Learning Design Questions
For
Thomas Creek Planning Unit – Umatilla National Forest
3-20-14
The Umatilla Forest Collaborative Group (the Collaborative) recommends research questions,
which have been designed by the Group, to help inform collaborators, land managers and others about
ecologic, social, and economic conditions in moist, mixed conifer forests. There are 1,017 acres in 41 old
harvest units within the (17,578) acres of the Thomas Creek Planning Area on the Walla Walla Ranger
District. The experimental studies proposed in these stands will help inform future actions on another
90,000 acres of similar harvest units across the Umatilla National Forest.
The Collaborative selected Thomas Creek as a collaborative project, because it has a
predominance of moist, mixed conifer sites, and it provides an opportunity to generate new information
which could inform management over the larger landscape. The Collaborative recognizes that their
unique situation as collaborators on a broadly moist, eastside forest includes a responsibility to help guide
the growing desire to better understand the overall science of moist stands in the dry forest zone. The
Collaborative agreed at their January meeting to partner with the Pacific Northwest Research Station
(PNWRS) to implement a learning design around the questions posed by the Collaborative. The two
organizations have initiated the project with the understanding that acquiring new knowledge requires the
resolute courage to depart from the “easy realm” of group comfort and steadfast norms. Together, the
partners agree that the new knowledge which may arise out of this project is extraordinarily valuable over
the wider landscape, today and far into the future.
Thomas Creek area includes about 41 somewhat rectangular stands which were harvested, then
planted with ponderosa pine seedlings. Existing studies have shown that natural succession typically
would have been dominated by larch and fir. These old-harvest units, combined with fire exclusion have
shifted the landscape so that it is now deficient in some of the structures, composition, and species seen
and recorded by early settlers and within the range of variation (RV) thought to be critical to ecological
health and resilience.
While the entire area appears to partly deviate from this natural range of variability, the group has
decided to focus on learning about how to restore the old harvest units with pine, including, as part of the
study on a subset, interrupting their abrupt edges by “feathering” selected treatments into the immediately
adjacent mixed conifer forest. The goals of softening the edges are to move more of the landscape toward
the RV, to reduce the lasting aesthetic signature of past management and to initiate the restoration process
in the most uncharacteristic areas first.
Questions:
While, the Collaborative is interested in a great many unanswered questions about moist, mixed conifer
forests, the following questions were selected to touch at least one uncertainty in each of the elements of
the collaborative mission: society, ecology, and economy:
1. Can new prescriptions move tree composition and woody debris closer to the natural Range
of Variability? There is particular concern about whether the over-abundant grand fir will
continue to reproduce and if so, can it be controlled through actions detailed in the prescriptions
(example: pre-commercial thinning).
Method: The effects of prescriptions on natural regeneration and survival of planted seedlings
will be monitored. The proportion of the experimental unit changed, will be measured along with
the project-wide proportion of landscape changed.
2. How will the diversity created by a mixture of prescriptions alter fire susceptibility and
intensity if fire does occur? The group recognizes that it would be difficult to ‘construct’ a
landscape configuration to control or ‘herd’ fire movement, but it is possible to examine this issue
by using modeling software. It is also possible to design prescriptions to maintain a stand in a
low or moderate canopy fuel loading condition which would make the stands relatively ‘immune’
to crown-fire behavior at a stand scale and under certain fire-weather scenarios.
Method: Wildfire susceptibility, as an indirect measure of potential fire effects, will be
determined by monitoring changes in fuel loads and linked predictions of various models.
Model outputs can be used as hypotheses, tested if and when a fire occurs.
3. Can hardwoods be re-established in managed riparian zones to move to RV and improve
riparian patterns and processes? There is an understanding that hardwoods play a critical role
in moisture retention and food supply to streams, and that fire exclusion, abundant ungulates, and
conifer management have greatly reduced their extent and influence. Effects of ungulate
exclusion are understood from nearby exclosures (Mottet and Hoodoo) and from elk models
developed at Starkey Experimental Forest.
Method: Patterns will be tested by monitoring effects of prescriptions on natural regeneration
and survival of planted hardwoods; processes will be tested by monitoring effects of prescriptions
on stream productivity and soil water-holding capacity. New exclosures could be considered to
test if ungulates are concentrating by being attracted from adjoining areas.
4. Can prescriptions successfully increase First Foods like huckleberry fruits? The
Collaborative and Tribes have an opportunity to grow and create compatible outcomes. Tribal
input will be sought to further develop this idea. Many shrubs, like huckleberries, will not fruit
well in excess shade.
Method: Various openings to increase huckleberry fruit and other First Foods will be tested,
including one in which fruiting is a major objective of the prescription.
5. Regional economic and ecologic consequences. By evaluating ecologic and socio-economic
effects of a range of approaches in the study, the long-term impacts of future decisions (choosing
one or more approaches), can be extrapolated to the 97,000 acres of old-harvest units. This
modelling effort will help to better understand what we mean by balancing ecological and socioeconomic objectives.
Method: Potential decisions (choices of approaches independently and in combination) would be
modelled to project change in HRV, timber volume, local jobs, and other outputs.