Little River Adaptive Management Area Research and Monitoring

Last updated: July 24, 2001

Title: Sugar Pine Maintenance and Restoration

Purpose: Improve growing and establishment conditions for sugar pine. Understand what treatments are needed to restore and maintain sugar pine and minimize disease and insect impacts to this species.
Methods: Develop and test methods of thinning around remaining live sugar pine trees (variable radius) to restore and maintain sugar pine populations. Plant sugar pine within clearings in young Douglas-fir plantations to determine if the species can be reestablished under these conditions.
Monitor: Sugar pine long-term survival, vigor, and regeneration under different treatments.
Status: Initial Treatments (harvest, planting) completed in 2000.  Follow-up work (pruning young trees, clearing vegetation around remaining live sugar pine trees) to be completed this year.  Post-treatment data collection is ongoing.
Location: Wolf Pine Timber Sale (FS and BLM) on the Little River Adaptive management Area.
Key Contact: Ellen Goheen, SW Oregon Forest Insect & Disease Technical Center; Barbara Fontaine, Umpqua NF; Anne Boeder, Roseburg BLM

Title: Late-Successional Forests Prone to Fire

Purpose: Change unnaturally dense live and dead standing vegetation structure in the surrounding landscape adjacent to the northern spotted owl core areas to minimize risk of large catastrophic fires in these forests. Asking how can forest structure be restored to more natural densities to minimize fire risks and maintain habitat for late-successional species?
Treatments: Develop and test methods using a combination of thinning, group openings, prescribed understory fire, and snag creation to restore late-successional forest structure that approximates the natural fire regime on warm/dry slopes within the Little River Watershed.
Monitor: Pre- and post-treatment structure and composition of the forest and develop a model to predict effects of prescribed fires on tree survival under different burning parameters.
Status: EA completed in 1998.  Project enjoined by court order.
Location: Withrow Timber Sale (FS), Little River Adaptive Management Area.
Key Contact: Barbara Fontaine, Umpqua NF; Ray Davies, Umpqua NF

Title: Diversity in Douglas-fir Plantations

Issue: Much of the gentle terrain, moist/warm growing sites in the watershed are managed as Douglas-fir plantations. These areas have little diversity in vegetation structure and composition, unlike the forests that preceded them. Historically, these sites burned less frequently, supporting a high proportion of late-successional forests throughout the watershed. In their current state, watershed processes in these areas, especially along riparian systems, are impaired, and the plantations are unsuitable habitat for a wide variety of animal and plant species.
Purpose: Provide future, late-successional forests and interior forest habitats that reflect the aquatic and terrestrial species diversity and conditions of the area prior to the 1940's. A 1,000-acre area in the White Creek vicinity, harvested and planted in the late 1940's is undergoing thinning and forest enhancement.
Treatments: Test the effectiveness of thinning techniques to enhance biological diversity within both upland and riparian plantations.
Learning: Determine how effective thinning prescriptions are to increase bird species diversity and complexity of forest structure while enhancing tree growth.
Monitor: Bird populations and plant abundance patterns.
Status: Breeding bird communities were sampled prior to thinning in 1996-1999.  Treatments of "traditional thinning" (remove 1/3 of the basal area) and thinning with small (1/4 acre) size gaps will be compared to unthinned sites.  Approximately 1/2 of the thinning has been occurred.
Location: Whitecap and Shadow Timber Sales (FS)
Key Contact: Mark Huff, PNW; Barbara Fontaine, Umpqua NF

Title: Restoration of Compacted Soils

Issue: Over the past several decades, routine tree harvesting practices (e.g., using tractors) have compacted fine-textured soils on gentle slopes throughout the watershed. In this area, reduced tree growth, shallow root development, trees prone to windthrow, and poor soil water infiltration have been observed. Forest productivity is reduced up to 30 percent compared to similar sites with uncompacted soil.
Purpose: Determine if mechanical restoration methods are effective and efficient for restoring soil structure in uncompacted soils.
Treatments: In 40+-year-old plantations, trees were harvested in (6) 5-acre blocks, treatment was applied, and area was planted with Douglas-fir and incense cedar.
Learning: Establish if subsoiling and spot cultivation are practical methods for restoring soil structure and functions in these fine-textured soils, as has been found for coarser soils in eastern Oregon.
Monitor: Tree growth and changes in soil structure.
Current Status: Study was implemented and post-treatment data collecion is on-going.
Location: Little River Adaptive Management Area, Whitecap Timber Sale (FS)
Key Contact: Robert Powers, Sliviculture Research Lab, Eureka, CA; Don Morrison, Umpqua NF

Title: Water Quality Monitoring

Issue: Recent water quality monitoring in the Little River Watershed has shown that many locations are exceeding state water quality standards, which may be lethal to some aquatic organisms. Problems include high pH and water temperatures, algae blooms, excessive sedimentation, and peak flows that exceed natural conditions.
Purpose: Establish long-term monitoring stations to evaluate trends in water quality throughout the watershed, including stream flow, pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and other water chemistry parameters. Understand the underlying causes and processes of the problems and develop corrective measures.
Learning: This baseline information will help isolate the causes of these problems and guide future land management activities to improve water quality.
Status: Two hydrolabs have been installed in Cavitt Creek and Little River.  Data will be posted to the Little River AMA website.
Location: Little River Adaptive Management Area
Key Contact: Ed Rumbold, Roseburg BLM; Steve Hofford, Umpqua National Forest;

