Using estimates of natural variation to detect ecologically important change in forest spatial patterns: a case study, Cascade Range, eastern Washington.

Hessburg, Paul F.; Smith, Bradley G.; Salter, R. Brion

doi:10.2737/pnw-rp-514

Cited by 25 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Numerous studies used interpretation of early, stereo, black and white aerial photography to better understand variation in landscape patch patterns and development of stand structure in relation to fire history (Habeck, 1976;Hessburg et al, 1999aHessburg et al, , 1999bHessburg et al, , 1999dHessburg et al, , 2000aHessburg et al, , 2007Skinner, 1998, 2003;Taylor, 2001, 2008;Taylor, 2001, 2010). Nearly all studies found a strong influence of topography on patch and stand structure patterns (discussed above).…”

Section: The Importance Of Meso-scale Heterogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many authors have focused attention on better understanding historical variability in meso-scale successional patterns (hereafter, the HRV) and its central role in landscape restoration (e.g., Allen et al, 2002;Hessburg et al, 1999bHessburg et al, , 1999dLandres et al, 1999;Morgan et al, 1994;Swanson et al, 1994;Swetnam et al, 1999;Millar and Woolfenden, 1999;Keane et al, 2009;Moritz et al, 2013;Wiens et al, 2012). Most discussions point to a pivotal role of using HRV information to guide landscape restoration, especially to understand how meso-scale successional patterns provided critical context for the variability of the local wildfire regime.…”

Section: The Importance Of Understanding the Historical Range Of Varimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The work of Everett et al (1994aEverett et al ( , 1994b was roughly tripled in a subsequent project, the 50 million ha Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP, Hann et al, 1997;Hessburg et al, 1999aHessburg et al, , 1999cHessburg et al, , 2000aRaphael et al, 2001), which is home to extensive MSForests. Subsequently, Hessburg and others (Gärtner et al, 2008;Hessburg et al, 1999bHessburg et al, , 1999dHessburg et al, , 2004Hessburg et al, , 2013Hessburg et al, , 2014Reynolds and Hessburg, 2005) developed operational decision support tools for estimating departures of contemporary landscape pattern conditions from both HRV and climate change analogue conditions for the mid21st century, which they called the future range of variation (FRV, Hessburg et al, 2013Hessburg et al, , 2014Hessburg et al, , 2015. Spatially explicit prescriptions for restoring patterns of large landscapes are derived from these landscape evaluations.…”

Section: The Importance Of Understanding the Historical Range Of Varimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Where possible, strategically place burn treatments to break up the homogeneity of the broad regional landscape (Finney, 2001;Agee and Skinner, 2005;Moghaddas et al, 2010), to buy time for creating desirable conditions on the larger landscape, and enable managers to cover more area with initial burn treatments Agee et al, 2000). Where Table 1 Percentage of potential vegetation type (PVT) area in early successional (seral) herbland, shrubland, woodland, bare ground and forest stand initiation patches in early 20th-century dry ponderosa pine, and dry and moist mixed conifer mixed severity forest environments of the Northern Cascades province of the Interior Columbia River Basin (adapted from Hessburg et al, 1999aHessburg et al, , 1999bHessburg et al, , 1999cHessburg et al, , 1999dHessburg et al, , 2000a. [Note that the historical photography predates all but trace amounts of regeneration harvesting].…”

Section: Overarching Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Hessburg

Spies

Perry

et al. 2016

Forest Ecology and Management

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175

190

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a b s t r a c tIncreasingly, objectives for forests with moderate-or mixed-severity fire regimes are to restore successionally diverse landscapes that are resistant and resilient to current and future stressors. Maintaining native species and characteristic processes requires this successional diversity, but methods to achieve it are poorly explained in the literature. In the Inland Pacific US, large, old, early seral trees were a key historical feature of many young and old forest successional patches, especially where fires frequently occurred. Large, old trees are naturally fire-tolerant, but today are often threatened by dense understory cohorts that create fuel ladders that alter likely post-fire successional pathways. Reducing these understories can contribute to resistance by creating conditions where canopy trees will survive disturbances and climatic stressors; these survivors are important seed sources, soil protectors, and critical habitat elements. Historical timber harvesting has skewed tree size and age class distributions, created hard edges, and altered native patch sizes. Manipulating these altered forests to promote development of larger patches of older, larger, and more widely-spaced trees with diverse understories will increase landscape resistance to severe fires, and enhance wildlife habitat for underrepresented conditions.Closed-canopy, multi-layered patches that develop in hot, dry summer environments are vulnerable to droughts, and they increase landscape vulnerability to insect outbreaks and severe wildfires. These same patches provide habitat for species such as the northern spotted owl, which has benefited from increased habitat area. Regional and local planning will be critical for gauging risks, evaluating trade-offs, and restoring dynamics that can support these and other species. The goal will be to manage for heterogeneous landscapes that include variably-sized patches of (1) young, middle-aged, and old, closedcanopy forests growing in upper montane, northerly aspect, and valley bottom settings, (2) a similar diversity of open-canopy, fire-tolerant patches growing on ridgetops, southerly aspects, and lower montane settings, and (3) significant montane chaparral and grassland areas. Tools to achieve this goal http://dx

