Author: M. J. Waterhouse

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13:

The Farwell Canyon project was established within two Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) stands in the Very Dry Mild Interior Douglas-fir (IDFxm) biogeoclimatic subzone in the Cariboo Region, British Columbia in 2001. The project goals were to improve forage for wildlife and livestock (i.e., increase vascular plant cover), improve the growth of the residual stand by reducing inter-tree competition, shift the plant community composition to one that is more typical of open forest condition, and improve the resiliency of the stand to catastrophic fire. From a timber management perspective, the goal was to increase individual tree growth by logging and thinning while maintaining overall stand-level growth. To achieve these goals, treatment combinations of "modified" logging, pre-commercial thinning, and burning were applied to return the forest to a more open condition that is typical of Douglas-fir forest adjacent to grassland in the IDFxm. Four treatments were applied to one or both blocks: 1. No-treatment areas were established to serve as untreated controls for demonstration and comparison purposes. 2. The logging treatment used a fellerbuncher and grapple skidder combination to apply a "BDq" approach that left a residual stand basal area of about 15 m2/ha (B=residual stand basal area; D=largest-diameter trees; q=diminution quotient). The merchantable utilization was reduced to 12.5 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) for Douglas-fir. 3. The logging treatment was followed by manual thinning of juvenile stems (