Lick Creek is the longest running fuel treatment and restoration study of ponderosa pine forests in the Northern Rockies. The Lick Creek Demonstration– Research Forest studies were established in 1991 in western Montana to enable the evaluation of tradeoffs among alternative cutting and burning strategies to reduce fuels and moderate forest fire behavior while restoring historical stand structures and species compositions. The experiment consists of two independent studies of thinning and retention shelterwood cuttings, with and without prescribed burning treatments. This seminar will describe treatment effects throughout the 20+ year-old study, including fuels, forest structure and composition, understory species responses, tree physiology, resistance to bark beetles, carbon storage, and fire hazard. Permanent photopoints established in each study also visually document forest and fuel change over time.
Lick Creek: lessons learned after 20+ years of harvesting and prescribed fire in a ponderosa pine forest