Fuel succession was quantified for a 515-year chronosequence in a Tsugaheterophylla/Pseudotsugamenziesii forest. Postfire stand ages selected were 1, 3, 19, 110, 181, and 515. After initial reductions due to mortality from fire in the first 3 years, live aboveground biomass in the tree component increased over time to over 1100 t/ha. Shrub and herb layer biomass was highest in year 19 and year 515. Dead aboveground biomass had different trends for different fuel size classes; normalized fuel loadings of five dead and down fuel categories peaked at four different stand ages: 1-h and 10-h timelag (TL) fuels, age 1; 100-h TL fuels, age 19; 1000-h TL fuels, age 110; >1000-h TL fuels, age 515. Surface fire behavior was highest early in the sere and lowest at ages 110–181. Old-growth forest patches appear to be best buffered against forest fire by mature forest patches rather than old growth or recently burned natural stands.

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We describe a protocol and provide a summary for point-count monitoring of landbirds that is designed for habitat-based objectives. Presentation is in four steps: preparation and planning, selecting monitoring sites, establishing monitoring stations, and conducting point counts. We describe the basis for doing habitat-based point counts, how they are organized, and how they differ from other approaches using point counts. We discuss links between local scale and larger scale monitoring and methods to evaluate sample size for monitoring. We develop a framework for identifying potential monitoring sites and provide an attribute database to characterize the potential sites, including rules to select sites. We describe buffer requirements for sites, rules for distances between points, ways to mark individual count stations, and alternative methods for riparian areas. We conclude with guidelines for counting birds and recording data.Keywords: Bird sampling, avifauna, monitoring, point count, Pacific Northwest, bird protocol, avian field methods, population trends, bird detections.This paper gives the rationale and a protocol for habitat-based bird monitoring using point counts. This protocol was developed through collaboration between the Pacific Northwest Research Station and Washington-Oregon Partners in Flight to study population trends and bird-habitat relations in these states.Point-count monitoring is a common way to monitor bird populations. It is characterized by tallying all birds observed at a fixed location during specific, repeated observation periods. It provides the relative abundance of all bird species and, over time, can detect trends in the abundance with a relatively small amount of work compared to other methods. Consistency with established monitoring protocols is essential for local-scale point-count monitoring, because small efforts are unlikely to have sufficient sample sizes to perform one of the key functions of monitoring: detecting changes in bird abundance. Such work can be meaningful when pooled with a larger body of compatible data.Two general approaches have been used in broad-scale point-count monitoring.The widely used population-based method disperses point-count stations at random across a geographic area or along roadways, usually without specific consideration for habitat at each point. The results represent the geographic area, but without additional design considerations they do not distinctly represent any specific habitat type.In contrast, the habitat-based approach stratifies points by habitat. The geographical extent of such monitoring can be large, as similar habitats can be separated by great distances. The results apply clearly, but also exclusively, to the habitats selected. For the purpose of associating bird species with habitat characteristics, SummaryBackground

Fire is an important disturbance agent influencing forest composition and structure in Pacific Northwest ecosystems. I examined the effects of a long fire‐return interval on forest development, composition, and tree age structure for a post‐fire sere on the west slope of the moist Olympic Mountains. Similar sites that burned in 1978, 1961, 1870, 1799, and circa 1465 were selected. Tree cores and size characteristics were collected from two randomly located 0.25‐ha plots at each site. Fires usually burned catastrophically, killing most overstory vegetation. Pioneer tree species were Douglas‐fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla); western hemlock assumed numerical dominance early in the sere. Forest reestablishment after fire was slow, taking ≥50 yr to complete establishment of shade‐intolerant Douglas‐fir. Understory establishment of western hemlock increased 150 yr after fire, although conditions that enhance its long‐term survival may occur ≈300 yr or more after fire. Establishment of western hemlocks existent at the 1465 fire site peaked ≈365‐424 yr after the fire; individuals establishing 150‐300 yr after the fire occurred much less frequently. Fire exclusion would shift the replacement sequence toward a wet, very‐low‐frequency fire regime, favoring western hemlock over Douglas‐fir.

We compared the potential fire behavior and smoke production of historical and current time periods based on vegetative conditions in forty-nine 5100-to 13 5OO-hectare watersheds in six river basins in eastern Oregon and Washington. Vegetation composition, structure, and patterns were attributed and mapped from aerial photographs taken from 1932 to 1959 (historical) and from 1981 to 1992 (current). Vegetation with homogeneous composition and structure were delineated as patches. Each patch was assigned a potential rate of spread, flame length, fuel loading, and smoke production from published information that matched the closest characteristics of the vegetation and downed fuels and assigned a uniform fuel moisture, wind speed, and slope. Potential rate of spread of fire, flame length, and smoke production were highly variable among sample watersheds in any given river basin. In general, rate of spread and flame length were positively correlated with the proportion of area logged in the sample watersheds. There were large increases in potential smoke production from the historical to the current periods for many sample watersheds due to changes in fuel loadings associated with management activities and, presumably, fire suppression. Wildfires were shown to produce nearly twice the amount of smoke as prescribed fire for the current period for all river basins. Understanding these and other tradeoffs will assist managers and society in making informed decisions about how to implement prescribed fire and manage wildfire to address air quality and forest health problems. Because of the variability of fuel or vegetative conditions observed among the sample watersheds, we recommend an extensive characterization of these conditions before large-scale restoration and maintenance of fire-related processes are undertaken.