Creating a Forest-Wide Context for Adaptive Management at Jackson Demonstration State Forest

At nearly 50,000 acres, Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) is the largest State-owned forest in California. In 2008, the CALFIRE Director appointed a 13-member Jackson Advisory Group to provide recommendations to the California State Board of Forestry for how to transition JDSF into a “world-class research forest”. After nearly 3 years of deliberations, we have developed a draft Research-Oriented Management Framework (ROMF) that, if adopted, will introduce a new model for adaptive management within the forestry sector. Our approach integrates several core elements. Scientific “Centers of Excellence” (including one focused on Coho recovery and/or watershed processes) would be developed around a Research-Oriented Landscape Allocation, that considers the existing distribution of forest attributes both within JDSF as well as within the broader coastal Redwood Region. The ROMF would establish an Experimental Basis for Management that seeks to leverage harvest activities with explicit experimental designs and monitoring objectives. Like many of the forests that comprise its customer-base, JDSF has a mandate to produce timber revenues. We view this as an opportunity to mimic the management constraint imposed on most private and conservation trust landowners to routinely harvest timber to support operational and capital costs. Timber revenues on JDSF would be used (in part) to support the research and monitoring program. Such a system would support both passive and active modes of forest manipulation and research, and would make JDSF research activities more relevant to stakeholders, potentially increasing opportunities for collaborative, landscape-scale studies that seek to resolve outstanding management issues and uncertainties. The ROMF also would seek to develop and improve practices related to sustainable forestry. Both Late-Seral Development Areas and Old-Forest Structure Zones would be established that will utilize uneven-aged management treatments to expedite a distribution of forest stand characteristics ranging from young to old. This system would provide the context for research and monitoring involving a wide array of hydro-geomorphic and ecological issues, while concentrating efforts into collaborative Centers of Excellence. Together, these ROMF elements can provide a backbone for adaptive management that will be relevant to a broad array of stakeholders, including landowners, agencies, conservation groups and policy makers.