Ecological Restoration

Over this last summer I worked in Ashland, Oregon for Lomakatsi Restoration Project in partnership with the US Forest Service. For Lomakatsi I did timber cruising and tree marking for commercial thinning projects. The thinning was done to help reduce overall stand density in different parts of the Ashland Watershed and also in the Fremont Winema National Forest located outside of Klamath Falls, OR. In these areas fire had been suppressed for many years and this led to very dense forest conditions. My job was to cruise these areas to give silviculturists an idea of how dense these areas are and then they could write a silvicultural prescription. Once the prescription was written I then would mark trees for removal based on the prescription. The goal of all of this was to help improve overall forest resiliency to wildfire and to help prevent devastating wildfire. Also in the future small scale controlled burning could be used to help prevent these dense forests returning, but still maintaining old legacy ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir. We were trying to affect the fuel portion of the fire triangle. Through this experience I never saw actual fire on the ground, but I was getting a hands on education about fire effects and possibly the potential good fire can do from a maintenance perspective in high risk areas.

Photo by taken by myself in the Ashland Watershed of a stand that has not been treated.