Grief is a human emotion that arises from the loss of objects of affection. When people lose someone or something that is dear to them, they grieve. Awkward as it often is, the opposite is also true. If someone or something is lost that was not held dear, then grief is also absent.

Many years ago I held a memorial service in the backyard for a deceased goldfish. The principal mourner at that service was a five-year-old girl who wept profusely over the dead fish. The child’s expressions of grief were touching indicators of her deep affection. I was also moved, by the little girl’s sincere feelings, not by the death of the goldfish necessarily.

Like most of us, I have on occasion attended funerals and burial services for deceased people. Funerals are very emotional events. The attendees are generally bereaved. The mourners express their loss, and the love they felt and still feel for the deceased, through eulogies, prayers, hymns, tears, and flowers. These outward signs of grief confirm their affections.

Trained and talented thespians (and politicians) can fake emotions, including grief, but most of the rest of us cannot. Sincere emotions well up unbidden and unconcealed. You can’t hide your true feelings, not well and not for long, anyway.

Not everybody has deep affections for forests. Why should they? There are a million other things in this world to place affections upon, and people vary in their predilections. Targets of affection include ice cream, seashores, puppies, baseball, weblogs, kittens, golf, knitting, politics, trout-filled lakes, flower gardens, five-foot surf, six-point bucks, antiques, the latest gadgets, and a lot more, not to mention each other. Most people would say they have positive feelings towards forests, but not consuming feelings. It would be weird if everybody was passionate about forests. I, for one, would feel cramped and crowded. I would probably take up bowling or some other obscure passion, just for the breathing room.

Some people, not everybody thankfully, do hold deep affections for forests. I suffer from this malady, myself, and I seek the company of others who share my disease. It’s been great for me, and still is, to have passions and deep feelings for forests, and to share those with fellow forest aficionados. I never fault expressions of affection for forests, even if those expressions are child-like or uninformed. If you like forests, for any reason, then you get a thumbs-up from me.

In my forest journeys I have encountered a strange phenomenon: false affection for forests. I am absolutely convinced that some people who express feelings for forests are faking it. They say they like forests, but they really don’t.

The tell-tale sure sign of pseudo-affection is the way fakers react when a forest is catastrophically destroyed by fire. True forest aficionados are grief-stricken, fakers feel nothing. If you ever wonder who it is that really cares about forests, look for expressions of grief. Look for the forest memorials, the eulogies, the prayers, the hymns, the tears and the flowers. If grief is absent when the forest is lost, then real affection was never there in the first place. There is nothing immoral about indifference to forests. However, faking affection for forests when none exists, for wholly self-serving reasons that have nothing to do with forests, now that’s immoral.

Grief verifies affection. That’s my litmus test, anyway.

We featured cohortedness in an earlier post, and have been using the concept regularly ever since. Recall that we defined a forest cohort as the group of trees that got started following the same regeneration-inducing disturbance. We also noted that in western forests new trees sprout up in time waves that may span 50 to 100 years following the disturbance.

In frequent fire forests the cohorts are many but their individual membership is low, sometimes less than one tree per acre. In fire-absent forests the cohorts are few, and the youngest cohort is dense, with as many as 1,000 or more tpa.

Once you have the concept, and you start looking at forests, their cohortedness pops right out at you. The cohorts were there the whole time, they just went unnoticed. With the idea in mind, cohortedness is rather obvious.

Here are some digitized photos of multicohort forests to test that theory. Can you see the cohorts?

[Click the kilobytes to see the larger image. The files are pretty big, to capture the details. Hope you have DSL.]

[406 KB] or [843KB]

[550 KB]

[644 KB]

[691 KB]

I have spent a fair amount of quality time in spotted owl forests. I have observed many an owl, and have been observed as well.

Owl forests are multicohort. In single cohort forests (especially tree plantations) the structure is too simple to be good owl habitat. Every tree is the same height and has roughly the same shape and crown length (the crown is the green, leafy part of the tree). In single cohort forests the canopy (all the crowns put together) is open near the forest floor but tightly interwoven at the uniform crown bases.

Every owl forest I’ve ever been in is multicohort, and strongly so. The structural lattices are complex, and the canopies are discontinuous vertically and horizontally. The discontinuities may be visualized as valleys, wells, caves, and tunnels in the forest canopy.

Spotted owls don’t flap their wings a lot; instead they glide. An owl might pull a stroke on takeoff, and another stroke or two if climbing sharply, but mostly spotted owls sail, seemingly effortlessly, from perch to perch.

