Policy makers, managers, and the public are engaged in an ongoing debate about the values and use of federal forests in the Pacific Northwest. This forest region was once dominated by large, old, long-lived conifers but the forests have been widely altered by more than 125 years of Euro-American settlement and forest use. Although the forests encountered by early explorers were typically old and successionally advanced, the forests have never been static and disturbance played important and varying roles across the region. Ecological and social systems have also interacted in dynamic ways that profoundly affect both systems. I address three major questions: 1) What is the latest science on the dynamics and processes that maintain biodiversity associated with conifer forests in the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest? 2) How have human activities altered those forests and their disturbance regimes? and 3) What are some options for maintaining native forest biodiversity and managing them for different uses and values?
Results/Conclusions
Drivers of forest dynamics in this region include climate, fire, wind, and land use. Fire regimes varied as climate fluctuated over time, and varied geographically ranging from infrequent, high severity fire in the wettest areas, to moderately frequent, mixed severity fire in drier and warmer areas. Forests containing old trees were widespread, but successional pathways were more diverse than once thought. Episodic disturbances created patches of early seral forest that were an important component of native biodiversity. Although Indians influenced forests in some areas the most widespread anthropogenic changes in forests came following EuroAmerican settlement in the 1800s. Timber management, converted many forests into spatially and compositionally uniform plantations and fire suppression removed fire, reducing stand and landscape level ecological diversity in some parts the region. Options for managing the federal forests include passive management of existing unmanaged forests, restoring heterogeneity in plantations through thinning, and restoring fire or fire surrogates where appropriate. Managing for timber production and other ecosystem services is an option and silvicultural approaches exist that can provide for some levels of both ecological and socio-economic outcomes. However, social license for active management can be difficult to come by and depends on trust and agreement on values.