Dry Forests of the Northeastern Cascades Fire and Fire Surrogate Project Site, Mission Creek, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest James K
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United States Department of Agriculture Dry Forests of the Forest Service Northeastern Cascades Pacific Northwest Research Station Fire and Fire Surrogate Research Paper PNW-RP-577 January 2009 Project Site, Mission Creek, Okanogan-Wenatchee D E E P R A U R T LT MENT OF AGRICU National Forest The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the principle of multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood, water, forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and management of the National Forests and National Grasslands, it strives—as directed by Congress—to provide increasingly greater service to a growing Nation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TDD). To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer. Compilers James K. Agee is an emeritus professor, College of Forest Resources, Box 32100, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195; and John F. Lehmkuhl is a research wildlife biologist, U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 1133 N Western Ave., Wenatchee, WA 98801. Dry Forests of the Northeastern Cascades Fire and Fire Surrogate Project Site, Mission Creek, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest James K. Agee and John F. Lehmkuhl, Compilers U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Pacific Northest Research Station Portland, Oregon Research Paper PNW-RP-577 January 2009 Abstract Agee, James K.; Lehmkuhl, John F. (comps.) 2009. Dry forests of the Northeastern Cascades Fire and Fire Surrogate Project site, Mission Creek, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. Res. Pap. PNW-RP-577. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 158 p. The Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) project is a large long-term metastudy estab- lished to assess the effectiveness and ecological impacts of burning and fire “surrogates” such as cuttings and mechanical fuel treatments that are used instead of fire, or in combination with fire, to restore dry forests. One of the 13 national FFS sites is the Northeastern Cascades site at Mission Creek on the Okanogan- Wenatchee National Forest. The study area includes 12 forested stands that encompass a representative range of dry forest conditions in the northeastern Cas- cade Range. We describe site histories and environmental settings, experimental design, field methods, and quantify the pretreatment composition and structure of vegetation, fuels, soils and soil biota, entomology and pathology, birds, and small mammals that occurred during the 2000 and 2001 field seasons. We also describe the implementation of thinning treatments completed during 2003 and spring burning treatments done during 2004 and 2006. Keywords: Dry forest, Washington, Cascade Range, vegetation, fuels, soils, soil biota, entomology, pathology, wildlife. Summary The Mission Creek Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) project was initiated in 2000. Since that time, pretreatment measurements have been completed and analyzed and are summarized in this report. Treatments have also been applied, although they were completed in two phases: thinning and four of the prescribed burns were completed in 2002–2004, and the final two prescribed burns were completed in 2006. This research paper summarizes the implications of the pretreatment results The forests of the and the implementation of treatments and posttreatment progress. Mission Creek study The forests of the Mission Creek study site are representative of larger dry site are representative forest landscapes of the West. Mission Creek is within Ecological Subregion 11 of larger dry forest (ESR 11) of the interior Columbia River basin, and the primary scope of inference landscapes of the West. for the study results. The subregion extends along the lower elevation forested lands of the eastern Cascades of Washington and Oregon, and on an easterly arc to the Kettle Range in northeastern Washington. The Mission Creek results combined with those from the Lubrecht FFS site in the northern Rocky Mountains of northeastern Montana and the Hungry Bob FFS site in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon expand the FFS scope of inference to much of the dry forest in the interior Columbia River basin. This dry forest is codominated by Douglas-fir Pseudotsuga( menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws). About 10 percent of the forest composition consists of grand fir Abies( grandis (Dougl. ex D. Don) Lindl.) and western larch (Larix occidentalis Nutt.). Among FFS sites, it is less ponderosa pine-dominated than dry forests of the Southwest, has less lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud.) than dry forests of the northern Rocky Mountains, and has lower tree species richness than sites in the Sierra Nevada. Among FFS sites, Mission Creek is closest in tree composition to the Hungry Bob site in northeastern Oregon, but our experimental units appear to have had fewer logging entries and higher basal area. Compared to historical stands in ESR 11, current units have higher tree density and basal area, more small trees, and more tree layers. All of these features are likely to be affected by treatments of thinning or prescribed fire. There are few significant vegetation differences among Mission Creek units. However, there is substantial within-unit variation. Overstory vegetation is generally similar across all pretreatment units in terms of tree density, snag density, basal area, stand density index, sapling density, species composition, canopy cover, bulk density, and base height. The site is fairly species rich with 124 understory species, most with low cover and frequency, but graminoids and shrubs dominate the understory. Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia (Nutt.) Nutt. ex M. Roem.), snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus (L.) S.F. Blake), and rose (Rosa spp.) are the dominant shrubs, and pinegrass (Calamagrostis rubescens Buckley) and elk sedge (Carex geyeri Boott) are the dominant graminoids. Understory community structure differs among treatment units, and understory vegetation is correlated with physical and biological elements, such as elevation and overstory tree density. Dry forests of Montana have shrub-forb understory dominance, and the Oregon and Southwest sites are forb-graminoid dominated. Current fuel conditions at Mission Creek show moderate variability among units, but few significant differences. The ranges of biomass for 1-hr, 10-hr, and 100-hr fuels are within the ranges of other dry forests, but the larger fuels (1,000- hr+ [>7.62 cm diameter]) are 25 to 65 percent of levels in other dry forests. Fire behavior is affected primarily by the smaller dead fuels plus herbs and shrubs, so the low levels of coarse woody debris have few fire behavior implications. Projections of fire Projections of fire behavior show a majority of units would be affected by severe behavior show a fire behavior (torching and crowning) under worst-case weather using either the majority of units would Northern Forest Fire Laboratory models or custom models where shrub depth be affected by severe was used to define fuelbed depth. Less severe fire behavior is predicted if fuelbed fire behavior under depth is defined by dead fuel particle height. worst-case weather. Soils of Mission Creek are largely mollisols, with some alfisols, inceptisols, and entisols, derived primarily from sandstone. The A horizons, on average, are deep for a forest soil (up to 88 cm), but quite variable across units; Bw and Bt horizons are also quite variable. Soils are well-structured with moderate bulk densities, usu- ally loamy to sandy loamy at the surface, grading to increasingly sandy or clayey texture at depth. Hydrophobicity is common at the surface owing to exudates from leaf litter coating surface soil particles. Carbon and nitrogen are high in these soils, with a high base saturation as well. Nutrients appear less limiting for plant growth than moisture, and it appears that by June, soil moisture levels are significantly drawn down by evapotranspiration. Soil enzymes and microarthropods are variable across and within units. Both can affect site productivity by influencing organic matter input and decomposition. Sampling on a landscape gradient of ridgetop, sideslope, open bare area, and valley bottom showed some differences by landscape position, probably associated with moisture availability. Soil enzyme activity was relatively low in the surface soil samples, generally higher with increasing Douglas-fir dominance, and not signifi- cantly different by landscape position. The soil microarthropod fauna density was dominated by oribatid mites (84 percent) and Collembola (springtails, 7