Interestingly enough, spotted owls stop at the same perches when they glide through the forest. At least, in my experience, that’s been my observation of Spotty and other owls I’ve known. They also glide the same paths from perch to perch, like a bus on a route with established stops.

Spotted owl aerial pathways go through wide tunnels in the canopy. Owls avoid big openings and canopy valleys that expose the sky. Instead they prefer overtopping cover. Owls glide fairly straight paths, too. They don’t juke around. If you had a tall ladder you could sail a Frisbee along and through spotted owl tunnels.

Interestingly enough, during the multi-millennial era of frequent fire western forest structures were more open. The trees were more widely spaced. Instead of covered canopy tunnels from perch to perch, there was lots of open sky. With eagles and goshawks circling.

Dense multicohort stands are a more common feature on the western NA landscape than they used to be, meaning there may not have been as many spotted owls in millennia past as there are now. Sizeable spotted owl populations may be a modern phenomenon, like those of starlings or urban pigeons. Spotted owls may be a species dependent on the inexplicable actions of humanity; not tame, but not exactly undomesticated, either.

Reno Hill, Images

Posted below are thumbnail images of Reno Hill. Click on each to view larger images.

300-year-old sugar pine. 298KB

Fire-scarred Douglas-fir. 398KB

Old Douglas-fir leans over grand fir thicket. 375KB

Where’s the forester? 409KB

Although this scrap of forest, Reno Hill, conveys a more open and greener feeling than South Fork, it has its denser moments. On some acres the Reno Hill grand fir thicket is even more brushy, dog-haired, and cantilevered with dead, pitchy snags. It’s a younger grand fir thicket than at South Fork, but it’s up and coming.

If a fire sweeps through Reno Hill next summer, most acres would experience 100 percent mortality. It is possible that some trees on a few acres would survive, but it depends on the weather on the day of the fire. The fuel loading and laddering is extreme throughout much of Reno Hill.

It is not possible, (in fact, it’s impossible), that the past fires at Reno Hill encountered so much pitch-soaked fuel. Otherwise the existing 24 trees per acre in the older cohorts would have been incinerated long ago. The only way the fire-scarred old trees could have lived through so many fires was if those fires were relatively cool, fast, and low-running. The fuel had to be light and thin: scrubby chinquapin and kinnikinnick, without tall thickets of grand fir. And the only way the fuels could be so light was if the fires were frequent, no more than 40 years apart, and probably much less.

The 1880 and 1860 fires could have been set by rancher/miner/trapper/pioneers. Before then frequent fires could have been set by resident Indians. Or lightning could be the culprit in all cases. If past fires were natural, then at Reno Hill (as at South Fork) Mother Nature is behind schedule. If lightning was the ignition source for past fires, then lightning must have diminished significantly about 100 years ago.

Recall that Reno Hill is at 5,000 feet. It’s way back up in there, at least 25 crow-fly miles from the broad bottomlands of Oregon’s nearest major river, the Rogue. If there were no roads, no houses, no people, no firefighting, and nothing but flammable forest between the Rogue River Valley and Reno Hill, could a fire set at the former (at 400 feet elevation) travel 25 miles uphill to the latter (at 5,000 feet)?

I see no reason why not.

Reno Hill is a scrap of “original” forest in the Oregon Cascades. Below is a graph showing the age distribution of trees at Reno Hill.

Note again that the vertical axis (trees per acre) is logarithmic. This brings out the detail in the older age classes, some of which have less than one t/a. Again the red lines indicate the years in which fire occurred at Reno Hill, ascertained from sampled fire scars.

Evidence of five historical fires was detected at Reno Hill, the most recent about 110 years before measurement (approximately 1880). It’s likely that more than five fires occurred at Reno Hill over the last 400 years, but signs from every one of them were not found. None of these fires was “stand replacing”. That is, none of the five or more detected and undetected fires catastrophically killed every tree.

Reno Hill averages 24 trees per acre older than 110 years, breast height age (bha). Among these trees are members of at least five different cohorts. The oldest tree increment bored was 373 years bha, but older trees are probably there. These old giants have withstood winter after winter, storm after storm, drought after drought, and fire after fire.

A Reno Hill acre also averages 416 trees younger than 110 years bha, plus an additional 182 seedlings. Two cohorts are represented by these younger trees, one that arose after the 1880 fire, and one that got started following the disturbance of punkin picking that happened 20 years before measurement.

