Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Trade-offs between management for fire risk reduction and northern spotted owl habitat protection in the dry conifer forests of southern Oregon

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  • There is a perceived trade-off between fire risk reduction and northern spotted owl habitat protection in dry-conifer forests in southwestern Oregon. Management options for balancing this trade-off need to be sought at the landscape level. Applied landscape ecology suggests three important features to consider are (1) patch size and configuration of fire resilient features that are used by northern spotted owls, (2) the scale at which forest structure and configuration impacts fire and northern spotted owl use, and (3) landscape memory, the influence of past ecological process on current ones. In this dissertation, I examine the landscape ecology of past and current fire regimes in the southwestern Oregon and northern California Klamath region and there implications for northern spotted owl habitat and fire risk reduction in current landscapes. Current old-forests in southwestern Oregon developed under a different fire regime than we see today. In chapter one, I review and discuss the characteristics of past fire regimes both at a fine scale, as assessed by stand-level fire history studies, and at coarse scales, as assessed by lake sediment core studies. Current landscape composition and structure represents a departure from pre-Euro-American landscapes. Forested landscapes generally have higher densities and more homogenous species composition today. In chapter two, I look specifically at edges within landscapes. Whereas past landscape edges were defined by disturbance patterns/gradients and physiographic changes, current landscapes are largely defined by ownership and management boundaries. I found no evidence of differences in surface fuel structure between two structurally and compositionally different edge-types, but I did find that edge-type impacted disturbance severity following the 2002 Timbered Rock Fire. On private industry land, salvage-logging was conducted immediately following the fire and resulted in strong edge effects into the adjacent publicly managed land that extended over 250 m from ownership boundaries. Additionally, I found that large gradients in forest age-structure on public lands reduced fire severity. In chapter three, I examine spotted owl habitat selection of fire-created edges following the 2002 Timbered Rock fire. Spotted owl use of edges varied by edge type (diffuse and hard) and spatial scale. Over moderate to large spatial scales, spotted owls selected diffuse edges, which were characterized by shallow gradients in fire severity. At fine spatial scales (<0.8 ha), there was some evidence of an association between spotted owls and hard edges, which were characterized by very steep gradients in fire severity. However, at broader spatial scales this result was reversed. I finish with overall conclusions that identify areas of common ground across these disciplines and lines and evidence, and with some management recommendations to restore more historic landscape structure that may assist with both fire risk reduction and northern spotted owl conservation.
  • Keywords: edges, fire ecology, Northern spotted owls
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