Abstract
Cahoon, Sean M.P.; Kuegler, Olaf; Christensen, Glenn A., tech. eds. 2020. Coastal Alaska’s forest resources, 2004-2013: Ten-year Forest Inventory and Analysis report. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-979. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 73 p. This report highlights key findings from the most recent 10-year survey of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data collected across southeast and south-central Alaska and represents the first full remeasurement of all forest plots in the coastal Alaska inventory unit. Estimates of forest area, stand age, volume, aboveground biomass, and carbon are provided across ownerships, forest types, and species throughout the region. Of the 54 million ac in the inventory unit, approximately 15 million ac (28 percent) were considered forest land, most of which is managed by Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. Western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), mountain hemlock (T. mertensiana), Alaska yellow-cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis), and Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) forest types dominate the region, together accounting for 75 percent of total forest area and 86 percent of total aboveground biomass. Understory vegetation was dominated by oval leaf blueberry, rusty menziesia, and bunchberry dogwood, while nonforest areas were dominated by tall and dwarf shrub community types characterized by Sitka alder (Alnus viridis ssp. sinuata), salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), and sweet gale (Myrica gale). Over the 10-year remeasurement cycle (1995-2003 to 2004-2013), net change in forest volume was mostly positive, with the exception of privately owned lands, where timber removals exceeded growth. Among softwood species, only lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) (also known as shore pine) displayed a net loss in biomass, while mountain hemlock, Sitka spruce, western redcedar (Thuja plicata), and all hardwood species exhibited a net increase in biomass. Mortality rate was highest for white spruce (P. glauca), likely driven by a large spruce bark beetle outbreak in the late 1990s. However, white spruce also experienced a higher growth rate than other softwood species, perhaps reflecting a growth release among survivors of the beetle attack. This report serves as an updated version to the forest attribute data summarized by Barrett and Christensen (2011) and provides important insight into forest resources for land managers, industry, and researchers.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-73 |
| Number of pages | 73 |
| Journal | USDA Forest Service - General Technical Report PNW-GTR |
| Volume | 2020 |
| Issue number | GTR-979 |
| State | Published - Apr 2020 |
Funding
We thank all Forest Inventory and Analysis field crew members working in Alaska during the 1995–2013 field seasons for their hard work, contributions to protocol improvements, and attention to data quality. Officials from the Alaska Region of the Forest Service deserve much appreciation for funding the nonforest plots and initial vegetation data. We also thank members of the Information Management team for compiling plot measurements into high-quality data that made this report possible, as well as to the numerous analysts who helped design the inventory, quality assurance procedures, and compilation algorithms, and to Tara Barrett for her insightful comments on the early drafts of this report. Finally, we are grateful for the reviewers’ comments which substantially improved the quality of this report. Additional financial support was provided in part by Sean Cahoon’s appointment as a postdoctoral fellow with the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) during the compilation of this report. ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under U.S. Department of Energy contract number DE-SC0014664 and administered through an interagency agreement with the U.S. Forest Service.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| DE-SC0014664 | |
| U.S. Forest Service-Retired |
Keywords
- Biomass
- Carbon
- Coastal alaska
- FIA
- Invasive plants
- Timber industry
- Understory vegetation
- Volume
