Old-growth redwood forests are prized for their biological and aesthetic riches. If you’re a land manager trying to restore lands where redwoods have been logged, the old-growth forest is the ideal to which you aspire. But how do you move toward old-growth characteristics most efficiently? Learn more about this research.
For years, Steve Norman had been told that the humid forests of coastal Northern California must be too wet to burn. Scientists who research fire acknowledge its power as a tool for reshaping the landscape, but some areas were considered nearly immune to fire. This assumption meant that the damp forests of Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park remained a blank file in the coastal forest fire records.
It seems unfathomable that the tiny seedlings Rob York sowed among ash piles in a clearing at Whitaker’s Forest could someday grow to be among the largest creatures on earth. Yet these green specks grew into giant sequoias two years after seeds were strewn in canopy gaps. This species of titan tree has stagnated in regeneration efforts for nearly a century. York, along with his graduate advisor, John Battles, is working on unlocking the secrets to growing new giants. Learn more about this research.
In a forest of towering redwoods, the small creatures scurrying underfoot and splashing into streambeds sometimes go unnoticed as visitors crane their necks toward distant treetops. We should look down, though, say researchers from the Redwood Sciences Laboratory, who visited several state parks to study the ecosystems that surround and support those mighty trees. Researchers Garth Hodgson and Hartwell Welsh pay particular attention to tiny amphibians such as frogs, salamanders, newts in redwood forests, because published studies suggest they are indicators of forest health. Learn more about this research.
In 1923 Emanuel Fritz, then a Professor of Forestry at UC Berkeley, and Woodbridge Metcalf secured for study a one-acre grove of second growth trees along the Big River in Mendocino County. By that year, much of California’s old-growth redwood had been logged and a second generation of trees had begun to grow. Fritz and Metcalf intended to study tree growth on their plot in order to better understand just how a second growth forest develops.
The coho salmon population in Del Norte County’s Mill Creek depends heavily on the quantity and quality of winter habitat for survival, according to a study by The Rowdy Creek Fish Hatchery and a team of fisheries biologists. Learn more about this research.
Dr. Christopher Keyes and Andrew Chittick have found that thinning—removing select trees in a second-growth coast redwood forest—speeds up the forest’s development of old-growth characteristics, which include tall and bulky trees, small gaps in the canopy through which sunlight can penetrate, trees of varying heights, thicker tree branches, understory shrubs and ferns, and healthy young saplings. Learn more about this research.
Grassy fuels on the forest floor were not the cause of frequent prehistoric fires in giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) groves, according to UC Berkeley researchers and California State Park ecologists.
Dr. Sarah Marvin, professor of Geography at the University of Oregon, has set out to understand how the shape of the land and its use by owners reflect the probability of a privately owned coast redwood forest being protected. The two questions she has asked are: “Are privately owned forests more likely to be protected if they are on bigger parcels?” and “Do traditional, rural land uses as opposed to traditional, residential land uses promote forest preservation?” Answers to these questions might help predict the likelihood of future, private redwood forest protection and—of logged forests—regeneration. Learn more about this research.
Legacy trees, old-growth trees left standing in second-growth redwood forests, could serve as a habitat refuge for terrestrial microarthropods, miniscule bugs that live in the forest floor and maintain healthy soils, not to be confused with the bigger arthropods like spiders and bees. Dr. Michael Camann, Karen Lamoncha and Laura Hagenhauer have found substantially more and a wider variety of the soil bugs underneath these so-called legacy trees than beneath surrounding second-growth trees. Learn more about this research.
Traditionally we think of forest conservation as protection of large areas of land. Is it possible, though, that just one tree could benefit an ecosystem enough to warrant individual protection? Mary Jo Mazurek and William Zielinski report evidence that suggests legacy old-growth redwoods can do just that. Learn more about this research.
It’s no coincidence that redwoods live in the thickest part of “California’s fog belt.” The presence of coastal summer fog has long been regarded a necessary ingredient for the health and perpetuation of coast redwood ecosystems. During drier summer months fog supplies trees with moisture and blocks the evaporating rays of direct sunlight, reducing the amount of water that redwoods lose via transpiration. What’s less understood, however, is exactly how fog frequency has varied in the past century and how redwoods have responded to this variation.
From time to time, a resident in Humboldt County will submit a report claiming to have spotted a Pacific fisher or a Humboldt marten. Because Pacific fishers are rare, and because the Humboldt marten was previously thought to be extinct due to human influences such as trapping and logging in their old-growth conifer habitat, these animals remain barely documented. The Corridor from the Redwoods to the Sea, built as a passageway for wild creatures, appears to be prime location to spot small carnivores such as fishers and martens, but despite local accounts, the rare sightings remain unverified by scientists. Where have these small predators gone? Learn more about this research.
Prior to this study, little was known about the bat community in Yosemite’s three giant sequoia groves and virtually nothing was known about how bats use the canopy in any of the Parks’ forests. Dr. Elizabeth Pierson, Dr. William Rainey, and Leslie Chow carried out major research to study bat roosting behavior in fire-scarred hollows at the base of sequoia trees, bat feeding behavior in association with a variety of habitats, and bat activity in the giant sequoia canopy. In addition, they combined observations from this study and others to describe the natural history of Yosemite’s 18 bat species. Learn more about this research.
Based on their research in Pairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Anthony Ambrose and Stephen Sillett have found that mats of humus soil deposited as high up as 265 feet in the crowns of coast redwood trees moderate the climate around them. This makes the mats habitable to a wide variety of insects and animals more commonly found on the forest floor. Learn more about this research.
In the upper reaches of their crowns, coast redwoods struggle to lift water and nutrients into their leaves. This struggle begins a process that limits tree growth, according to a team of researchers studying redwoods in Prairie Creek and Humboldt Redwoods State Parks.
Wandering Salamanders (Aneides vagrans), in addition to dwelling on the ground, have been found in high-up patches of humus moss mats in trunk crotches, on limbs, under bark, and in the cracked and rotting wood of coast redwood trees. They may inhabit forest canopies, the researchers of this study speculate, because of a more profitable food resource available there. Learn more about this research.
It’s likely that Pacific fisher (Martes pennanti pacifica) populations are well distributed in Northern California’s Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) for the same reason that Humboldt martens (Martes americana humboldtensis) have disappeared, according to research done by Keith Slauson, William Zielinski, and Gregory Holm. Second-growth forest habitats that cover a majority of the park are fishers’ sweet and martens’ sour. Learn more about this research.
Dr. William Russell found that the negative effects of timber harvesting in riparian coast redwood forests lessen with respect to two conditions; (1) longevity of the forest and (2) wider no-cut buffer zones. Longer-lived forests and forests with wider buffer zones surrounding rivers show less harm from logging. Riparian buffers are strips of forest left on either side of rivers after logging that control the amount of sediment and nutrients filtering into the water. In recently harvested forests and ones with thin or no buffers, young tree crowns crowd the canopies, letting through less sunlight, deciduous hardwoods thrive, extra dead wood litters the forest floors, and exotic and disturbance-prone understory species invade. These alterations, in addition to affecting the physical structure of rivers, down the line cause higher levels of organic material to filter into them. Learn more about this research.
Giant sequoias are sometimes simply referred to as “big trees” and with good reason: They are the largest trees by volume and among the largest living things on Earth. These massive trees do not function in a void; they are supported by an intricate network of natural processes that keep the ecosystem working properly.
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