Experiment
The
landscape experiment
Three
management pathways are being applied to 1300-acre portions of existing road systems, called “roadsheds”
(see colored sections on
map). The pathways are
Continuous
Pulsed
Passive
Passive
Pulsed
Pulsed
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Pulsed
Passive
1 mi2
Paved county road
Forest Service travel-corridor road
Alsea River, Hwy 34
Waldport, OR 20 mi
Private land
Passive
Group: Bernard Bormann,
Paul Thomas, …
Paul Thomas, …
Passive--decommissions roads, allows existing plantations and aquatic systems to achieve Plan objectives on their
own;
Pulsed--thins plantations and restores streams aggressively, then closes roads for 30 years before reopening them for
further management; and
Continuous-- maintains
roads open and thins plantations and restores
streams frequently and at low intensity.
Note the four
roadsheds (replications) for each pathway.
Pathways were randomly
assigned to roadsheds after potential roadsheds were analyzed and those most similar were chosen—thus,
results will be more
attributable to pathways, rather than differences in initial conditions.
Summary
This
experiment is an important new form of landscape management in itself—one centered on achieving learning objectives identified in decision documents. This
approach is also a diversified
strategy (we call it options forestry) based on a fuller recognition of the uncertainties (especially here—where
no one has ever tried to produce
late-successional and riparian objectives on such an intensively managed forest before).