Erik Piikkila (espcwd AT yahoo.com)
Is the Study of Railroad Logging the Holy Grail, the Rosetta Stone or the Dead Sea Scrolls for Forestry Jobs, the Spotted Owl, Carbon Sequestration and Climate Change??
Other possible titles were Pacific Northwest: CSI, Cold Case, History Detectives, or Murder on the Climate Change Express because of the use of scientific methods to solve a mystery by finding hidden or presumed lost clues.
In this case we know “Who Dunnit”, Man to fill societies’ voracious appetite for wood products. But what occurred on these landscapes over the last 133 years has almost been lost to time.
Decoding Second Growth landscapes of the Pacific Northwest (and elsewhere) has many similarities with The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones. There are so many forgotten and hidden clues that need to be (re)discovered. Ecological discoveries at Mount St. Helens since 1980 is a modern detective story.
If current trends of habitat destruction continue through extensive Old Growth forest harvesting, then this story will become a murder mystery with the possible extinction of endangered species from “lowly” soil bacteria and fungi to salamanders, woodpeckers, voles and to the “poster child” of the environmental movement, the Spotted Owl.
Railroad Logging and its associated multiple fires is an epic story that covers tens of millions of acres across North America and may be the Rosetta Stone for Forest Management and Conservation Biology. With the inclusion of prehistoric and historic wildfires covering millions of acres more, the timeline extends by another 700 years (to the year 1200) with the story reaching almost mythological proportions.
Here are some links:
I organized, moderated, and was also a presenter at a symposium about Railroad Logging at Portland OR in April 2011 at the US Chapter of International Association of Landscape Ecologists Conference:
http://drupalweb.forestry.oregonstate.edu/usiale/sessions/symposium-6-landscape-and-disturbance-legacies-railroad-logging-50-130-years-post-disturban
I organized, moderated, and was also a presenter at a symposium about Railroad Logging at Northwest Scientific Association Meeting in Centralia WA in March 2010.
I presented a 4′ x 8′ poster called the West Coast Geography of Railroad Logging and a PowerPoint presentation called the Biological, Landscape and Disturbance Legacies of Railroad Logging at the Northwest Scientific Association Meeting in Seattle WA in March 2009.
My WordPress blog about Railroad Logging:
http://railroadlogginglegacies.wordpress.com/
My Bio:
My Dad was a tree faller and so was my grandfather. That gives me a strong connection to forestry going back to 1924. They used science and in particular physics every day in order to survive because every tree and log they cut was a manipulated explosion.
I want to stand on their giant shoulders and combine their science with the latest ecological science from the giants of the ecological world.
I worked for 11 years at the BC Ministry of Forests were I worked as a Land Information Guru by tracking harvesting, wildlife tree patches, replanting and treatments, and new forest information.
I was trained in forestry at BCIT, Finland, and at the University of Washington in Seattle with Dr. Jerry Franklin, the originator/father of New Forestry, Variable Retention Harvesting (leaving more for Wildlife Tree Patches), and ultimately Ecosystem Based Management.
Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) has been used in Canada, US, Europe, and Australia. In BC, EBM was the basis of the Forest Practices Code 1994, Clayoquot Sound Scientific Process, the Coast Forest Project (Macmillan Bloedel/Weyerhaeuser) and the Coast Forest Conservation Initiative (Central and North Coast/Great Bear Rainforest). In the PNW, EBM has been the basis of the Northwest Forest Plan and the Spotted Owl Recovery Plan.
I have spent the last few years researching Railroad Logging, Prehistoric and Historic Wildfires, Clearcutting since 1940/50’s, and Variable Retention Harvesting in use since 1994 (also the year the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented). I think there huge similarities between all eras other than Clearcutting. By analyzing all eras, I can completely describe the last 150 years of forest management and 800 years of wildfires.
This information will create detailed standards that will provide certainty for Forestry Jobs, habitat for the Spotted Owl and other Old Growth Dependent Species, additional Carbon Sequestration and ultimately solutions for Climate Change??