Researcher Jennifer Chapman, next to a post-fire stand of manzanitas, found that the shrub adapts to living on the edge of redwood forests.

Redwood Forest Edges Offer Habitat for Evolution

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Though common in chaparral, manzanitas can also eke out a living on the edges of coast redwood forests. A recent study funded by Save the Redwoods League explored the differences between coastal versions of this sturdy red-barked shrub and their more sun-loving cousins.

Researcher Emily Burns noticed that half the ferns in coast redwood forests were evergreen and half were deciduous. Deciduous ferns turn white in the fall while the evergreen ferns stay vibrant green.

Deciduous Ferns May Hold Advantage as Climate Changes

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In 2010, funded by Save the Redwoods League and the National Science Foundation, Professor Jarmila Pittermann and Burns began a study comparing the leaves of evergreen and deciduous ferns. Interested in their response to drought, they chose midsummer, just before the deciduous ferns would shed their leaves, in the drier southern part of coast redwoods’ range (in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Big Sur). They expected that evergreen leaves, which are thicker, would show fewer signs of water stress.

A researcher assesses the health of giant sequoias planted more than 30 years ago in an area hotter and drier than their original homes. Photo by John-Pascal Berrill

Small Giant Sequoia Groves May Not Endure

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More than 30 years ago, giant sequoia seeds were collected in 23 groves representing the species’ range from north to south in the Sierra Nevada. They were propagated and planted on US Forest Service land 20 miles east of Auburn, California, that was hotter, drier, lower in elevation and farther north than any of their original homes. This experiment, the legacy of William J. Libby, UC Berkeley emeritus professor and Save the Redwoods League board member, has been studied and carefully maintained ever since.

Good giant sequoia regeneration was strongly associated with canopy gaps. Photo by Marc D. Meyer

Promoting Giant Sequoia Regeneration

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Giant sequoias can live for thousands of years, but they sometimes have difficulty getting started. Unlike coast redwoods, giant sequoias rarely sprout from their bases. Their reproductive future lies in their tiny (0.2-inch-long) seeds, which need just the right combination of soil, sun and moisture to survive.

Humboldt Marten.

Redwood Forest Restoration and Martens

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Martens are agile, 2-foot-long members of the weasel family. They need ancient forests—and used to thrive in the coast redwoods of California. Today the Humboldt marten, the coastal subspecies of the Pacific marten in California, has vanished from more than 95 percent of its former range. A single population of about 100 remains on the coastal edge of the Six Rivers National Forest, roughly between Crescent City and Arcata. Learn more about this research.

High-severity treatments have boosted the growth of isolated giant sequoias in what is now Giant Sequoia National Monument. Photo by Rob York

Disturbances Benefit Giant Sequoias

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Being dwarfed by Earth’s most massive tree, the giant sequoia (aka “Sierra redwood”), fills you with wonder. It’s hard to believe that a living thing can be so enormous and old. It may be alarming to see these forests on fire, but research funded by your gifts shows that disturbances such as these actually are good for giant sequoias. Learn more about this research.

Silver-haired bats mate in redwood forests. Photo by Theodore J. Weller

Redwood Forests May Be Crucial for Silver-Haired Bats

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A US Forest Service ecologist, Weller decided to check out his own backyard: the redwood forests of Northwest California. He not only found bat activity in winter, but also important clues about the bats’ migrations. When Weller had surveyed a common species called the silver-haired bat in summer, he’d found almost all males. In the winter, however, he began to catch females right away. So he asked Save the Redwoods League to fund research to figure out what was going on. Learn more about this research.

One year after a wildfire, burnt redwoods regrow foliage. Photo by Benjamin S. Ramage

Redwoods Regrow After Fires

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In the past 70 to 80 years, most fires in California’s coast redwood forests were prevented or suppressed. But in 2008, more than 2,000 fires ignited forests in Northern and Central California during a single summertime lightning storm. Overwhelmed by conflagrations in drier areas, firefighters allowed many of fires in coast redwood forests to burn.

In Mill Creek forest, tree removal experiments explored how to bring old-forest features (such as giant redwoods and diverse plants and animals) to young forests like this one as quickly as possible. Photo by Kevin L. O'Hara

Forest Restoration through Thinning

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For more than half a century, the Mill Creek region in Northern California produced lumber. After clear-cutting, too many seeds were planted, producing a forest in which too many young trees competed for light, water and other resources. Now, thanks to Save the Redwoods League, Mill Creek is protected as part of Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park and is becoming a laboratory for redwood forest restoration. Learn more about this research.