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Section: The Importance Of Meso-scale Heterogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Importance Of Understanding the Historical Range Of Varimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Importance Of Understanding the Historical Range Of Varimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Overarching Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Hessburg

Spies

Perry

et al. 2016

Forest Ecology and Management

Self Cite

175

190

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Prior to the era of settlement, regional landscape resilience to wildfires naturally derived from mosaics of previously burned and recovering vegetation patches from prior wildfire events, and a predictable distribution of prior fire-event sizes [41]. This resilience yielded a finite and semi-predictable array of pattern conditions [42][43][44][45].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Geodesign for Watershed Restoration on the Fremont-Winema National Forest, Pacific Northwest, USA

Reynolds

Murphy²,

Paplanus

2017

Sustainability

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Spatial decision support systems for forest management have steadily evolved over the past 20+ years in order to better address the complexities of contemporary forest management issues such as the sustainability and resilience of ecosystems on forested landscapes. In this paper, we describe and illustrate new features of the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system that extend the system's traditional support for landscape analysis and strategic planning to include a simple approach to feature-based tactical planning priorities. The study area for this work was the Chewaucan watershed of the Fremont-Winema National Forest, located in south-central Oregon, USA. The analysis of strategic priorities recommended five subwatersheds as being of high priority for restoration activities, based primarily on decision criteria related to the stream accessibility to headwaters and upland condition. Among high priority subwatersheds, the most common tactical action recommended was the removal of artificial barriers to fish passages. Other high priority tactical actions recommended in high priority subwatersheds to improve fish habitats were reducing the road density and restoring riparian vegetation. In the discussion, we conclude by describing how the simple tactical planning methods illustrated in this paper can be extended in EMDS to provide a more sophisticated hybrid approach to strategic and tactical planning that can evaluate alternative portfolios of designed management actions applied across landscapes. The latter planned improvement to decision support capabilities in EMDS encapsulates Carl Steinitz's concept of geodesign.

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Landscape Evaluation and Restoration Planning

Hessburg

Salter

Reynolds

et al. 2014

Making Transparent Environmental Management Decisions

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Contemporary land managers are beginning to understand that landscapes of the early 20th century exhibited complex patterns of compositional and structural conditions at several different scales, and that there was interplay between patterns and processes within and across scales. Further, they understand that restoring integrity of these conditions has broad implications for the future sustainability of native species, ecosystem services, and ecological processes. Many too are hungry for methods to restore more natural landscape patterns of habitats and more naturally functioning disturbance regimes; all in the context of a warming climate. Attention is turning to evaluating whole landscapes at local and regional scales, deciphering their changes and trajectories, and formulating scaleappropriate landscape prescriptions that will methodically restore ecological functionality and improve landscape resilience. Here, we review published landscape evaluation and planning applications designed in EMDS. We show the utility of EMDS for designing transparent local landscape evaluations, and we reveal approaches that have been used thus far. We begin by briefly reviewing six projects from a global sample, and then review in greater depth four projects we have developed with our collaborators. We discuss the goals and design of each project, its methods and utilities, what worked well, what could be improved and 135 related research opportunities. It is our hope that this review will provide helpful insights into how spatial decision support technologies may be used to evaluate and plan for local and perhaps larger-scale landscape restoration projects.

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Using estimates of natural variation to detect ecologically important change in forest spatial patterns: a case study, Cascade Range, eastern Washington.

Cited by 25 publications

References 25 publications

Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Toward Geodesign for Watershed Restoration on the Fremont-Winema National Forest, Pacific Northwest, USA

Landscape Evaluation and Restoration Planning

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