• Home
  • Technical Library
  • Resources
    • Resources Home
    • Wetland Prairie Restoration: An Online Resource
      • History & Ecology
      • Restoration & Management
      • Sites & Case Studies
      • 6 Steps to Wetland Prairie Restoration
      • Research
      • Videos
      • More Resources
    • Cascadia Prairie Oak CWMA
  • Working Groups
    • Mazama Pocket Gopher
      • Working Group Home
      • Technical Library Documents
    • Taylor’s Checkerspot Butterfly
      • Working Group Home
      • Technical Library Documents
    • Streaked Horned Lark
      • Working Group Home
      • Technical Library Documents
    • Oregon Silverspot Butterfly
    • South Puget Sound Prairie Landscape Working Group
  • About CPOP
  • 2021 Conference

Stand Structures of Oregon White Oak Woodlands, Regeneration, and their Relationships to the Environment in Southwestern Oregon

Although Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) woodlands are a characteristic landscape component in southwestern Oregon, little is known about their current or historical stand structures. Meanwhile, fuel reduction thinning treatments that change stand structures in non-coniferous communities are ongoing and widespread on public lands in this region; some of these treatments also have restoration objectives. Managers need baseline information on which to base prescriptions that have a restoration focus. We inventoried 40 Oregon white oak dominated woodlands across two study areas in southwestern Oregon, and describe here their stand characteristics and age structures. We assessed whether these varied systematically with site conditions or recorded fire history. Stands included various proportions of single- and multiple-stemmed trees and a range of tree densities and diameter- and age-class distributions. Variables that may indicate site moisture status were weakly associated with multivariate gradients in stand structure. Peak establishment of living Oregon white oaks generally occurred during 1850–1890, sometimes occurred in the early 1900s, and recruitment rates were low post-fire suppression (∼1956). Recruitment of sapling-sized oak trees (< 10 cm diameter at breast height, ≥ 1.3 m tall) was generally low and their ages ranged from 5 to 164 yr; they were not necessarily recent recruits. The observed wide range of variability in stand characteristics likely reflects the diversity of mechanisms that has shaped them, and suggests that a uniform thinning approach is unlikely to foster this natural range of variability.

 

For more articles from the Spring 2011 issue of Northwest Science please refer to the link below:

The Future of Restoration and Management of Prairie-Oak Ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest

 

 

Go to "Stand Structures of Oregon White Oak Woodlands, Regeneration, and their Relationships to the Environment in Southwestern Oregon" on
Author
Gilligan, L.A., P.S. Muir
Publication Year
2011
Region
Willamette Valley
Habitat
Woodland & Savanna
Topic
Flora, Mammals
  • google-share
Copyright 2018
This page is managed by the Center for Natural Lands Management for the Cascadia Prairie Oak Partnership. All rights reserved.