Punkin picking, officially known as Dead and Dying Salvage, was a USFS program that involved cruising the back roads and harvesting peeler-grade old growth, (supposedly within a few feet of the road, but I’ve backtracked skid trails more than a quarter mile to the OG stump). Dead and Dying Salvage was discontinued in the mid-1970’s in the Reno Hill forest, but the signs are obvious, and quantifiable to the expert forensic forest biometrician. I estimate 5.2 punkins per acre were picked at Reno Hill, all over 200 years old, in the harvest year of 1971.

As another example of a forest, I present Reno Hill. Reno Hill is not an entire forest, but is a forest fragment, a scrap of a forest that once blanketed the entire Oregon Cascade Mountains, and spread out from there in lobes and stringers to connect with a mega-forest so vast it covered most of western North America.

Reno Hill is fifty miles north and 2,000 feet higher in elevation than South Fork, but they share many characteristics. Both contain the same mix of conifers species. Both have multicohort age structure. Both are spotted owl nesting stands. Both are fuel-loaded, catastrophic fires waiting to happen.

Reno Hill is a little bit more open and airy than South Fork. The youngest cohort trees are smaller and less frequent, but the older cohort trees are just as big and more frequent. As a result, Reno Hill still has something of the park-like feel remaining from the frequent fire era of centuries past. Giant orange ponderosa pines stand out all over, demanding attention at eye-level. Look up and you’ll see the equally giant, dark purple sugar pines towering alongside the ponderosas, with foot-long cones dangling from their gray-green crowns over 150 feet above. Tall spires of Douglas-firs and incense cedars share the skyline with the pines. Crouched below are gnarled grand fir snags, and surrounding them a spate of younger, greener, skinnier, shorter trees of all the overstory species.

Reno Hill is higher up than South Fork, has a shorter growing season, and thinner soil with rounded basalt outcroppings and boulders. All these factors limit tree seedling survival and reduce tree-per-acre density. Reno Hill also has thick, seedling-impeding patches of kinnikinnick, aka bearberry, (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), a lovely, low-growing ground cover with the best English and Latin names (of any brush). Shrub-form golden chinquapin, (Castanopsis chrysophylla), a close second in the name department, also decorates Reno Hill.

Here is a thumbnail digitized photo from Reno Hill, another gem from my forest pin-up collection. Click to view larger, high quality image (670 KB).

[Crafty Christmas Gift Idea! You can download twelve images off this site for free, and then make your very own, customized, SOS Forests calendars!]

Posted below are thumbnail images of South Fork. Click on a pic to view the larger image.

Fallen snags, standing snags,
and an older cohort Douglas-fir
amongst the grand fir youngest cohort. 508 KB

Height pole (collapsed to six feet)
leaning on older cohort incense cedar.
Older cohort sugar pine in background. 484 KB

Fire scarred, woodpecker drilled,
Douglas-fir snag with sugar pine cones. 537KB

Measuring an older cohort incense cedar. 460 KB

Older cohort sugar pine with
laddered fuels and kindling duff. 547 KB

Neck-craning view of an older cohort
Douglas-fir. 511 KB

[This post is dedicated to Spud]

I almost forgot to mention it. South Fork is a nesting “stand” for northern spotted owls. Which brings to mind the following story:

The first time I ever saw South Fork was on a warm spring day more than 15 years ago. Early in the morning we all met at a coffee shop on the edge of town: myself (a dirt forester), Dr. Hoot Hooter (world’s foremost authority on spotted owls), Igor (his perennial grad student), Dr. Augustus Pope (world’s foremost authority on forest ecosystems), and some other honchos and notables.

During breakfast some dunderhead asked Dr. Hooter why we didn’t breed spotted owls in captivity. Captive breeding could assure a viable population, preserve genetic diversity, etc. The dunderhead was about to say, “I raise chickens myself,” when Dr. Hooter pounded his fist on the table so forcefully the hash browns took a hop.

“It’s not about the owls,” he thundered at the dunderhead, “It’s about the habitat!” The patrons in the coffee shop turned to look at the source of the commotion.

Dr. Pope, Dr. Hooter’s good friend, calmed him down. “X is a good guy,” soothed Dr. Pope, “He just wants to learn.” Then he gave a lecture — the substance of which I can’t recollect.

After breakfast we all piled into two vans and drove to the woods. On the way Igor explained to me that spotted owls live in cavities in old growth snags, and eat flying squirrels plus the occasional wood rat. “Don’t they eat mice, too?” I inquired. No, the experts clarified it for me, spotted owl talons are too big to catch prey as small as mice.

