An ecological context for “whole system” conservation of eastern Washington forests

Background/Question/Methods

Forested landscapes across western North America are in crisis today; at risk of uncharacteristic disturbances that threaten both natural and human communities. Conserving these forests will require working at landscape scales and explicitly incorporating ecological processes along with the needs of human communities.  By doing so, we can more effectively conserve and restore these extremely diverse and valuable ecosystems and build sustaining relationships between nature and people. 

This “whole systems” approach to conservation requires an accurate and comprehensive understanding of landscape context and current ecological conditions.  The objective of this project was to assess the current ecological condition of forests across eastern Washington at landscape scales to facilitate development of forest conservation goals.  Using LANDFIRE data on the historic and current forest structure and composition, we assessed the departure of current forest vegetation from historic reference conditions.  

Results/Conclusions

Across eastern Washington State, approximately 73% of all forests are moderately or severely departed from historic reference conditions.  Low severity fire regime forests are the most common forest type (2.3 million hectares) and 93% are moderately to severely departed.  Mixed severity fire regime forests are also very abundant (2.1 million acres).  While 52% are moderately to severely departed statewide, departure levels vary considerably statewide.  The US Forest Service is the largest individual owner of forested lands in eastern Washington and patterns of departure by forest fire regime group did not differ between ownerships. 

This assessment underscores that need for active stewardship/restoration over large geographic areas in partnership with multiple land owners and managing entities.  Specific forest conservation goals must also acknowledge that active treatment is not required on every hectare of departed forest and use of historic reference conditions must also consider the impacts of projected climate change.