By Mary Ann Albright | Posted: Wednesday, April 4, 2007 12:00 am
Gazette-Times reporter
More than a year after research on post-fire logging in the Biscuit region catapulted Oregon State University's College of Forestry into the limelight, researchers there are revisiting the controversial issue of natural regeneration.
Today, the Journal of Forestry is publishing research conducted by three OSU scientists in the department of forest science examining the recovery of conifers on 35 plots of forest land in southern Oregon and northern California that had been burned in wildfires between nine and 19 years ago.
The report is authored by Jeff Shatford, a senior faculty research assistant, David Hibbs, professor of forest ecology and silviculture, and Klaus Puettmann, associate professor of silviculture.
The study found that natural regeneration of tree seedlings was generally abundant though sometimes limited on the driest sites. The scientists also found that tree regeneration gradually accumulated in the years after fires.
Although seedlings may grow back more quickly if replanting occurs, or if competing vegetation is removed, forests in the area studied will usually regenerate naturally in time, even in a drier region, the report concludes.
"It's a question of whether you can afford to be patient and rely on the natural generation process," said Hibbs, noting that foresters identify specific timelines and habitat goals for the land they manage, and these priorities will dictate whether natural regeneration is the best approach.
The report is based on fieldwork Hibbs and Shatford conducted in the summer of 2005. They worked in areas that hadn't been replanted or logged after fires.
They looked at a spectrum of ecological settings in this diverse region, from drier to more moist forest zones, and found "surprisingly high" densities of seedlings, according to Hibbs.
The density of conifer seedlings they found was as much or more than typical levels in 60- to 100-year-old stands in this region (about 100 to 1,000 trees per acre).
"Assertions that burned areas, left unmanaged, will remain unproductive for some indefinite period seem unwarranted," the authors said in their report.
"We came at this with the hope of helping managers prioritize their activities after wildfires," Shatford said.
Their research in the Klamath-Siskiyou region straddling the Oregon and California border indicated that "some areas will regenerate quite well" when left alone.
Forest managers might want to direct their limited funding and resources to replanting areas at low elevations, which seem to naturally regenerate more slowly.
These most recent findings support the controversial research led by Daniel Donato, now a doctoral student at OSU, that appeared in the journal Science in January 2006.
This report looked at natural regeneration and the effects of salvage logging two and three years after the 2002 Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon.
The Donato et al. report contradicted other studies authored by OSU faculty members that had been used to back a Bush administration plan to log the Biscuit area, and a bill co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden to accelerate logging of burned forests.
Some professors in the College of Forestry who disagreed with Donato's findings tried to delay publication of the study, raising concern among students and faculty about censorship.
The fallout drew nationwide attention to the college and raised questions of academic freedom and responsibility. It also prompted questions as to whether the college, which gets about 10 percent of its overall funding from logging taxes, is in the timber industry's pockets.
College constituents took a vote of confidence in Dean Hal Salwasser's abilities to lead them forward, and he received 66 percent approval.
Salwasser appointed an internal committee to review the college and established an action plan to increase diversity within the college.
Bev Law, OSU professor of global change forest science and Donato's adviser and coauthor on the Biscuit fire paper, said Hibbs and Shatford's research reinforces her group's findings "that natural seedling regeneration occurs in the Siskiyou Forest."
Law and Donato, along with coauthors Joe Fontaine, Boone Kauffman and Doug Robinson, compared seedling densities before and after post-wildfire logging.
They found that forests did regenerate naturally, and that logging equipment and tree felling damaged seedlings and hindered regrowth. They also determined that post-fire logging can create tinder that increases the risk of future fires.
Detractors criticized Donato and his co-authors for interpreting their results too broadly, drawing sweeping generalizations. Donato countered that the research reflected only one region during a specific window of time.
This new report may help generalize those findings, however.
Law and her colleagues have several papers in the works looking at the Biscuit region four years after the fire, as well as other wildfires in Oregon. They also are studying reburned areas and the effects of fires and post-fire logging on bird populations.
Moving beyond any past contention within the college, Hibbs is quick to point out that he and Shatford "shared our draft papers with all interested faculty and got good and helpful input from all, no matter what side they were on in the previous debate."
For their next step, Hibbs and Shatford would like to create a decision-making tool, either graphical or computer-based, that will help forest managers determine how best to respond after wildfires and predict how well natural regeneration will meet their goals.
Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.