Integrating Natural Disturbances and Management Activities to Examine Risks and Opportunities in the Central Oregon Landscape Analysis

Miles Hemstrom, Xiaoping Zhou, R. James Barbour, and J. Merzenich

USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station (1-2) and Pacific Northwest Region (4)

We used state and transition models to integrate natural disturbances (wildfire, insect epidemics, and others) with management activities to project potential future conditions of forest composition, structure, timber products, wildlife habitats, and disturbance probabilities in portions of the upper Deschutes subbasin in Oregon.  Our models were run on combinations of ownership, land allocation, and potential vegetation type within individual watersheds.  We examined the potential effects of three landscape scenarios that integrate natural disturbances with varying levels of management activities.  Our scenarios included 1) current management approximating the levels and kinds of treatments done over the last decade, 2) aggressive fuel treatments in the wildland-urban interface while protecting and enhancing old forest conditions on other federally managed lands, and 3) aggressive fire-suppression with little active management on federal lands.  Our results suggest that while aggressive fuel treatment may reduce the risks of high-intensity wildfire in the wildland-urban interface, opportunities to pay for treatments with forest products are often low. Fire suppression only may result in relatively low amounts of old forest and high amounts of stand replacement disturbance.  In addition, we suggest that managing for old forests outside the wildland-urban interface is likely to have highly variable success and that success may depend on a closer integration of stand-scale treatment tactics with mid-scale (e.g. many watersheds) strategies.  Given the somewhat unstable nature of multi-story old forest in dry environments in the study area, we question the utility of formally designated reserves to conserve multi-story old forest habitats.  Future research should include a thoughtful integration of stand-level silvicultural models and mid-scale landscape models, a better understanding of natural fire and insect probabilities, new or alternative silvicultural treatments to foster various old forest conditions in different environments, and reconsideration of conservation designs for old-forest habitats.

Fire Session - Thursday Afternoon

corresponding author:

Miles A. Hemstrom
Portland Forestry Sciences Laboratory
PO Box 3890
USDA Forest Service
Portland, OR 97208
503-808-2006
mhemstrom@fs.fed.us