TreeTopics

I’m starting a new series of posts for those of you, like me, that (for better or worse) are smartphone and tablet users. More often than not these days, there are a few participants in my Extension workshops taking notes on their iPads*. And smartphones…well, with nearly half of all U.S. adults owning a smartphone, they are a fact of life.

There’s an app for just about everything, including forestry and natural resources. I thought I’d share some of the apps that I’ve found useful, starting with this post. A caveat – I have an iPhone 4 (sorry Android users) so can’t download some recent app versions only compatible with Androids or iPhone 5, or other devices.

With much of western Oregon under a flood watch today, let’s look at a couple of apps that allow you to monitor your local river levels. The one that I like is FloodWatch. It pulls in real-time data from USGS stream gages, including stream height, rainfall totals, and allows the user to compare to flood stages.

Another similar app is River Data. This one presents the actual charts from the USGS, and though it is not as user friendly in my opinion, there is lots more data. With this app you can also access water quality data like temperature, turbidity from some gages.

It’s interesting to compare the trends over the past 7 days from some of our local watersheds of varying sizes. What can these hydrographs tell you about the differences in these river systems? (Click on the image to enlarge it.) If unfamiliar with hydrographs, time is charted on the horizontal axis and the water data (in this case, river height) is on the vertical.

Do you have a favorite natural resources related app? Send me your suggestions for future posts…or better yet, send me your own review.

*Let’s hope they were taking notes, and not playing Angry Birds…

Lately I’ve been immersed in the subject of forest management planning. From developing a website that helps landowners navigate the process of creating a forest management plan; to collaborating on a revised set of management planning guidelines for Oregon; to teaching Mentored Management Planning workshops; this has been a major theme of my work over the past year.

So I was interested to come across a recent article about management planning in the Oregonian. The article described the management plan that is in place for the city of Forest Grove’s 4,200 acre forested watershed, and the positive impacts that having the plan has had on the land. Though this forest is much bigger than those that most small woodland owners manage, the article demonstrated many of the same principles of forest management planning that I use in my courses.

Management planning starts with identifying goals for the site. The number one goal in the case of Forest Grove’s watershed is, not surprisingly, protecting drinking water quality. Biodiversity and sustainable timber management are secondary goals. These goals drive all of the actions called for in the plan – such as road rehabilitation, erosion control, and carefully planned timber harvests.

Forest management planning has evolved over time. In the 1970′s and ’80′s, most forest management plans were concise timber management plans – laying out succinct timelines for planting, weed control, thinning and clearcut harvest to optimize wood production.  Nowadays we take a much more holistic approach. Today’s plans consider all the different resources on a given piece of land – timber, of course; but also recreational resources, streams, fish and wildlife, roads, aesthetics, soils, and much more. We recognize that most landowners value many other aspects of their property as least as much as the timber resource. Well-constructed plans reflect the suite of values of the landowner and place emphasis on them appropriately.

The other important management planning principle that I took note of in the article was the fact that the plan is being updated, ten years after it was originally written. It is a good idea to revisit one’s plan after a time, both to check that the goals are still relevant and to recognize the progress that has been made towards achieving them.

One of the guiding principles of the Extension Service is to be a source of research-based information. Research-based? Meaning that the information we provide is not supposed to be based on rumor or anecdotes, but is supported by science.

University researchers are obviously an important source of our research-based information. Nonetheless I believe that “research” and “science” come in many forms and on many scales. Many woodland owners like to experiment on their own forests to come up with management techniques that work for them.

I’ve found this especially to be the case when it comes to preventing deer and elk damage to western redcedar seedlings: from painting seedlings blue to scare tactics, I think I may have heard it all. Are these experiments “research”? Maybe – it depends on how they are set up and measured.

Western redcedar and Sitka spruce in the same planting hole. Photo by Glenn Ahrens

Recently a forest owner wrote to ask about one such browse deterrent method whereby a cedar and a spruce seedling are planted together (see photo). (The hypothesis: the animals are deterred by the sharp spruce needles; the spruce thereby protects the cedar; eventually, when the cedar has grown above browsing height, the spruce is carefully cut away.) The individual wanted some specific guidance on how to do this, and wanted to see a demonstration site. Although we know that people have tried this method, to our knowledge none of these plantings were carried out in a scientifically valid way. We can provide a hypothesis on how things might turn out, but to date we do not have research-based information to provide. Instead, we can only rely on anecdotal evidence.

