United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical Report

PNW-GTR-830

December 2010

Riparian Adaptive 

Management Symposium: 

A Conversation between 

Scientists and Management
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Technical Editors

Douglas F. Ryan is an ecologist and decision support specialist, U.S. Department 

of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Focused Science 

Delivery Program, 3625 93rd Ave. SW, Olympia, WA 98512. John M. Calhoun is 

Director of the Olympic Natural Resources Center, School of Forest Resources, 

College of the Environment, University of Washington, 1455 S. Forks Avenue, 

Forks, WA 98331.

Papers were provided by the authors in camera-ready form for printing. Authors are 

responsible for the content and accuracy. Opinions expressed may not necessarily 

reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The use of trade or firm names in this publication is for reader information and does 

not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of any product or 

service.

Cover

Gordon H. Reeves, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station 

(red salmon, upper left photo). Jason Walters, USDA Forest Service, Shasta-Trinty 

National Forest (debris flow, upper right photo). Brian Fransen, Weyerhaeuser Co. 

(Schultz Creek, lower photo).
Riparian Adaptive 

Management Symposium: 

A Conversation 

between Scientists 

and Management

Forks, Washington

November 3–4, 2008

Douglas F. Ryan and John M. Calhoun 

Technical Editors

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service

Pacific Northwest Research Station

Portland, Oregon 

General Technical Report

 PNW-GTR-830

December 2010

Published in cooperation with: 

U.S. Department of Agriculture
Symposium Sponsors

University of Washington

Olympic Natural Resources Center

www.onrc.washington.edu/

USDA Forest Service

Pacific Northwest Research Station

www.fs.fed.us/pnw

Washington State Department 

of Natural Resources

www.wa.gov/dnr
Abstract

Ryan, Douglas F.; Calhoun, John M., tech. eds. 2010. Riparian adaptive management symposium: a conversation between scientists and management. Gen. Tech. 

Rep. PNW-GTR-830. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 

Pacific Northwest Research Station. 135 p.

Scientists, land managers and policy makers discussed whether riparian (stream 

side) forest management and policy for state, federal and private lands in western 

Washington are consistent with current science. Answers were mixed: some aspects 

of riparian policy and management have a strong basis in current science, while other 

aspects may not. Participants agreed that the same body of science, originally synthesized by the Forest Ecosystem Management Team (FEMAT) report in 1993, underlies 

most current federal, state and private land policy and management of riparian areas. 

With some exceptions, that underlying science base has been supported by most 

recent research. However, some riparian forest policy and management in western 

Washington have been implemented in ways that may drive riparian areas toward 

static and uniform conditions over large areas, an outcome that may not be consistent 

with current science consensus. Current thinking in the scientific community is that 

sustaining high aquatic productivity at the scale of large landscapes or river basins 

probably depends on maintaining dynamic and heterogeneous riparian conditions 

driven by disturbance processes that operate over large spatial and temporal scales. 

Recognition of this inconsistency of policy and management with current science 

appeared to be new, especially for the management and policy communities. Participants suggested steps to address the identified science-policy gap, including analyses 

to identify specifically what policies are and are not consistent with current science 

and landscape-scale experiments to test the effectiveness of management alternatives 

that apply current science.

Keywords: riparian forest management, riparian policy, aquatic productivity, 

riparian disturbance, and science-policy gap.

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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

The goal of this symposium was to ask whether 

riparian forest policy and management in western 

Washington is consistent with the current science 

consensus on riparian processes. This is a cogent question because, although they are related to one another, 

changes in science, policy and management do not 

necessarily occur at the same pace. The mechanisms 

that align them (e.g. technology transfer, legislation, 

legal actions, public opinion etc,) sometimes act only 

after long delays. Further complicating this question, 

policies guiding management of forested riparian areas 

are significantly different on federal, State and private 

lands. Answers that came out of our two-day symposium were mixed: some aspects of riparian policy and 

management are consistent with current science, but 

in other areas there appear to be gaps between policy 

and management and current science. Recognition of 

some gaps seems to be new, especially for the management and policy communities. Participants could only 

outline implications of the gaps because detailed analyses have not yet been done. I review what gaps were 

identified, touch on some of their potential implications 

and suggest some actions that scientists, forest managers and environmental policy makers might consider to 

mend these gaps.

