Research Database
Displaying 41 - 44 of 44
Temporal dynamics and decay of coarse wood in early seral habitats of dry-mixed conifer forests in Oregon’s Eastern Cascades
Year: 2012
Early seral forest habitats are increasingly valued for the unique structural resources they provide in many western US forests. Coarse woody detritus (CWD) are a significant feature of this developmental stage and are highly dynamic, suggesting these environments exhibit temporally diverse structural conditions prior to forest canopy closure. In dry-mixed conifer forests, snags are hypothesized to decay slower than logs making long-term dynamics in these forests dependent on snag fall, breakage and the decay rates of both standing and surface CWD. We estimated snag fall and breakage rates…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Multiple successional pathways and precocity in forest development: can some forests be born complex?
Year: 2012
Background. In forests subject to stand-replacing disturbances, conventional models of succession typically overlook early-seral stages as a simple re- organization/establishment period. These models treat structural development in essentially ‘relay floristic’ terms, with structural complexity (three-dimensional heterogeneity) developing primarily in old-growth stages, only after a closed-canopy ‘self-thinning’ phase and subsequent canopy gap formation. However, is it possible that early-successional forests can sometimes exhibit spatial complexity similar to that in old-growth forests – i.e…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lessons of the Hayman fire: weeds, woodpeckers and fire severity
Year: 2008
This project took advantage of pre-fire data gathered within the perimeter of Colorado’s 2002 Hayman Fire. Researchers studied the unique fire regime of Front Range ponderosa pine forests, and fire effects on understory-plant communities and American Three-toed Woodpeckers. Results confirmed that historically, the diverse structure of these forests was maintained by a mixed-severity fire regime that included large areas of severe fire. In addition, researchers found that much of the burn meets habitat requirements for American Three-toed Woodpeckers, and that understory plant species that…
Publication Type: Report
Has Fire Suppression Increased the Amount of Carbon Stored in Western US Forests?
Year: 2008
Active 20th century fire suppression in western US forests, and a resulting increase in stem density, is thought to account for a significant fraction of the NorthAmerican carbon sink. We compared California forest inventories from the 1930s with inventories from the 1990s to quantify changes in aboveground biomass. Stem density in mid-montane conifer forests increased by 34%, while live aboveground carbon stocks decreased by 26%. Increased stem density reflected an increase in the number of small trees and a net loss of large trees. Large trees contain a disproportionate amount of carbon,…
Publication Type: Journal Article