I’m a strong advocate for woodland owners contributing to our collective knowledge of woodland management by trying out different techniques on their own properties. However, there are several important design factors to keep in mind if you want to call your experiments “research”:

• Have a control. Suppose you planted 100 cedar/spruce in the same hole, but did not plant any cedar without spruce. If the cedar are not browsed, it is not possible to know whether the spruce had any effect. It might just be that the deer were not hungry that year. In a controlled experiment, you leave a portion of the area untreated, or without the variable whose effect you are trying to test.
• Have a large enough sample size. Suppose you only plant five spruce/cedar combinations, and of them, two cedars are browsed and three are unbrowsed. It is hard to draw a conclusion from five seedlings. Was the treatment 60% effective, or did the two browsed trees happen to be unluckily planted right along a deer trail? If you had planted 50 spruce/cedar combos, and only two were browsed, then it is easier to say that the technique is effective.
• Replicate. What works on a north slope in Columbia County may not be effective on a south slope in the Willamette Valley; what works in a dry year may not work in a wet year. By repeating the entire experiment in more than one year or on more than one site, you can draw conclusions that have more power. This is probably the hardest one for small woodland owners to pull off individually. However, collectively there are a lot of experimenters out there. What if we could compile the results from everyone’s scientifically valid experiments? Then we might have some real research-based information (and some real value to all you frustrated cedar growers).

Here are a couple of upcoming events for small acreage owners, or for those who have multiple activities (farm, livestock, forest) on their land. Click on the program headers for more information.

Small Farms School – Sept. 8th – at Clackamas Community College. An all-day event for beginning farmers and small acreage landowners. Field and classroom workshops will address small farm topics such as crop and livestock production, direct marketing, small-scale equipment, and soil and water conservation.

Rural Living Field Day – Oct. 13 – Echo Glen Farms, North Plains. A fun event for rural landowners with educational topics including wildlife and pollinator habitat, invasive weeds, small scale agriculture, woodland management, livestock and pasture management, and more. Sponsored by West Multnomah, Tualatin and Columbia Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

And also, a bit further afield but sounds like a fun and interesting program…

Family Forest Fair and BBQ - Sept. 15th – near Brownsville. The Oregon Woodland Cooperative invites you to celebrate the Co-op’s recent accomplishments and learn about their latest projects to help small woodland owners diversify their income. Free! Hands-on demonstrations including bundled firewood, specialty milling, medicinals, truffles, figured wood, walking tours and more.

Submitted by Glenn Ahrens, OSU Extension Forester, Clackamas, Marion & Hood River Counties

Alder flea beetles are particularly active this summer as they go about their business of skeletonizing leaves on red alder trees. I have seen this come and go over the years, and generally flea beetles are not a serious threat. Flea beetle flare-ups in the forest usually run their course after 2-3 years, after which their population crashes – similar to western tent caterpillar infestations. Healthy alder trees with good vigor are usually not seriously affected. Stressed alder trees – particularly those in dense thickets – may die after 2-3 consecutive years of flea beetle infestation. If you like your red alder trees and want to promote “good vigor” the best way is to 1) avoid growing alder on poor alder sites and 2) keep trees well-spaced to ensure large healthy crowns.

That is the question we asked concert goers in downtown Portland last week. The nonprofit organization Ecotrust hosted the music and invited groups to attend with educational booths related to the theme “Treasuring Forests.” At the OSU Extension table, we talked to members of the crowd about the Hopkins Demonstration Forest, the Women Owning Woodlands Network, and the important role that the 70,000 Oregon family forest owners play in our state.

As a conversation starter, we put up a flipchart and invited people to give us their definition of sustainable forestry. A few brave souls took on the challenge.

(Click on the photo to enlarge)

This led to some interesting interactions.

My own view is that sustainable forestry is a much larger and more nuanced concept than anything captured on the flipchart. But I think it’s always instructive to hear what non-forest owners perceive and understand about forestry.

So, what does sustainable forestry mean to you? And, more importantly, two follow up questions: Are you able to implement your vision of sustainable forestry on your land? If not, what is standing in the way?

I invite you to write your thoughts on the virtual flipchart, a.k.a. the comments section of this post.

The Summer 2012 edition of Tall Timber Topics is in the mail, but you can read it here first. In this issue of our quarterly newsletter:

• Upcoming events: Summer Woodland Tour and Fall Mentored Management Planning Shortcourse
• Tips for Seeding Woodland Roads
• Know Your Birds (Swainson’s Thrush) and Your Trees (Bigleaf Maple)
• Christmas Tree Tips: Insect Pests
• Research Brief: Biofuels
• New Publications from the OSU Extension catalog

Thanks for reading!

