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The public got a peek Wednesday at seven years worth of research into the effects of intensive logging on private lands.
Nearly 60 people — composed of many professional foresters, a few elected officials and a few more conservationists — crammed in the Ford Room of the Douglas County Library for a one-hour presentation on the 10-year Hinkle Creek Paired-Watershed Study.
The study is designed to laser in on the effects second-growth logging, contemporary harvesting equipment and newer road-building techniques have on the environment. The research is considered the most ambitious of its kind in Oregon since the 1960s. The forestry practices used are prescribed by the Oregon Forest Practice Act rules.
Nearly 60 people — composed of many professional foresters, a few elected officials and a few more conservationists — crammed in the Ford Room of the Douglas County Library for a one-hour presentation on the 10-year Hinkle Creek Paired-Watershed Study.
The study is designed to laser in on the effects second-growth logging, contemporary harvesting equipment and newer road-building techniques have on the environment. The research is considered the most ambitious of its kind in Oregon since the 1960s. The forestry practices used are prescribed by the Oregon Forest Practice Act rules.
Forest engineers and biologists will examine changes in stream temperature and sediment disposition — including fish dispersal — in creeks downstream of harvest activity on upper watersheds; the seasonal hydrologic changes in headwater streams where clear-cuts have removed tree buffers to varying lengths; and the abundance of fish and fauna that remains after changes to watershed habitat have been made.
This spring research will begin to focus on clear-cuts farther downstream and their effects.
Arne Skaugset, project director of Hinkle Creek and associate professor in the department of forest engineering at Oregon State University, gave a slide show presentation Wednesday night that included research about the effects intense forestry management has on the headwaters of fish-bearing streams.
Not surprisingly, headwater creeks about half a mile in length with the heaviest activity — 70 percent harvested, in one case — show the most changes in increased maximum temperatures and sediment dispersal, Skaugset said.
The Hinkle Creek study, located on the north and south forks of Hinkle Creek about 15 miles east of Sutherlin, is a cooperative experiment conducted on land owned by Roseburg Forest Products of Dillard. The north and south forks are the easternmost tributaries of Hinkle Creek, which feeds Calapooya Creek.
Besides RFP and OSU, the cooperative also includes Douglas County, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Douglas Timber Operators, the Bureau of Land Management and many other private, state and federal entities.
The cooperative, administered by the college of forestry at OSU, brings together like-minded people for forestry research, Skaugset said.
The research could provide state policy makers with newer information on the impacts extensive timber harvests have on the environment. About $5 million has been spent so far on the Hinkle Creek project, he said.
The study compares the effects logging has on the south fork of Hinkle Creek to the unharvested watershed of the north fork, which serves as the control. The entire area, about 5,000 acres, was last logged around 1950. The two watersheds are comparable in size and complexity.
About 380 acres of timber from five sites for a total of more than 12 million board feet was harvested from the south fork in 2005.
This spring RFP will begin building roads and logging on the south fork watershed for the second phase of the project. The timber company will wait to log the north fork watershed until 2011.
The clear-cuts on the south watershed primarily exist on smaller creeks, where not a single tree remains in the riparian zone but slash has been placed across the streams or piled within it to control flow temperatures.
“The argument as you go up (the watershed) is less developed and to a large degree, the debate has become not how wide the buffer should be but how long,” Skaugset said.
Minimum stream temperatures in the study areas dropped while maximum temperatures stayed about the same, Skaugset said.
“We expected to see the maxes go a lot higher,” he said. “If we did not have any slash in the streams I’d expect the maxes to go up.”
Instead, Skaugset said loggers “fluffed up” the streams with leftover debris after commercially viable logs were hauled away.
Eric Geyer, an RFP forester, said he’s walked across 2-foot wide creeks chock-full of slash without getting his boots wet. The creeks, he pointed out, are in the upper reaches of the watershed where access by fish is often blocked.
OSU graduate students have tagged over 2,000 cutthroat trout in the north and south forks with microchips — the creeks are wired with electronic sensors — since the study’s beginning and have found both watersheds’ populations improved and declined together, Skaugset said. The reason might be because of low flows allowing for easier predation, he added.
This spring research will begin to focus on clear-cuts farther downstream and their effects.
Arne Skaugset, project director of Hinkle Creek and associate professor in the department of forest engineering at Oregon State University, gave a slide show presentation Wednesday night that included research about the effects intense forestry management has on the headwaters of fish-bearing streams.
Not surprisingly, headwater creeks about half a mile in length with the heaviest activity — 70 percent harvested, in one case — show the most changes in increased maximum temperatures and sediment dispersal, Skaugset said.
The Hinkle Creek study, located on the north and south forks of Hinkle Creek about 15 miles east of Sutherlin, is a cooperative experiment conducted on land owned by Roseburg Forest Products of Dillard. The north and south forks are the easternmost tributaries of Hinkle Creek, which feeds Calapooya Creek.
Besides RFP and OSU, the cooperative also includes Douglas County, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Douglas Timber Operators, the Bureau of Land Management and many other private, state and federal entities.
The cooperative, administered by the college of forestry at OSU, brings together like-minded people for forestry research, Skaugset said.
The research could provide state policy makers with newer information on the impacts extensive timber harvests have on the environment. About $5 million has been spent so far on the Hinkle Creek project, he said.
The study compares the effects logging has on the south fork of Hinkle Creek to the unharvested watershed of the north fork, which serves as the control. The entire area, about 5,000 acres, was last logged around 1950. The two watersheds are comparable in size and complexity.
About 380 acres of timber from five sites for a total of more than 12 million board feet was harvested from the south fork in 2005.
This spring RFP will begin building roads and logging on the south fork watershed for the second phase of the project. The timber company will wait to log the north fork watershed until 2011.
The clear-cuts on the south watershed primarily exist on smaller creeks, where not a single tree remains in the riparian zone but slash has been placed across the streams or piled within it to control flow temperatures.
“The argument as you go up (the watershed) is less developed and to a large degree, the debate has become not how wide the buffer should be but how long,” Skaugset said.
Minimum stream temperatures in the study areas dropped while maximum temperatures stayed about the same, Skaugset said.
“We expected to see the maxes go a lot higher,” he said. “If we did not have any slash in the streams I’d expect the maxes to go up.”
Instead, Skaugset said loggers “fluffed up” the streams with leftover debris after commercially viable logs were hauled away.
Eric Geyer, an RFP forester, said he’s walked across 2-foot wide creeks chock-full of slash without getting his boots wet. The creeks, he pointed out, are in the upper reaches of the watershed where access by fish is often blocked.
OSU graduate students have tagged over 2,000 cutthroat trout in the north and south forks with microchips — the creeks are wired with electronic sensors — since the study’s beginning and have found both watersheds’ populations improved and declined together, Skaugset said. The reason might be because of low flows allowing for easier predation, he added.
So you know ...
<b>WHAT:</b> The Hinkle Creek Paired-Watershed Study
<b>WHEN:</b> From 2001 to 2011 <b>WHERE:</b> About 15 miles east of Sutherlin <b>WHY:</b> A cooperative research agreement between Roseburg Forest Products and many other private, state and federal agencies — administered by Oregon State University’s College of Forestry — to determine how contemporary logging methods affect fish in fish-bearing streams and the environment. <b>FOR MORE INFORMATION:</b> Visit www.watershedsresearch.org and click on the Hinkle Creek tab on the right to view maps and read detailed descriptions of the project. |
