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<p>We report on the 25-year results of a long-term experiment on the Olympic Peninsula, WA comparing a pure Douglas-fir to a mixed Douglas-fir and red alder plantation that was designed to increase the time and space for early-seral habitat. The early-seral stage in Pacific Northwest forests has been greatly diminished driven in part by a reduction in harvests on National Forest land, prioritization of late-seral habitat, and more effective vegetation control. Recent research on early-seral forests highlights the many plant and animal species dependent on this stage and the value of species like red alder in restoring soils, especially those degraded by intense wildfire. In this paper, we evaluate a long-term ecosystem productivity study located on the Olympic Peninsula, WA that seeks to add in early-seral elements to standard rotations by planting red alder and comparing this to a standard Douglas-fir monoculture. Despite some initial implementation challenges that altered the desired species contrast&#xa0;and limited the number of alder planted, we found&#xa0;initial significant alder effects before age 17, including 4.5 × higher stand basal area and 2.9 × higher aboveground biomass. These effects did not persist as the stand developed though. However,&#xa0;significant block differences were observed with deeper, less rocky soils showing more alder effect. Other interspecies interactions between blocks were also observed, including higher Douglas-fir seedling survival in mixed stands compared to pure Douglas-fir, large effects of naturally regenerating hemlock, and reduced salal cover associated with increased alder cover. These somewhat subtle interim results suggest that fine-tuning sites or altering early-seral strategies for different sites will be important in more widely adopting plantations geared to restoring early-seral elements in these intensively managed systems.</p>

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Adding Early-Seral, Mixed Species Elements into Douglas-Fir Plantation Culture: 25-Year Changes in the Long-Term Ecosystem Productivity Study on the Olympic Peninsula, WA

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年8月4日

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  • Courtney R. Bobsin,
  • Bernard T. Bormann

摘要

We report on the 25-year results of a long-term experiment on the Olympic Peninsula, WA comparing a pure Douglas-fir to a mixed Douglas-fir and red alder plantation that was designed to increase the time and space for early-seral habitat. The early-seral stage in Pacific Northwest forests has been greatly diminished driven in part by a reduction in harvests on National Forest land, prioritization of late-seral habitat, and more effective vegetation control. Recent research on early-seral forests highlights the many plant and animal species dependent on this stage and the value of species like red alder in restoring soils, especially those degraded by intense wildfire. In this paper, we evaluate a long-term ecosystem productivity study located on the Olympic Peninsula, WA that seeks to add in early-seral elements to standard rotations by planting red alder and comparing this to a standard Douglas-fir monoculture. Despite some initial implementation challenges that altered the desired species contrast and limited the number of alder planted, we found initial significant alder effects before age 17, including 4.5 × higher stand basal area and 2.9 × higher aboveground biomass. These effects did not persist as the stand developed though. However, significant block differences were observed with deeper, less rocky soils showing more alder effect. Other interspecies interactions between blocks were also observed, including higher Douglas-fir seedling survival in mixed stands compared to pure Douglas-fir, large effects of naturally regenerating hemlock, and reduced salal cover associated with increased alder cover. These somewhat subtle interim results suggest that fine-tuning sites or altering early-seral strategies for different sites will be important in more widely adopting plantations geared to restoring early-seral elements in these intensively managed systems.