Forest Ecosystem Topics

The health and productivity of forests are critically important to a forested region like the Columbia Basin, not only for prosperity of our communities, but also for wildlife, ecosystem services like cleansing air and water and moderating water flows, and for spiritual and cultural values. The health can be measured by structural and biological attributes, such as diversity and age class distribution of trees, by number of rare and endangered species, and by rates of change in disturbance regimes. These include stand-replacing events such as high intensity forest fires and clearcut timber harvest, and stand-altering events such as low intensity fires, insect infestations and partial-cut timber harvest. After harvest and other stand-replacing events, commercial stands are replanted, and other stands are allowed to reforest by natural regeneration.