Management & Land-Use Effects
Dry Forest Restoration
The idea –
Ponderosa pine stands have been greatly altered from historical conditions due to logging and fire suppression. Active treatment of ponderosa pine forests to reverse historical trends is a recent management direction involving well-financed, regionally coordinated restoration efforts. The goal of this project is to collect and develop information on the response of bird species to management of dry forests in the Northern Region.
The widespread distribution and abundance of study sites provides a unique opportunity for well-planned, proactive monitoring of avian changes in dry forest habitats at a broad, regional scale. A controlled research design, especially one using pre- and post-treatment surveys, minimizes the potential effect of confounding variables due to differences in local conditions within, or landscape conditions surrounding, study sites.
Methods –
Using our Standardized Point Count Protocol, we conducted a study of avian species response to dry-forest restoration in the northern Rockies, during 2001 and 2003. Habitat types were represented by dry Douglas-fir and grand fir habitat types that contain ponderosa pine as the major seral or climax associate. We chose three categories of sites for comparison in this study: (1) 30 control sites, slated for future treatment; (2) 11 treated sites that had been logged or underburned, in order to reduce fuels and to approximate the more open structural conditions that existed historically; and (3) 19 sites that were naturally underburned during the 2000 fire season.
Annual Reports for this project –
click here for completed reports.
- Dry Forest Report 2001
- Monitoring for Adaptive Management in Coniferous Forests of the Northern Rockies (141 KB)
Jock S. Young, John R. Hoffland, Richard L. Hutto - http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr191/psw_gtr191_0405-0411_young.pdf
Funders –
USDA Forest Service Northern Region
Contact–