PA C I F I C
Quarterly
N O R T H W E S T
Forest Inventory
& Analysis
Issue 8 / Fall 2006
Inside:
A Message From
the Program Manager................ 1
Studying Invasive Plants
and Biodiversity......................... 2
Employee Profiles.......................2
Recent PNW-FIA
Publications................................. 4
Forest Inventory and Analysis
Pacific Northwest Research Station
P.O. Box 3890
Portland, OR 97208-3890
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fia/
A Message From the Program Manager
We have completed another good fiscal year (Oct. 2005 to Sept. 2006 for you
nonfederal readers) with the 2006 field data collection progressing on schedule, 5-year reports for Oregon and California being developed, and continued
emphasis on improving our internal processes with the goal of increased efficiency and improved data quality. The Alaska field season wrapped up in early
September—it was a challenging season with poor weather conditions, forcing
crews to spend several nights on land instead of in their warm dry bunks on the
boat, but all survived safely and with good attitudes! Field work in the Federated States of Micronesia was completed earlier this spring, and we are looking
forward to seeing results from the analysis next year. Field work in California,
Oregon, and Washington is also progressing nicely, especially since we successfully transferred our field staff to 15 duty stations throughout the three states
this summer, and we had significant areas involved in forest fires, which limited
or delayed access to many plots. We are expecting to complete our California,
Oregon, and Washington field work by mid-November.
The Pacific Northwest Forest Inventory and Analysis (PNW-FIA) research
teams in Portland and Anchorage are in the process of creating new 5-year
research plans. Key areas of work will continue to be in land use change, ecological dynamics, forest health, forest land assessments, and inventory techniques. We have recently had some changes to the research staff: Tara Barrett
has relocated from the Portland FIA research team to the Anchorage team, and
Hans-Erik Anderson started work as a new FIA employee for the Anchorage
research team. Tara’s past work includes Sudden Oak Death, status of California hardwoods, tree height estimation, and techniques to evaluate efficiency
opportunities in field data collection. Hans brings skills in remote sensing and
LIDAR to the program and will be focusing on how to apply those skills to the
interior Alaska inventory.
October 1 starts the new federal fiscal year and normally I am happy to
report good news on progress toward getting FIA fully funded. However, this
year we are under a “Continuing Resolution” until mid-November and anxiously await the passage of a federal budget. Until then, we operate at last year’s
budget level.
—Sue Willits, PNW-FIA Program Manager
N O R T H W E S T
Forest Inventory & Analysis Quarterly
Studying invasive plants and biodiversity
The diversity and structure of forest plant communities
are important indicators of forest health. Changes in species
diversity caused by disturbance or the lack thereof (e.g., logging or fire suppression) are common national and regional
concerns. In particular, nonnative invasive plants can displace
native species, increase soil erosion, reduce forage quality,
and change fire regimes, resulting in both substantial costs
and lost revenue to land managers.
Extensive data on the distribution and ecological requirements of understory plants is scarce, however. Monitoring
vascular plants across a region presents several challenges:
there are a lot of species—at least 3,090 occur in Washington
state—and many of them (e.g., grasses and small forbs) can
be difficult to identify or are identifiable during only a part of
the field season. The PNW-FIA Program has been inventorying understory plants in combination with overstory trees for
many years, and has been testing a variety of approaches to
provide more comprehensive information on plant diversity
and invasive species.
For the standard PNW-FIA inventory, field crews record
the most abundant species (those ≥3 percent cover) that are
common and readily identified. The mix of species and their
abundance allows us to classify plots into standard plant
community classifications that indicate wildlife habitat and
ecological site characteristics (e.g., droughtiness and fertility).
The high density of plots (1 per 6,000 acres), in combination
with data collected on the plot and derived from maps, makes
it possible to examine the importance of vegetation type,
climate, topography, and management history on the distri-
Issue 8 / Fall 2006
2
Employee Profiles
In each issue of our newsletter we profile some of our employees
and their roles and responsibilities in the PNW-FIA Program.
Meet Andy Gray
Andy is a research ecologist who has been with the PNW-FIA
Program for the last 7 years on the Environmental Analysis and
Research team. After completing his Ph.D. in forest ecology at
Oregon State University in 1995, he worked for the PNW Station
studying late-successional forest structure and gap disturbances.
His recent research with FIA includes examining the effect of plot
size on the ability to characterize late-successional forests and
the distribution and abundance of nonnative plant species in the
forests of California, Oregon, and Washington. Andy is the colead analyst for Washington state and recently completed reports
on the most recent periodic inventories for Washington. Current
research projects include creating models and maps of tree distribution in relation to climate, improving FIA estimates of wildlife
habitat availability, and developing techniques to monitor changes
in tree-line. In his free time, Andy likes to hike, travel, play music,
and try to convince his dogs who’s boss.
bution and abundance of species that are reliably detected.
