy in
the Oregon Coast
Most forests and timber in Western Oregon are taxed under the Western Oregon Forest Land and Severance Tax (WOST), a system which is accepted as one that promotes "correct" economic rotation lengths. This study was motivated by the observation that an optional tax with the same stated purpose - the...
Forest management has been influenced by many social and political changes, and one of the most prominent is the increasing urbanization of neighboring lands. As a result, forests once relatively far removed from urban areas now share boundaries with residential developments, and receive increasing pressure to provide recreation and other...
A crossdated fire history was reconstructed for a 1562 km2 area in the southern Willamette foothills of Oregon, using fire scars and tree origin years from twelve sites. The purpose of this study was to determine fire frequency for each site and to quantify temporal and spatial variability of fire...
The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program conducts an annual inventory throughout the United States. In the western United States, 10% of all plots (one panel) are measured annually, and a moving average is used for estimating current condition and change of forest attributes while alternative methods are sought in...
This investigation on fire mosaics addressed several aspects:
(1) quantifying the role of terrain variables in fire-related
mortality and historical mean fire return interval (MFRI), (2)
comparing post-burn Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery, TM
difference imagery, and aerial photo interpretation to map forest
survival after wildfire, and (3) to describe...
Headwater streams are generally small, first-order streams that can comprise up to 80% (by stream length) of the drainage network in mountainous areas of the Pacific Northwest. These streams are intimately connected with downstream reaches, serving as a source of sediment, woody debris, organic matter and nutrients. The surrounding forests...