The annual OSU Extension/Columbia County Small Woodlands Association summer tour is coming up. This year’s tour happens on Saturday, July 28^th at Rod Nastrom’s place in Warren and the program for the day is “Woodland Roads: Best Management Practices”. Two of my Forestry Extension colleagues, Paul Adams and Steve Bowers, will be joining us as instructors for the program. Paul Adams is our Extension Watershed Management Specialist and he has had a long history of working on issues related to forest roads and streams. Steve Bowers, better known to many as the “Treeman”, is our Extension Agent in Douglas County and he brings to this topic his own practical experience as a logger and woodland owner. The two of them will no doubt have plenty of valuable insight to share.

(And, here’s a link to a newly revised Extension publication on the subject of road design for small woodland properties.)

On the tour, we will look at a variety of road designs, surface types, stream crossings, and slopes, and talk about the pros and cons of each. Following the tour will be a picnic lunch graciously provided by CCSWA, and then a firewood processor demonstration in the afternoon. I hope to see many of you there. Click here for a flyer with all the details.

The western tent caterpillar is a native insect to our forests. It population is cyclical. Over a period of two to three years, the population builds up and then crashes as natural parasites and diseases kill them off. Then we don’t see them again for maybe 8 – 10 years.

This week I saw some tent caterpillars in a recently planted site near Clatskanie (see photo). Last month, I saw lots more over by Sisters, where they were all over the bitterbrush around our family’s camping spot (“eew”, proclaimed my 9-year-old). Here on the westside, they prefer hardwoods such as alder, cottonwoods and willows.

While they may look alarming and can substantially defoliate the trees they infest, there’s little cause for alarm. The caterpillars are done feeding by late June, and the affected plants typically regrow a new set of leaves later in the summer. There’s no reason to spray insecticide – the best strategy is to wait it out and let nature take its course.

My guess is that we’ll see more western tent caterpillars in some localized areas next year.

(If you missed them, here’s Part 1 and Part 2. Now for the final installment…)

Coweeta and other LTERs have all kinds of equipment which continuously monitor and record temperature, precipitation, stream flow, water chemistry, and so forth, and thus have compiled valuable long-term records.

This is one of the meteorological stations at H.J. Andrews forest, but the one at Coweeta looks pretty much the same. Photo by Al Levno

At Coweeta, these records date back to 1934, and two climate trends are evident from the data that’s been collected since then. First, there’s been an upward trend in temperature since around 1980 (before that, there was no discernible trend). Second, with respect to rainfall, the wettest years have been getting wetter, and the driest years have been getting drier. They collect data on rainfall chemistry too; and interestingly, they started seeing a sharp drop in sulfate concentrations around 1990 – coincident with the passage of the Clean Air Act which was enacted in response to sulfur dioxide deposition (a.k.a. acid rain).

The biggest takeaway I left Coweeta with was an appreciation for the value and power of long-term observation. Forests grow slowly, and so we need to be really patient if we want to understand how they work. This is one of the reasons why the network of LTER sites across the country is so valuable.

This leads to some further musings. One, as a family forest landowner, you probably don’t have access to fancy monitoring equipment, or a Ph.D. scientist (or two or three) for hire. However, you do have a place that you observe on a fairly regular basis and you and your family may have a long-term connection to that place. Your observations, and more importantly your recording of your observations, have power. You can monitor changes on your property for your own purposes – wildlife sightings, stream changes – whatever fits your interests. For example, if you attend the upcoming June 23^rd tour at Hyla Woods, you’ll learn how the host family has been monitoring birds in different forest types on their property for years.

Additionally, there are opportunities to contribute your locally collected data to larger networks to help scientists understand long-term and large-scale patterns of change. Some examples include the National Phenology Network, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), and the Oregon Invasive Species Hotline.

The final thought – partly because nature is full of long-term processes, our scientific understanding evolves over time, and sometimes what seems like a pattern or a clear result in the short term turns out to be different in the long term. I suppose that’s why forest management practices are based on the “best available science” of the time, but as time passes we might revisit and revise what is considered a best management practice. If those scientists who planted the pine watershed at Coweeta had stopped their experiment after ten years, they would have come to false conclusions about different tree species’ water use. And if climate scientists looked at trends over just a decade or two, they would certainly also miss the big picture.