Ashland Forest Resiliency
Stewardship Project
Monitoring Update – Spring 2012
Soil evaluation prior to
logging
Removing smaller
trees and leaving
the larger trees
Surface and ladder
fuel treatment
implementation
A soil scientist from the Forest Service has teamed up with The Nature
Conservancy to evaluate soil disturbance and effective ground cover in
advance of ground based logging on 94 acres. While most of the tree removal
on the Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project will be implemented with
helicopters, on gentle slopes (<20%), ground based systems will be used to
reduce treatment cost. Ground based logging systems can significantly impact
forest soils so machinery will operate on previously cut limbs and tops to
protect the soil and logging contracts specify that the project shall add <5%
detrimental soil impact. The monitoring partners are taking this extra
precaution to give greater certainty that soil disturbance and effective ground
cover standards will be met.
Collaboration increases awareness of important work being done on public
lands and can improve project outcomes, yet it is also an exhausting process
replete with rules, procedures, and opportunities for misunderstanding.
Administrative monitoring has identified actions needed to increase project
efficiency, primarily by capitalizing on trust built after working as Partners for
two years and empowering Lomakatsi Restoration Project with greater
autonomy to implement surface and ladder fuel treatments. Additionally, we
are adaptively managing to cleaving more closely to basic design elements of
the project such as thinning most aggressively around legacy trees and
leaving the largest trees in the forest.
Klamath Bird Observatory has annually monitored songbird populations
using mist nets to capture, then band and release the birds to learn about
population trends, breeding success, health, and longevity. In addition to this
demographic work, basic observations on songbird communities are also
needed to evaluate treatment impacts on overall avian communities. A
contract has been developed to pay Klamath Bird Observatory with American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to conduct bird point-count transects in
areas where density management will be occurring later this year. These data
will then allow evaluation of how treatments have altered bird habitats, and
subsequently bird communities.