Title: Spawning Gravel Sedimentation Monitoring

Issue: Spawning habitat for anadromous fish is affected negatively by sedimentation of "fine" materials by suffocating fish during their early development.
Status: Sediment levels have been measured; the data were analyzed and a summary report was completed.
Location: Little River Adaptive Management Area
Key Contact: Barbara Fontaine, Umpqua NF;

Title:Proportional Size Class Thinning

Issues: Stagnated tree growth and inadequate overstory diversity in plantations.
Purpose: Increase spacing to improve growth and vigor of individual trees of different size classes (structural diversity), enhance and prolong habitat conditions suitable for Northern Spotted Owl foraging and dispersal, and increase understory plant diversity in riparian and upland areas.
Methods: Use a proportional thinning approach to retain trees across all diameter classes.
Learning: Measure changes in overstory and understory composition and structure over time; use by spotted owls.
Status: Pretreatment data was collected and harvesting has been completed.  Initial post-treatment data collection for the purpose of implementation monitoring has been completed.
Location: BLM: Sampson Butte commercial thinning.
Key Contact: Anne Boeder, Roseburg BLM

Title: Retrospective Thinning Study

Purpose: How have past manipulation of overstory tree density effected the growth and development of overstory and understory vegetation in second-growth Douglas-fir stands throughout western Oregon.
Methods: Measure the woody composition and growth response to historic thinnings by examining current stand conditions.
Status: Sampling completed; summary report completed and published.
Specific projects: National Biological Service and BLM: Component of regionwide retrospective study.
Key contacts: Anne Boeder, Roseburg BLM

Title: Restoration of the Umpqua Mariposa Lily

Purpose: Umpqua mariposa lily (Calochortus umpquaensis) is endemic to Oregon, restricted to serpentine soils, and listed as endangered by the state of Oregon. This study will test ways to maintain or increase populations of C. umpquaensis through habitat manipulations and maintenance programs.
Methods: Evaluate the effectiveness of proactive treatment on endangered species restoration.  Follow the conservation strategy for this species which includes prescribed burning, tree girdling, and thinning of competing vegetation.
Status: In the Little River AMA, two projects are underway at Ace Williams Mountain. The first is a research project where the effects of thinning (gap development) and burning on calochortus growth and reproduction was tested. Two years of pre-treatment and two years of post-treatment data was collected.  Project design requires 7 years of post-treatment data. The second project was a prescribed burn. The burn was conducted in October of 1999 and was limited to meadow habitat. The objective was to maintain habitat by removing young invading conifers.
Key Contacts: Russ Holmes, Roseburg BLM; Nan Vance, Pacific Northwest Research Station

Title: Community Partnerships: Education and Ecosystem Management

Purpose: To provide local students with experiences that are practical, problem solving, and educational in natural resources and ecosystem management. Also to provide useable water quality information to the agencies.
Methods: Give hands-on experience with collecting water quality data, geographic information systems, and internet communications. Characterize water quality conditions throughout the Little River watershed using the local community involvement.  Water quality data will be collected according to interagency protocols using portable instrumentation.
Status: The Glide school is in their 4th year of participation in this project.
Location: Glide School Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
Key Contacts: Anne Boeder, Roseburg BLM

Title: E-Mile Regeneration Harvest and Commercial Thin

Purpose: The primary emphasis for the Little River AMA is to develop and test approaches to the integration of intensive timber production with restoration and maintenance of high quality riparian habitat. The project will address annual harvest commitments and maintain or improve riparian habitat and water quality.
Methods: Monitor point source erosion and impacts of road restoration.
Status: EA completed.  Project on hold to legal challenges.
Key Contacts: Anne Boeder, Roseburg BLM

Title: Effects of Fire on Landscape Patterns and Processes

Purpose: Determine (1) the historical landscape patterns and processes associated with fire events and compare these conditions to current conditions and (2) how fire has effected landscape pattern and processes historically.
Methods: Fire history was sampled from 125 sites selected from a grid over the entire watershed.
Status: Master of Science thesis was completed in 1998 by Kelli Van Norman at Oregon State University. A review team of scientists and managers assessed the findings in the context of stand and landscape management options. Further investigations into the use of uneven-aged management to approximate fire disturbance are planned.
Location: Entire Little River AMA.
Key Contacts: Mark Huff, PNW; Kelli Van Norman, OSU

Title: Juvenile Fish Outmigration Monitoring

Purpose: Establish a long-term monitoring station to evaluate trends in juvenile fish production in the Little River basin, and determine life history strategies and relative abundance of the different anadromous fish species that use the basin.
Methods: rotary-screw smolt trap is used to trap, identify, and count fish migrating from Little River from April through June.
Status: Annual monitoring
Key contacts: Charley Wheeler, Roseburg BLM; Glenn Harkleroad, Umpqua NF