Westside Restoration. Middle Fork Ranger District

Transcription

1 Westside Restoration Middle Fork Ranger District

2 Jim s Creek Savanna Restoration Stewardship Project

3 The Location Oakridge Hills Creek Reservoir Willamette River Jim s Creek (~700 acres)

4 The beginning.. Tim our project planner found a large dead oak and large pine trees with evidence of indigenous use

5 Need for Restoration Oregon white oak snags and live trees in forest and meadows Large live ponderosa pine (cultural trees), some sugar pine

6 Objectives for Monitoring Restoration Objective 1: Analyze current oak-pine distribution, health, and threats to persistence and interpret the results in terms of their implications for restoration actions on the site. Objective 2: Analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of successional change from oak-pine savanna to forest :

7 Plant community composition, structure, including tree age (canopy/ shrub/ ground layers) Environmental and site physiographic factors Soils, soil moisture and other edaphic factors 5 stratified random belt transects totaling 3300 meters in length Ridgeline Willamette River

8 Understory sampled in 2 perpendicular transects within each plot

9 The Process ~2002 Developed loose collaborative group Multiple meetings/field tours Research community (University of Oregon, Dr. Bart Johnson) collaboration with Ecology and Botany : Challenge Cost Share at Jim s Creek Joint Fire Science (broader oak distribution) Developed Restoration Objectives NEPA Implementation Post-Treatment Monitoring and beyond 2017 Complete NEPA for underburn in Jim s Creek.

10 Jim s Creek Project Goals Re-establish the historic condition of an open pine/oak forest with an understory of native grasses and herbs, along with the frequent fire regime that played an important role in maintaining this open forest with a grassy understory. This goal will accomplish a related goals to restore the full suite of plant and animal specific that used this now extinct open forest;

11 Jim s Creek before Restoration

12 Jim s Creek Oak Pine Savanna 100 years ago

13 Jim s Creek Changes

14 Jim s Creek NEPA and Implementation An Environmental Analysis used data on presettlement communities and tree distributions to build a prescription for the 433 acre Jim s Creek site. The prescription: Regardless of age, trees equal to or in excess of 24 inches in diameter at breast height will be retained. Pine and oak trees of any size will be retained, except as noted below. In one 16 acre area centered on the largest meadow, dense young pines encroaching upon the meadow will be thinned. Trees in the 100 year age class greater than 24 inches in diameter that are directly competing with mature pine or oak may also be removed. The spacing of retained trees will be quite variable and may result in creation of small openings up to an acre in size.

15 Project Implementation on ~425 acres:

16 Jim s Creek after Restoration The project was completed with stewardship retained receipts in 2015.

17 Jim s Creek: Before and After

18 Post-treatment questions What is the post-treatment status of the legacy/presettlement trees? Is the post-treatment tree structure and composition moving towards desired condition? Spatial distribution? Is the post-treatment understory moving towards desired condition?

19 Target Tree Survivorship and Health Results showed that careful logging could retain target trees. 90% of oak and ponderosa pine and 95% of Douglas fir target trees were alive after the treatment. Some of these may have died before the logging and some may have died afterwards because of their declining health pre-logging. The highest mortality was seen in 30% of large oaks (over 20 /50cm DBH). Some became snags and others logs. There was very little mechanical damage done to target trees during the timber harvest.

20 Tree Density as a Measurement

21 Q Did groundcover communities respond to restoration treatment? Total native: 378 Total exotic: 68 Total 446 Total native: 860 Total exotic: 283 Total 1,143 Native bunch grasses common to prairie/savanna Native clover forbs Invasive exotic annual grasses Groundcover species counts pre- and post-treatment A Dramatic shift in abundance and composition

22 Summary of projects completed for restoration. Ten million board feet of 110 year old Douglas-fir removed around large pine trees and oaks. Non commercial trees were cut and piled. Some piles remain to be burned in 2014/2015. ~2 miles of road decommissioned. Acorns collected and grown out =300 oaks planted in Jim s Creek area Underburning in the plantation areas and test burn of logging slash.

23 Projects completed with Stewardship Receipts in 2015 Snag creation Invasive plant control Removal of vexar tubing from planted oaks and monitoring of survival. Small tree cutting, piling and burning. Underburning Grass seed collection and grow out.

24 Other projects completed Our collaborators were an important part of this project and we hope this leads to a larger collaboration in the mixed conifer project area that contains other areas like Jim s Creek 5 master s thesis based on monitoring. Volunteer help (oak planting) from Oregon Hunter s Association Pre and Post transects installed by U of O with the ecology and botany program. Wildlife exclosure monitoring Will complete NEPA for underburning in 2017 and hope to burn in 2018.

25 Products/Next Steps Using information in planning for larger Rigdon Dry Forest restoration effort

26 Lesson s Learned Jim s Creek was our first Stewardship Project Stewardship receipts were not available until the logging was completed. We needed to spend project dollars to complete some restoration goals within the necessary timeframes. Extensions given to the logging companies meant the project took years longer than expected. We did not collect any KV for the area and Stewardship dollars can t be used for salary so we are needing to use project dollars to fund our days.

27 Surprise, surprise! Staged treatment made post-treatment sampling challenging: need to be flexible with personnel and funding sampling can t be too onerous. Pilot underburn surprisingly expands! Planned and executed follow-up burn before we could posttreatment sample. Planting oak close to the road. Strong line of communication with District/implementers. You can t always tease apart all the potential factors creating different conditions be willing to lump or have some level of uncertainty.

28 Post Treatment 2016 Wind Storm during the winter of Did the treatment cause this? Was it detrimental?

29 Approx 600 trees were blown over Because more trees were left during the restoration treatment to allow for mortality the blowdown brought the area closer to pre settlement tree densities.

30 Trees that could be removed from the road were taken for aquatic restoration in a nearby stream.

31 Our collaborators were an important part of this project and we have just begun a collaborative process in the 25,000 acre mixed conifer project area that contains other areas like Jim s Creek. We hope lessons learned here will help us implement the next projects in this forest type.

32 Meadow Restoration These meadows varied from dry to mesic to wet. Work was done using force account crews and by Northwest Youth Corps. The project was done in a couple of phases and multi funded using Botany program dollars, PAYCO, Challenge Cost Share with the fuels and wildlife programs and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation Grants. Partners: Oregon Hunters s Association, RMEF, Native Plant Society, Northwest Youth Corps.

33 Mule Meadow Oak meadow close to Oakridge. Smoke management and perception issues. An easy to implement burn but socially complicated.

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35 Grass Mtn. Prescribed Burn

36 Quail Meadow Knobcone Pine Restoration

37 Cedar Meadows Small cedar encroaching on this dry site needle grass meadow will be cut and then the meadow will be burned.

38 Cedar Meadows Scattered trees made it possible to get better consumption of the grass.

39 Big Pine Opening Small conifers were cut and burned. More mid size pine were killed than originally intended. Fuels personnel would like to try burning and then assessing if additional cutting needs to be done.

40 Lesson s Learned Calapooya Divide Meadow Restoration It is difficult to plan prescribed fire treatments because they are weather and personnel dependent. Funding in a fiscal year is difficult. Multi source funding was necessary to complete. Using a combination of contract, force account, volunteers and NWYC was logistically complicated but an effective way to get work done. Restoration of meadows that are just beginning to be encroached by trees is more cost effective than working on meadows with 100 year old trees. Some cut trees can be used for special forest products (cedar and fir boughs)