There was general agreement among scientists, 

policy makers and managers at the symposium that the 

same body of science underlies the current policy and 

management guidelines for riparian areas on federal, 

State and private forest lands in Western WA. Much 

of that body of science was originally synthesized by 

the Forest Ecosystem Management Team (FEMAT) 

report (FEMAT 1993), which was developed for use in 

formulating the Northwest Forest Plan for managing 

federal lands in western WA, and in western OR, and 

northern CA as well. The State of Washington subsequently adopted the same science basis to develop 

its guidelines for riparian management of State and 

private forest lands for the Cascade Mountains and 

westward. Specific policy and management guidelines 

themselves are different for federal, State and private 

lands, primarily because their legal, economic and 

political environments are not alike, but their underlying science basis is essentially the same.

Two parts of the FEMAT science base that were 

adopted into policy and management, were the focus of 

much discussion: the first was a series of relationships 

that described how various ecological functions of 

the riparian zone change with distance away from the 

stream bank (often called the “FEMAT curves”), and 

the second was the hypothesis that the most productive 

aquatic conditions occurred in “old growth” forests. 

Gordon H. Reeves, who had been a member of the 

FEMAT team, related that both of these components of 

the FEMAT report represented a synthesis of the scientific literature available in 1993 and the professional 

opinion of the FEMAT scientists. 

Most of the studies at that time had been done at 

the scale of individual stream reaches and most of the 

reaches that were studied were in old-growth forests 

representing a relatively narrow range of riparian conditions. The team also assumed that because aquatic 

productivity of stream reaches increased with time 

after severe disturbance, that productivity of native 

fishes would be maximized in “old growth” conditions 

because they assumed that “old growth” riparian areas 

would have had the longest time to develop. 

Since the FEMAT report, scientific studies of 

the relationship between stream habitat and riparian 

conditions have added to both the depth and range 

of available knowledge. Riparian processes are now 

Douglas F. Ryan, US Forest Service PNW Research Station

Executive Summary and Synthesis
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

better understood at both the reach scale and at larger 

spatial and temporal scales. This broader knowledge 

base indicates that the productivity of fish populations 

depends on processes that occur over landscapes and 

whole river basins. Recent studies have also largely 

affirmed the relationships that were embodied in the 

FEMAT curves, i.e. additional studies found that riparian functions were, for the most part, well described by 

the curves. However, Lee Benda related that the more 

rich data currently available on riparian conditions 

at the reach scale combined with modern geospatial 

modeling tools now permits these relationships to 

be predicted taking local factors into consideration. 

This ability to model riparian influence on stream 

habitat [analogous to “FEMAT” curves] that vary from 

point to point along a stream, depending on locally 

controlling factors, was not available at the time of the 

FEMAT report. Thus, although the functional relationships between riparian width and aquatic habitat, 

described by the original FEMAT curves, continues to 

be supported by current science, more recent data and 

modeling capabilities can reliably predict how local 

influences affect these relationships at different places 

along a stream network. These new capabilities mean 

that policy and management no longer have to rely on 

the “one-size-fits-all”, average values for these critical 

relationships that were in the FEMAT report.

