Morning Ag Clips logo
  • Subscribe ❯
  • PORTAL ❯
  • LOGIN ❯
  • By Keyword
  • By topic
  • By state
  • Home
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Store
  • Advertise
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Subscribe to our
    daily email
    ❯
  • Portal Registration❯
  • Login❯
  • policy
  • tractors & machinery
  • education
  • conservation
  • webinars
  • business
  • dairy
  • cattle
  • poultry
  • swine
  • corn
  • soybeans
  • organic
  • specialty crops
  • Alabama
  • Alaska
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • California
  • Colorado
  • Connecticut
  • Delaware
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Iowa
  • Kansas
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Maine
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • Michigan
  • Minnesota
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • Montana
  • Nebraska
  • Nevada
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey
  • New Mexico
  • New York
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Ohio
  • Oklahoma
  • Oregon
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • South Carolina
  • South Dakota
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Utah
  • Vermont
  • Virginia
  • Washington
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin
  • Wyoming

Morning Ag Clips

  • By Keyword
  • By topic
  • By state
  • policy
  • tractors & machinery
  • education
  • conservation
  • webinars
  • business
  • dairy
  • cattle
  • poultry
  • swine
  • corn
  • soybeans
  • organic
  • specialty crops
  • Home
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Store
  • Advertise
Home » Vegetation resilient to logging after wildfire
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH ... Comments

Vegetation resilient to logging after wildfire

Research examines vegetation response to salvage logging after wildfire

PUBLISHED ON February 5, 2017

Nearly 10 years after having half its trees removed in a salvage logging operation following the 2002 Cone Fire in California's Lassen National Forest, the amount and variety of naturally regenerated plant life in this stand of trees differed little from a similarly burned area that wasn't logged. (Carl Skinner, US Forest Service)

SACRAMENTO — Nearly a decade after being logged, vegetation in forested areas severely burned by California’s Cone Fire in 2002 was relatively similar to areas untouched by logging equipment. The findings of a U.S. Forest Service study shed light on how vegetation responds to severe wildfire and whether further disturbances from logging affect regrowth.

The study, “Response of understory vegetation to salvage logging following a high-severity wildfire,” reports a modest difference between logged and unlogged areas for some shrubs, but researchers with the agency’s Pacific Southwest Research Station conclude the diversity of plant species and their abundance, as a whole, differed little between logged and unlogged sites. Salvage logging refers to the practice of harvesting fire-killed trees (“salvage”) to extract economic value from them before the wood decays.

The differences observed within the shrub communities could stem from the plants’ reproduction cycle and timing of the logging operations.

“The three native shrub species that declined in abundance with logging (prostrate ceanothus, snowbrush ceanothus and greenleaf manzanita) have seeds triggered to germinate by heat or char from fire,” said Eric Knapp, a research ecologist with the Forest Service and study co-author. Logging occurred more than a year after the fire, which would have coincided with the seedling stage of the new shrubs, making them vulnerable to surface disturbances.

“It is possible that the effect on shrubs might have been avoided if logging had been done soon after the fire, prior to seeds germinating,” Knapp said.

Additional findings include:

  • Researchers did not find a difference in the abundance of native versus weedy non-native plants between logged and unlogged sites. A common concern in post-fire logging is that logging equipment may serve as a source or transport for unwanted plant species.
  • Researchers observed plant species which weren’t dependent on fire-stimulated germination to be less affected by post-fire logging. Many of these species emerge from deeply buried roots or bulbs, leading researchers to believe they were better protected from ground disturbances caused by logging machinery.
  • Researchers did observe, however, substantial changes in the plant community during the course of the six-year study. For example, the amount of weedy non-native plants across all research sites increased, suggesting that the plant community responded more strongly to environmental changes caused by high-intensity wildfire than disturbances from logging.

The relatively flat ground and rocky soil of the research sites within the Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest in California’s Lassen National Forest, where the Cone Fire burned, may have reduced negative effects associated with ground disturbance, leading researchers to caution applying their findings to areas where soil disturbance from logging is greater. However, the results do coincide with a growing body of evidence from other post-fire logging studies.

“Longer-term research is finding that understory vegetation might not be as substantially impacted by post-fire logging as originally feared,” said Martin Ritchie, Forest Service research forester and study co-author, “especially when care is taken to minimize soil impacts.”

Knowing that salvage logging doesn’t appear to significantly impact vegetation regrowth could allow researchers and land managers to instead focus attention on other aspects of post-fire logging that could benefit from further research.

“If future studies continue to not find strong longer-term salvage harvest effects on forest understory vegetation,” Knapp said, “the debates about pros and cons of post-fire management could then narrow to topics such as snag habitat and woody fuel levels that are unequivocally impacted by salvage harvest.”

–USDA Forest Service – Pacific Southwest Research Station
via EurekAlert!

For more articles out of California, click here.

Click Here to find out more about your favorite topics

conservation forestry natural disasters

Spread the word

Browse More Clips

Producer support of Beef Checkoff softens

Calif. ranchers fight gray wolf protections

Primary Sidebar

MORE

CALIFORNIA CLIPS

milk dairy schools (m01229, Flickr/Creative Commons)
NMPF: FDA officials agree, nutrition’s a problem for plant-based faux dairy
May 17, 2022
Revamped, robust UC Davis Olive Center classes starting in June
May 17, 2022
Winegrowers Lifetime Achievement Awards
Winegrowers Lifetime Achievement Awards to be presented
May 17, 2022
Demand for U.S. beef rebounding in Middle East post-pandemic
May 16, 2022
Dairy Girl Network announces 4th Annual Forward TogetHER Conference
May 16, 2022
  • Trending
  • Latest

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...

NRCS-NY announces application cutoff dates for Conservation Stewardship Program
May 17, 2022
What is the current research about soil additions to help soil biology?
May 17, 2022
Northeast SARE seeks grant preproposals for $5M in sustainable ag funding
May 17, 2022
New USDA emergency relief payments benefit Texas producers
May 17, 2022
USDA to provide $6 billion to producers impacted by 2020, 2021 disasters
May 17, 2022

Footer

MORNING AG CLIPS

  • Sponsors
  • About Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Privacy Statement
  • Terms of Service
  • Customer & Technical Support

CONNECT WITH US

  • Like Us on Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

TRACK YOUR TRADE

  • Markets & Economy
  • Cattle Updates
  • Dairy News
  • Policy & Politics
  • Corn Alerts

QUICK LINKS

  • Account
  • Portal Membership
  • Invite Your Friends
  • Subscribe to RSS
  • WeatherTrends
  • Just Me, Kate

© 2022 Morning Ag Clips, LLC. All Rights Reserved.