Northwestern US

[vtbuckslayer]

To anyone out there especially you guys on the west coast i was wondering if you new any good sites or books on anything to do with soil compaction and the effects of logging on soils in the northwestern u.s?  Decided to check out the other site of the country for a forest management research paper.  Any article has to be peer edited or from a well credit source.  Thanks for any help fellas

[beenthere]

You might do a search on Soc. of American Foresters publication, as well as Forest Science.
Also, the US Forest Service research publications another source of peer reviewed papers.

[SwampDonkey]

Also if you want another perspective from the Province of British Columbia, you will find a lot of information on soils, roads, gullies, terrain stability assessments, soil rehab, soil conservation, Fan Landforms, Management of Landslide-Prone Terrain, site class (look for Vancouver and Prince Rupert Forest Regions)and stream side management. They have many field guides that have evolved around their forest practices codes and subsequently Forest and Range Practices Act.

http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/Lmh.htm


Dig around in Google or the Ministry of Forests and you'll be surprised of the information BC has in publications.

[pappy19]

I was a US Forest Service forester doing timber sale administration for a few years and after that I inspected all private timber sale activities in all 17 SW counties in Idaho for 5 years. I inspected over 150 timber sales a year overseeing the Idaho Forest Practices Act for erosion, stream protection and revegetation. In my opinion, flagged and manditory skid trails were the worst for erosion and difficult reveg. Soil compaction due to concentrated use made correct water bars/dips almost impossible. Reveg was a joke due to the soil compaction. The solution was to not mark skid trails and just make barked up leave trees a monster fine, like 10X stumpage or $1,000 each. That way the skidder would take great care not to bark up leave trees while skidding. Also, windrowing slash into rows and burning is a waste of time. The resulting burn of concentrated slash will cook the soil and render it sterile, not to mention allow the exposed soil from the dozer work to grow alot of noxious weeds. Best way is to either skid tree length to the landing and chip the slash or to broadcast burn, more like nature.

I highly recommend that you look at the International Erosion Control Association web site for a real insight on good erosion prevention and proven methods of erosion control. The timber industry is light years behind on this and the forest community still goes by the seat of it's pants or some professor's white paper that has never worked in the woods long enough to see their mistakes and try to understand the reasons why. Believe me, erosion control and reveg is more of an art than it is a science.