Perhaps the most interesting emergent scientific 

findings were that the most productive aquatic/riparian systems are not necessarily being found in “old 

growth” riparian conditions. Rather, highly productive aquatic/riparian sites have been found within a 

watershed-scale mix of forest conditions of which 

late-seral forests are only a part. In addition, highly 

productive aquatic conditions are patchy and do not 

occur over large areas and are closely associated 

with certain channel geomorphic characteristics (e.g., 

floodplains, stream junctions, confined to unconfined 

channel transitions). These spatially limited patches 

of favorable physical habitat for salmon and trout 

are associated with riparian areas that developed 

after a severe disturbance about 100 to 200 years in 

the past. The evidence seems to also indicate that 

productivity declines as those patches continue to age 

beyond one to two centuries after disturbance. This 

dynamic behavior and patchy distribution is linked to 

the pattern of where severe disturbance events (e.g. 

intense wildland fires, major floods, large landslides, 

etc.) intersect with the riparian/stream network. An 

implication of this finding is that riparian conditions 

conducive to high aquatic productivity have probably 

been temporally dynamic and spatially heterogeneous 

across the landscape for a long time, and were so 

even before European settlement when fish were more 

abundant than in the present. Interestingly this would 

imply that current patches with the highest quality fish 

habitat are legacies of disturbance events that occurred 

in the 19th century, before industrialized society 

exerted strong influences on disturbance patterns in 

much of the Northwest landscape. This development 

pattern applies to physical habitat and should not be 

confused with the different pattern aquatic food webs 

follow after disturbance. Studies of foodwebs after 

Mount St. Helens’ eruption and the Yellowstone fires, 

for example, found that aquatic food webs usually peak 

within 2 decades or less after disturbance, responding 

to short-term abundances of resources including nutrients and light. Food webs usually decline thereafter as 

these resources dwindle. Food web transients can contribute to fish abundance while they are occurring, but 

their short duration means they contribute relatively 

little to long-term sustainability of fish populations at 

landscape scales. The general consensus among the 

scientists at the workshop was that sustaining high 

aquatic productivity at the scale of large landscapes or 

river basins probably depends on maintaining dynamic 
ix

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

and heterogeneous processes of riparian disturbance 

and the associated processes that develop high quality 

physical aquatic habitat for fish.

Symposium participants did not explore in detail 

what parts of current riparian policy and management 

guidelines are based on the FEMAT curves (i.e. on 

maintaining favorable riparian conditions at the reach 

level). Most likely policy and management that are 

affirmed by current science probably include, but are 

not limited to, guidelines for setting riparian buffer 

widths or conservation zones and the riparian management permitted within these stream-side forests, 

which are different on federal, State and private lands. 

In other words, policy and management measures 

designed to create conditions in riparian areas favorable to fish productivity at the reach level continue to 

have a strong science basis, but further analysis will be 

needed to identify specifically what parts federal, State 

and private management guidelines the current science 

affirms. 

Presentations by the scientific panelists indicated 

that implementation of riparian forest policy and management in western Washington strongly influences 

the distribution of riparian conditions across larger 

landscapes and river basins. This distribution may not 

be consistent with current science consensus about 

what riparian conditions are most favorable for the 

productivity of native fishes (e.g. Bisson et al. 2009). 

By adopting goals for riparian and aquatic condition 

based on “average” and “old growth” targets and 

applying them to large areas, management and policy 

guidelines may have, in effect, set goals for managing 

riparian and aquatic ecosystems that are static in time 

and uniform over large areas. In theory, these static 

and homogenous policy goals may not be adequate to 

sustain the diverse landscape conditions that are necessary for resilient and productive watersheds needed to 

achieve high levels of long-term aquatic productivity. 

The scientists hypothesized that spatially uniform and 

temporally static goals for riparian areas might even be 

an impediment to restoring highly productive aquatic 

systems. Their logic followed this path: uniform 

conditions may prevent aquatic systems from cycling 

through the full range of disturbance and recovery 

stages that produce highly productive riparian and 

aquatic states. In addition, the scientists hypothesized 

that these static riparian and aquatic conditions also 

may not conserve the genetic diversity of life cycle 

patterns in salmon populations that give them the 

resiliency to respond when aquatic conditions change. 