For example, the most abundant understory plant in western Washington was swordfern (Polystichum munitum); this
important nontimber forest product species was found just
as frequently in conifer and hardwood forests, but cover was
twice as high in hardwood forests. Swordfern was most common in areas with high precipitation, low elevation, and high
tree canopy cover. In contrast, many of the nonnative species
were found in recently disturbed areas
with low tree canopy cover, and were
(continued on page 3)
Photo by Walter Foss
P A C I F I C
PNW-FIA crew member, Connie Hubbard,
sampling understory vegetation.
P A C I F I C
N O R T H W E S T
Forest Inventory & Analysis Quarterly
Photo by Walter Foss
Issue 8 / Fall 2006
Bunchberry, Cornus canadensis.
(continued from page 2)
most common at low elevations near
urban and agricultural areas.
The PNW-FIA Program is working
with state and federal collaborators to
develop a prioritized list of invasive
species to monitor across the region. If
implemented, crews would be trained
to record a specific set of species regardless of abundance, to provide more
complete information on their distribution, and potentially to monitor their
spread over time.
We also have been pilot-testing the
national FIA vegetation
indicator protocol in
selected states. Experienced botanists go to the
“forest health” subset
of plots during the
peak growing season
and record all vascular
plants, regardless of
abundance. This protocol allows us to examine patterns in species
diversity and get a more
complete picture of the
impact of non-native
species. Dramatic differences in patterns
of plant diversity were found across the
ecological regions of Oregon, with high
plot richness and the highest species
turnover among plots found in the Blue
Mountains. Seventy-one percent of the
plots on forest land across Oregon had
at least one nonnative species recorded.
Surprisingly, some of the common nonnatives found in this comprehensive
survey are not listed on any regional
invasive priority list (e.g., sheep sorrel,
Rumex acetosella, and wall lettuce, Mycelis muralis). Abundance of non-
3
native species differed from 15 percent
of the species in western juniper stands to 1 percent in high-elevation
conifer stands. The proportion of cover
made up of nonnative species was highest in juniper and ponderosa pine forest types.
The FIA inventory provides robust
statistics on the distribution and abundance of understory plants that have
not otherwise been available across
such large regions. Results to date
include some hard numbers and some
surprises. Going forward, we are faced
with a choice between comprehensive,
all-species assessments on a subset of plots versus less-confident, partial-
species assessments on all plots. We
look forward to continuing consul-
tations with collaborators to meet their
information needs.
—Andy Gray
For more information see:
Gray, A.N. 2005. Eight nonnative plants in
western Oregon forests: associations with
environment and management. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. 100:
109–127.
Gray, A.N.; Azuma, D.L. 2005. Repeatability and implementation of a forest vegetation indicator. Ecological Indicators. 5(1):
57–71.
Fried, J.S.; Gilless, J.K.; Riley, W.J.; Moody, T.J.; Simon de Blas, C.; Hayhoe, K.;
Moritz, M.; Stephens, S.; Torn, M.S. 2006. Predicting the effect of climate change
on wildfire severity and outcomes in Californina: a preliminary analysis. White
paper CEC_500-2005-196-SF. Prepared for the California Energy Commission’s
Governor’s Science Report. http://www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/CEC500-2005-196/CEC_500-2005-196-SF.PDF.
Jovan, S.; McCune, B. 2006. Using epiphytic macrolichen communities for biomonitoring ammonia in forests of the greater Sierra Nevada, California. Water,
Air, and Soil Pollution. 170: 69–93.
Veblen, T.T.; Donnegan, J.A. 2005. Historical range of variability for forest
vegetation of the national forests of the Colorado front range. Fort Collins, CO:
Colorado State University, Warner College of Natural Resources. 151 p.
Please visit our Web page at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fia/
Published by the
Pacific Northwest Research Station
P.O. Box 3890
Portland, OR 97208-3890
Sally Campbell, Managing Editor
scampbell01@fs.fed.us
(503) 808-2034
Pilar Reichlein, Layout
preichlein@fs.fed.us
(503) 808-2114
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PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Fiala, A.C.; Garman, S.L.; Gray, A.N. 2006. Comparison of five canopy cover
estimation techniques in the western Oregon Cascades. Forest Ecology and
Management. 232: 188–197.
News for Pacific Northwest Research Station,
Forest Inventory and Analysis Clients, Employees,
and Retirees
Quarterly
Brandt, J.P.; Morgan, T.A.; Dillon, T.; Lettman, G.J.; Keegan, C.E.; Azuma, D.L.
2006. Oregon’s forest products industry and timber harvest, 2003. Gen. Tech.
Rep. PNW-GTR-681. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest
Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 53 p.
Forest
Service
Forest Inventory
& Analysis
Boucher, T.V.; Mead, B.R. 2006. Vegetation change and forest regeneration on the
Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, following a spruce beetle outbreak, 1987-2000. Forest
Ecology and Management. 227: 233–246.
United States
Department of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Pacific Northwest Research Station
Forestry Sciences Laboratory
620 SW Main, Suite 400
P.O. Box 3890
Portland, OR 97208-3890
Recent PNW-FIA Publications