The Co-op Correspondent

The Newsletter of the Stand Management Cooperative

4th Quarter 1999, CFR University of Washington

 

SMC Home | SMC Publications | Events Calendar | Research | Staff and Members

| Other Web Sites | College of Forestry

 

From the Director, David Briggs

The Fall SMC Policy Committee meeting on September 22-24 in Victoria, BC was highly successful with 55 people from 26 organizations attending. A field tour organized by the BC Ministry of Forests and Western Forest Products visited progeny tests of western red cedar, yellow cedar, sitka spruce, hemlock, Douglas-fir and hemlock pruning trials.

We had excellent weather and a wonderful barbecue and social following the tour. At the next day’s business meeting John Trobaugh of The Timber Company was elected as the new Chair of the Policy Committee and Norm Andersen of the Washington Department of Natural Resources was elected Vice-Chair. Greg Johnson of Willamette Industries was presented an award for service as Chair for the past five years. After the business meeting, scientists from FORINTEK and PAPRICAN reported on their research on lumber, veneer treating, and pulping of second growth western hemlock. After dinner, Professor John Innes, Forest Renewal Council Chair of Forest Management at the University of British Columbia, gave a very interesting comparison of forestry and forest certification practices in Europe and North America which led to a lively discussion. The morning of the third day was devoted to reports by the TAC leaders and on the six projects funded by the SMC in 1998/99.

Future Meetings

The Spring 2000 meeting will be held again at McMenamin’s in Troutdale, Oregon on April 5-6, 2000 so be sure to mark your calendars. The TAC’s will have time to meet on the first day and we will have a business meeting on the second day. As the six projects that were funded during 1998/99 are ending, a number of members have expressed interest in defining new areas of interest, soliciting proposals and deciding on new projects to fund. One of the objectives of the TAC meetings will be to develop potential research topics of common interest that we can discuss further and develop into requests for proposals. Be sure that your organization is represented in these discussions. We will be sending details. The Fall 2000 meeting will be held during the week of September 18-22. We are working with the USFS Olympia Lab and the Washington DNR on a field trip, facility for the meeting which will likely be in the Olympia-Kelso corridor, and specific dates. We will keep you informed of developments.

SMC Featured at Fall Forestry Educational Seminar

The Washington Farm Forestry Association and WSU Cooperative Extension held the 1999 Fall Forestry Educational Seminar “Best Available Science” at Pack Forest, Eatonville, Washington on November 6. The morning of the seminar featured the SMC Director David Briggs and Silviculture Project Leader Eric Turnblom gave the following presentations:

• Overview of the SMC by David Briggs
• Response of Douglas-fir to Different Spacings by Eric Turnblom
• Effect of Stand Density on Branch Size in Douglas-fir by David Briggs
• Response of Douglas-fir to Pruning by Eric Turnblom
• Factors Affecting Occlusion of branches and Attack by the Douglas-fir Pitch Moth by David Briggs

More than 70 small private tree farms and consultants were present and there were many questions and great interest from the audience.

AGENDA 2020

The request for proposals arrived in early Fall 1999 with 2 page pre-proposals due by mid-November. The Sustainable Forestry component of AGENDA 2020 had been rewritten to have a greater focus on wood quality and it did not seem that our proposal from last year to obtain funds for a new generation of installations to look at genetics and silviculture would be viable. Eric Turnblom and David Briggs did submit a proposal for further analysis of number and diameter of branches as measured under the newly adopted branch measurement protocol and to develop a linkage to models that predict number and diameter of branches elsewhere along the bole.

Soil Science Society of America’s Annual Meeting

Rob Harrison, Bob Edmonds, Barry Flaming, Amy Sidell, and Gage Wagoner recently attended the Soil Science Society of America annual meeting in Salt Lake City UT Nov 1-4. Posters detailing the progress of the Nitrogen Carry-over project, the Long-term Forest Productivity project, the Organic Residue Mineralization project and the Long-Term Results of SMC Nitrogen Fertilization Trials were presented. There was a record showing for the Forest Soils (S-7) division, chaired by Rob Harrison, with many talks and posters focussing on carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems.

Publications

A paper titled “Response of Coastal Douglas-fir Trees to Live Crown Reduction: Epicormic Branching” by Randy Collier and Eric Turnblom has been accepted by the Western Journal of Applied Forestry. Another paper “Branch Diameter in Young, Coastal US Douglas-fir Plantations Thinned to Varying Densities” by David Briggs and Eric Turnblom is in review with the Canadian Journal of Forest Research. SMC Fact Sheets on both of these are in preparation. Several additional publications will be submitted very soon.

Carbon Sequestration Center

A previous issue reported that the SMC was selected by the US Department of Energy as the Northwest Regional C-Sequestration Center. Initially SMC will receive $45,000 per year for 3 years to investigate carbon sequestration responses to fertilizer applications in Douglas-fir stands. The research will test the hypothesis that urea fertilizer applications increase carbon sequestration by increasing above-ground tree growth, by increasing surface soil C, and by mobilizing organic matter to subsoil where complexation with clay minerals protects soil organic matter from rapid decomposition. Investigations will compare and contrast Douglas-fir ecosystem responses to fertilization on soil derived from glacial till and volcanic parent materials.

Articles in This Issue

This issue contains one article, Biodiversity Indices: Roadmaps to Future Forests? By JoEllen Kassebaum, a Graduate Student at Evergreen College, and a former SMC field crew member .

Field Notes

The SMC field crew has enjoyed the unseasonable mild Fall and is ahead of schedule with this year’s fieldwork. All plots that were approaching a thinning trigger have been checked. Fifteen plots reached their RD trigger this year and have been marked for thinning. Maps, Instructions, and "cut/leave" tree lists have been sent out to the land owners. We ask that the thinning be completed by April 2000.

A SMC milestone was reached this fall when 2 Type I plots reached their 2nd thinning trigger. Both plots, at 2 separate installations were installed in 1987. They were both thinned for the first time in 1991. Eight years later they have reached their 2nd thinning trigger (1st thinning RD 55 to 35, 2nd thinning RD 55 to 40). The field crew will begin the new year doing routine remeasurements of Type I, II, and III installations. About March they will begin installing new Type III and IIIpa installations. Some Type IIIpa plots will have to be marked for thinning and some pruning on those installations will occur this Spring.

Bob Gonyea visiting Installation 926, R.F. sale, a Type III with 100 stems per acre

Database Update

With the 1999 – 2000 field season well underway the database continues to grow almost daily. At this writing, the database has been translated from ACCESS 2.0 to ACCESS 2000. The code used to generate reports and check data has all been reviewed and where needed, revised. The database contains data from 435 installations, which in aggregate contain 4427 plots. These plots have been measured 24,436 times, and have received 4262 treatments. In total the database contains data on 244,321 trees, which have been measured 1,238,491 times. The crown study data has been incorporated into the database and error checked. The stem sectioning dataset now has data on 354 sectioned trees.

The Stand Management Cooperative Home Page is provided by the College of Forest Resources. To find the contact you need, please check the Members or contact David Briggs, SMC Director, or Megan O'Shea, SMC Program Manager, SMC Cooperative, University of Washington Box 352100 Seattle, WA 98195, 206-206.543.1581. © 2000-2001, University of Washington, Stand Management Cooperative, including all photographs and images unless otherwise noted.

SMC Home | SMC Publications | Events Calendar | Research | Staff and Members

| Other Web Sites | College of Forestry

Top of Page