Now Early Seral Patches May Be Rarer Than Old Growth.

[slowp]

Inneresting. But doomed--my own cynical comment.:bang:

Does Mount St. Helens Have Lessons for an Oregon Logging Experiment? · EarthFix · Northwest Public Radio

 

[northmanlogging]

Interesting... but yeah what are they trying to fix? Seems to me that all the shrubby stuff comes back shortly after logging regardless of replanting. There are some units near the house here where its seems like they sprayed and then planted Doug Firs, which seems a little odd to me, no black berrys:msp_sad: or fire weed, and so far no cotton woods or alders sprouting up but its only been a couple years. But there is canada thistle from the horse jerks riding through.

I can see where leaving some of the older healthy trees as seed stock (seed trees...) is a good Idea. But this isn't news... been standard practice for some time now.

“Mature forests are still a rare and beautiful thing" quoted from the oregone wild douche... apparently He has never left his car while driving through any forests, or maybe he can't see the forest for the trees, cause mature forests are not a rare thing around here.

 

[slowp]

Yes, we started leaving wildlife patches in clearcuts during the 1980s. Patches were easier to lay out than marking single trees, and you were more likely to be able to locate them in places where they could be logged around--if you knew what you were doing. Oh, and they needed to survive the burning too.

 

[Joe46]

Don't forget to throw in the Spotted Owl habitat

 

[madhatte]

Dammit, now I'm annoyed. A certain DOD installation where I may or may not work has been doing this exact type of sale for about 30 years and we've gotten very good at it and they totally work. Only problem is nobody in the other agencies pay any attention to what Army facilities do. It's like we're outcasts or something. The BS "security" restrictions we've been shackled with post-9/11 have not helped at all, either -- everything has to get blessed by Public Affairs before any kind of media release. Also, we're tiny so not much is published. We do so much cool and progressive forestry stuff out just of the public eye it's not even funny and nobody ever hears about it because our property line is an opaque wall to the public. We need to fix that. The article above wouldn't have been written with such a "gee whiz" tone if the author knew that what they were talking about is routine on a small patch of land a couple of hundred miles to the north. I know Franklin knows about us -- one of his current PhD students did his MS work here in cooperation with our Ecologist.

 

[slowp]

Dammit, now I'm annoyed. A certain DOD installation where I may or may not work has been doing this exact type of sale for about 30 years and we've gotten very good at it and they totally work. Only problem is nobody in the other agencies pay any attention to what Army facilities do. It's like we're outcasts or something. The BS "security" restrictions we've been shackled with post-9/11 have not helped at all, either -- everything has to get blessed by Public Affairs before any kind of media release. Also, we're tiny so not much is published. We do so much cool and progressive forestry stuff out just of the public eye it's not even funny and nobody ever hears about it because our property line is an opaque wall to the public. We need to fix that. The article above wouldn't have been written with such a "gee whiz" tone if the author knew that what they were talking about is routine on a small patch of land a couple of hundred miles to the north. I know Franklin knows about us -- one of his current PhD students did his MS work here in cooperation with our Ecologist.

Like I said, it isn't new. But elsewhere from your place, any logging is bad. How else are those folks employed by enviro groups going to stay employed?

 

[Jacob J.]

Sheesh Nate, everyone already knows that DOD doesn't have a clue when it comes to land management...

I used to work with Steve and there was a similar project we did here in the early 90's where we marked 8-acre clearcuts leaving 3 or 4 .75-1 acre patches in them and called it "matrix sales."

It worked well in some areas and not so well in some others- Invasive species being the problem in some cases.

 

[madhatte]

Invasive species being the problem in some cases.

Ok, yeah, there is that. We've gotten to where "broom management" is a legit step in any plan. Cleaning up a road? Think about broom. Rx burning? Think about broom. ROW maintenance? Broom. Closing out a sale? Broom. Broom is no joke.

 

[Jacob J.]

It sure isn't and it's a huge problem here. One thing that a lot of people haven't seen yet too is that broom burns hot when conditions are right- real hot. It seems to have a heavy sap in it and when it gets going it moves fast.

 

[madhatte]

It's weird stuff, fire-wise. It won't burn, it won't burn, it won't burn... then it blows up. The fuel charts want to treat it as a 1-10 hour fuel type but it's really a July-Oct fuel type. I've seen some crazy flame lengths on the big stuff -- what we call "old-growth Scots' broom" -- 30 feet or more. The seeds can stay viable in the ground for up to 60 years, so the only way to get rid of the stuff is to kill it over and over again until the seed bank is exhausted. Miss one, or move a seed in from somewhere else? A single 3-year old broom plant can produce over 10,000 seeds in a year, and through "explosive dehiscence", the pods can throw the seeds up to 10 feet as they dry out. It's probably my least favorite plant.

 

[OlympicYJ]

Ah yes Norm Johnson's work. I listened to him speak about this at last years WA state SAF convention. I agree with his idea. It's not a new one. Like Nate says he uses it and so does the FS of sorts. As I understand it Johnson want's to incorporate it as a way to allow harvesting on greater areas. Been a while since I read the article on his proposal. I think it's more about selling this form of management than actually coming out with a new idea. I agree in theory with what he has to say. Private land no thanks, too many headaches and such as long as we can still clearcut. But on federal lands where the econasties are being a PITA I can see it's value.