Redwood Soil Microbes Can Adapt to Climate

Redwood Soil Microbes Can Adapt to Climate

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Coast redwoods need healthy soil and its tiny organisms to survive. So how will climate change affect the forests’ fungi and bacteria? A research team led by Professor Mary Firestone at the University of California, Berkeley, recently found a way to mimic what the future may hold. Learn more about this research.

Large spotted A. flavipunctatus are found in southern inland Mendocino and Lake counties. Photo by M. Mulks

Black Salamanders Show Biodiversity of Redwood Forest

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The range of the black salamander (Aneides flavipunctatus) almost perfectly overlaps with the historic range of redwoods along the Central and Northern California coast. While most animals live on the Earth’s surface, this well-hidden amphibian travels mostly up and down in the rocks and soil. Its vertical approach to life comes in handy when the weather is hot or dry: the salamander moves deeper into the Earth until conditions are more to its liking. Learn more about this research.

Sudden oak death killed a tanoak stand creating an opening in this forest. Tanoak plays an important ecological role in the redwood forest. Photo by Benjamin Ramage

Tanoak Decline in Redwood Forests

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Tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) grows in coastal forests in Oregon and California. Compared with the majestic redwood, it’s scruffy and small. But this humble hardwood plays an important ecological role in the redwood forest ecosystem. Its medium-height trees add a second canopy to the complex architecture of an old-growth redwood forest, creating more niches for diverse species. And its nutritious acorns feed bear, deer, rodents and birds.

Researchers sampled coast redwoods' DNA at the Russell Research Station in Contra Costa County, California. Photo by Richard S. Dodd

Central California Redwoods More Vulnerable

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Researchers found in a 2007 study that coast redwoods’ genetic diversity was “very high” throughout the state, and more divergent in Central California. These Central California redwoods are most threatened by climate change and “should be a conservation priority,” said Richard S. Dodd, a professor of plant population genetics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Photo by Sean Dreilinger, Flickr Creative Commons

Examining Coast Redwood Genes

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Genome science has made stunning advances in the past few decades. But until recently, no one had tried to sequence Sequoia sempervirens, the coast redwood. Part of the problem was the species’ complexity. Humans are “diploid,” meaning that for each chromosome, they have one copy inherited from their mother and one from their father. Redwoods, on the other hand, are “hexaploid,” meaning that they have three copies from each side, which triples the size of their genome.

Emily Limm found that western sword fern absorbed the most moisture from fog. Photo by Emily Burns

Fog and Redwood Forest Plants

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Coast redwood forests depend on fog to survive the nearly rainless summers of California’s Mediterranean climate. It was once thought that redwoods captured this moisture through their roots. But a 2004 Save the Redwoods League-funded study proved that redwoods suck up water through their leaves as well. As a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, Emily Burns set out to discover whether other plants in the redwood ecosystem were equally adept at “foliar uptake.”

Photo by cm195902, Flickr Creative Commons

Pre-Logged Northern Redwood Forests

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If you want to restore a logged-over redwood forest, how do you decide what should be there? In the past, land managers looked at the mix of species in nearby protected areas. But no one knew for sure whether they represented typical redwood forests—or just the ones with the most interesting or abundant redwoods. Learn more about this research.

Fire is an example of a disturbance event that redwoods face.

Coast Redwoods’ Response to Disturbance Events

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In 2006, Save the Redwoods League recruited eight scientists to survey scientific literature about how coast redwood forests respond to “disturbance events” such as fires, windstorms and floods. The scientists considered how redwoods fit into two broad categories of trees: those that need major disturbances to perpetuate themselves and those that don’t. The seedlings of disturbance-dependent trees germinate in open spaces, grow quickly to outcompete other vegetation and tend to form even-age stands. Species that don’t need disturbances tend to be shade tolerant, slower growing and longer lived.  They usually grow in uneven-age stands.

In this logged forest, alders compete for dominance with Douglas-fir and redwoods. Redwoods here were stunted compared with their relatives in a untouched "old-growth" forest. Photo by Emily King Teraoka

Thinning Would Spur Old-Growth Qualities

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Upland forests in Redwood National Park have been studied extensively. But until a few years ago, less was known about streamside, or “riparian,” forests, which benefit the park’s salmon habitat by providing shade, erosion control and woody debris in the streams. So Humboldt State University graduate student Emily King Teraoka decided to compare two of the park’s riparian forests: one along Lost Man Creek, which had been clearcut between 1954 and 1962; and one along Little Lost Man Creek, which was mostly untouched. Learn more about this research.