We got to South Fork, piled out, and walked up into the forest. Igor pulled a galvanized bucket out of the back of one of the vans, and carried it along. First we observed the nest, which was on a green “witches broom” (a living, bushy, tree limb) and not in a snag hole.

Dr. Hooter hooted and sure enough, within seconds, a spotted owl sailed in and perched on a branch about 25 feet away from our group. Igor took the lid off the bucket, reached in, and pulled out a white laboratory mouse. He cradled the mouse in his hands for a few seconds, and then put him on a long stick.

The mouse clung tightly to the stick. At first I wondered why he didn’t scurry off. Then I realized that the poor mouse was in shock. His whole life he’d lived in something smaller than a shoebox, until the galvanized bucket, which must have been like a mansion to the mouse. Then suddenly the lid was off! And there was the sky! And the sun! (He’d heard rumors about the sun, and now there it was!) And there were enormous trees that rose to meet the sun and the sky. And the breeze, the colors, the scents. Oh, the scents! For the first time in his tiny life the mouse experienced the world, the real world, in all its glory, and he was in shock at the awesome, fantastic grandeur, beauty, and wonder of it all.

Igor held the stick aloft. The owl swooped down, snagged the mouse in mid-flight, sailed on to the nearest branch, and swallowed the mouse whole, the tail last to disappear down the owl’s gullet.

“Well, that’s it for Mickey,” I thought, glumly.

Later, when I was measuring trees at South Fork, (without the clown troupe), Spotty followed me around constantly. Spotty is what I named him, or her, I’m not sure which. I didn’t need to hoot for Spotty; he or she found me. Spotty hung around on a nearby branch all day, every day, obsessively, except for occasional breaks for secret owl business.

Each day I worried, while eating my lunch, that Spotty would mistake my bologna sandwich for a lab mouse, come swooping down, and snatch it right out of my hand.

I don’t know how to put this delicately: I had similar concerns when relieving myself with Spotty watching. I didn’t trust him, or her, any more than I trusted some of the world’s foremost authorities.

What happened at South Fork? Here’s what. Since time immemorial low-intensity fires have frequented the South Fork forest. I detected seven fires over a period of 250 years, from 400 years ago to 150 years ago. I probably failed to detect that many or more. It seems that, in the past, fire visited South Fork every 10 to 30 years, probably for centuries.

The frequent fires consumed the understories, probably grasses, small brush, and tree seedlings initiated by the prior fire. The frequent fires did not consume the large, thick-barked, wide-spaced trees. Perhaps one seedling per acre survived subsequent fires and eventually joined the scattered giants towering over prairie-like, frequently-incinerated, low-to-the-ground vegetation.

The last such fire occurred about 1840. Since then fire has been absent. No doubt every conifer species in the park-like overstory shed seed soon after (and frequently since) the last fire. Pine seedlings probably got established and started to grow first. Douglas-firs quickly followed. Grand fir seedlings probably also germinated within a few years of the last fire, but grand fir seedlings can remain tiny and nearly dormant for decades. Eventually, perhaps fifty years later, the grand fir seedlings started to grow. Few other species thrive in dense grand fir thickets, and the early post-fire pioneer pines and Douglas-firs got crowded out at South Fork.

Today the thicket of grand fir remains, together with the mixed-conifer trees of the older cohorts. The latter are dying, though. At South Fork large snags are as frequent as large living trees. Measurements were made on snags of all the cohorts. Evidence suggests that half the trees established prior to 1840 have died since, most within the last 50 years. In 1840 South Fork had about 15 trees per acre. Today half those trees are still alive, along with 1,000 resinous and decadent grand firs per acre. The absence of fire has turned South Fork from an open, grassy, park-like forest into a kindling pile of sick and dying trees.

So where did the fires go? Some people blame “fire suppression”, but that argument doesn’t comport with the facts. The US Forest Service wasn’t established until 1905. In the 1930’s the Tillamook (and other) Fires were fought by men on horseback. It wasn’t until after the Korean War that decent roads, bulldozers, helicopters, and retardant-dropping air tankers were added to fire-fighting arsenals. In other words, there was no significant, effective fire suppression at South Fork for at least 110 years following the last fire. If a fire started today at still remote South Fork, with its enormous fuel build-up, all the modern fire suppression technology in the world wouldn’t be able to put the fire out. No, I’m sorry, but the fire suppression hypothesis doesn’t wash.

If the natural fire frequency at South Fork was one every twenty years, then why has Mother Nature missed Her last eight appointments? Did lightning diminish recently; is lightning an endangered phenomenon about to go extinct? Noooo, obviously not.

What happened to the fires?