The quoted article here wasn't a very good one or descriptive about the issue. The greenies just want to lock up more land and any sane proposal that tries to satisfy their "complaints" with the way we manage forests will never be enough for them.

Hopefully he can get something started here and hopefully Nate's and others management work along these lines could be brought to light and used as a perfect example.

Oh and broom sucks... figured I'd reaffirm that fact. lol Nate I'm not sure but doesn't fire kill broom seeds? Fire is a much better site prep tool than spray in my opinion. One of my past bosses would love to burn every unit he could but sadly try getting the DNR to get on board. Same with Joe public... He was old school and did a ton of burning in his time. His stories made me pine for the 70s lol

Wes

 

[madhatte]

doesn't fire kill broom seeds?

Yes, but...

Tough seed coat plus tiny embryo means that the fire has to be both intense enough and to stay in one place long enough to kill the seed. A low-intensity, fast moving fire, like burning broom, kills very few of those seeds. In fact, it can even make matters worse by prematurely drying the seed pods and encouraging dispersal via the aforementioned explosive dehiscence. Which leads me to...

Fire is a much better site prep tool than spray in my opinion.

With broom, you need all three forms of control -- fire, herbicide, mechanical destruction -- and repeat actions of at least two. There is no one-shot kill for broom. It's just too tenacious. Anybody who deals with broom needs to get in the habit of thinking of it as a long-term problem that will require frequent revisits. That genie is free and will not be re-bottled.

 

[OlympicYJ]

Okay kinda comin back now couldn't remember any of the fire stuff about broom. I guess fire is excellent for anything except broom lol Wilbur Ellis has done some good research on broom treatments. You ever get to their trainings for CECs?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[Jacob J.]

The kind of fire that kills Scotchbroom is also the kind of fire that's hard on the soil. Long residence times and good surface intensity enough to work on the seed bank also destabilizes that healthy layer of top soil. Like Nate said, it's several different methods in conjunction that produces results. What we did down here was mechanically pull it from roadsides in the affected corridors and piled that and burned it, sprayed the stuff further in, and ran fire through openings where it was getting a foothold. It's expensive, and time and labor consuming. The story here is that broom was brought over from Europe by the wife of a DOT supervisor who thought it would make good cover in the roadside landscaping and highway interchanges in the 40's.

 

[slowp]

You need to start fining land developers too. Just down the road, they logged some land then subdivided it and it is a Scotch Broom farm. The stuff is getting old growth sized. Meanwhile, a young guy bought part of it and has been fighting it but next door, it grows on.

 

[OlympicYJ]

The kind of fire that kills Scotchbroom is also the kind of fire that's hard on the soil. Long residence times and good surface intensity enough to work on the seed bank also destabilizes that healthy layer of top soil. Like Nate said, it's several different methods in conjunction that produces results. What we did down here was mechanically pull it from roadsides in the affected corridors and piled that and burned it, sprayed the stuff further in, and ran fire through openings where it was getting a foothold. It's expensive, and time and labor consuming. The story here is that broom was brought over from Europe by the wife of a DOT supervisor who thought it would make good cover in the roadside landscaping and highway interchanges in the 40's.

That's the story I heard as well... it lends credibility to testing that sort of thing instead of just doing it. I spent part of my summer spraying that crap. Just gotta keep going back. There are some areas that I've seen that it is out competing the seedlings, poor slow growing ground. From a silv point of view it's a doosy.

You need to start fining land developers too. Just down the road, they logged some land then subdivided it and it is a Scotch Broom farm. The stuff is getting old growth sized. Meanwhile, a young guy bought part of it and has been fighting it but next door, it grows on.

Yupp the forest industry fights it and so do others but it's a losing battle when you have a seed source nearby on someones property that won't do anything with it.

 

[madhatte]

You need to start fining land developers too.

That would mean reclassing it from a Class "C" noxious weed to at least a "B"... which my ear to the ground has suggested may be in the works. I'm not holding my breath, though -- the construction market is too fragile now to handle much of that kind of litigation.

 

[ArtB]

"explosive dehiscence"

Wow, learn something everyday! Never knew that as the technical term was for the snap and popping sounds from SB during hot (over 75 here) summer days.

FIrst time heard it thought one of the kids was eating rice crispies in the backyard <G>

When we first moved to PNW (1967) DW put some SB on the mantle for Christmas decorations. The 'grandma' next door saw it and burst into near uncontrollable laughter - asked DW WHY she put weeds on the mantle for Christmas!

I'll take the SB over salmonberries any day though.

 

[forestryworks]

You need to start fining land developers too. Just down the road, they logged some land then subdivided it and it is a Scotch Broom farm. The stuff is getting old growth sized. Meanwhile, a young guy bought part of it and has been fighting it but next door, it grows on.

Ah, the rewards of land fragmentation!

 

[madhatte]

I'll take the SB over salmonberries any day though.

Salmonberry is native and edible. Scots' broom is invasive and poisonous. I'll take the former over the latter every time.