Policies setting underlying riparian goals that are 

essentially static and homogenous have become an 

integral part of many of the management guidelines 

that drive the goals for riparian management on 

federal, State and private forest lands in western Washington. Discussions at the symposium did not indicate 

that current management and policy guidelines necessarily preclude practices that might produce dynamic 

and heterogeneous riparian conditions. Because they 

promote uniform conditions over large areas, however, 

current policy and management guides do little to 

encourage treatments that would lead to ecologically 

diverse landscapes that could maintain critical functions that were formerly produced by natural disturbance regimes. The types of management decisions in 

which static assumptions may influence on-the-ground 

implementation are probably numerous. For example, 

these goals play a role in selecting what criteria are 

used to designate riparian reserves or buffers, how to 

assess the quality of riparian/aquatic habitat conditions 

(favorable or unfavorable for fish species of concern), 

what monitoring protocols to select to measure effectiveness, how to select and implement monitoring 

protocols and how to interpret monitoring results. 

However, the participants did not systematically 

analyze in detail the significance of the implications 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

of these static assumptions for forest policy and management of federal, State and private lands.

Response of Policy and Management to postFEMAT science:

Although members of the science community widely 

agreed that some important aspects of the science of 

riparian processes have changed since FEMAT, members of the policy and management communities at the 

symposium did not present any examples in western 

Washington of change in either policy or management 

on federal, State or private forest land in response 

to new science. Some management experiments that 

demonstrate or test management that are alternatives 

to current practice were cited at the symposium, but, 

with the exception of a computer modeling exercise 

in the Cowlitz basin presented by Lee Benda, these 

activities did not occur in western Washington. A 

joint science-policy-management meeting that was 

held a few months before this symposium (Liquori 

et al. 2008, Benda et al. in preparation), raised issues 

about the currency of science in riparian policy and 

management but its focus was confined to California. 

Subsequently, California has revised its regulations 

for commercial timber harvesting on private land in 

watersheds where there are listed salmonid species, 

based on a review of the current scientific literature 

and scientists’ testimony (California Board of Forestry 

2009). In western Washington, this symposium made 

clear that, although the science base assembled by 

the FEMAT team still underlies much of riparian 

policy and management, a gap has developed between 

some aspects of riparian policy and management and 

the science consensus since FEMAT regarding the 

importance of riparian processes at larger spatial and 

temporal scales. In effect, the science community suggested that the spatial and temporal scope for setting 

riparian policy and management needs to be expanded 

to include processes producing high quality riparian 

and aquatic habitat that function at landscape or river 

basin scales. The policy and management communities 

are still operating within guidelines based on science 

that was developed at the scale of stream reaches, some 

of which have been superseded. 

Consequences of a science-policy gap:

Could this gap between science, policy and management create problems? Potentially yes, because societal 

tensions can arise if a gap persists and it affects values 

that many people care about. For example, if policy 

and management based on outdated science fails to 

restore healthy aquatic habitat, salmonid fish populations may suffer set backs or even extinctions. A 

decline of these highly visible and regionally important 

fish could potentially raise questions about why these 

threatened species were allowed to decline or why 

so much public money has been spent restoring them 

without a positive outcome. A further decline of native 

fish might also lead to more strenuous measures to protect fish habitat with the potential for negative impacts 

on the State’s timber industry and it’s economic activity. Policy and management goals based on outdated 

science could also risk losing public confidence in 

salmon restoration efforts by creating an “illusion of 

failure” (in Gordon H. Reeves’ words), because they 

aspire to goals that may be unattainable (for example, 

that all river segments can be restored to conditions of 

high fish productivity).

Public frustration with a policy/management 

strategy that persistently fails to reach its goals might 

lead members of the public to demand corrections by 

the courts or legislature. Legal and legislative corrections for natural resource issues may be expedient but 

they run the risk of being “blunt instruments” that may 

cause unintended social, economic and ecological disruptions. But the participants pointed out that legislative- or court-directed remedies for the science-policy 

gap do not have to be inevitable. Adaptive management 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

approaches that actively engage the science, policy and 

management communities to close the science-policy 

gap may be worth considering as alternatives with 

potentially less contentious and disruptive outcomes. 

Policy and Management Actions to close the 

science-policy gap:

First, land managers and policy makers need to 

become aware that there is a newly emerging science consensus and that a gap may exist between it 

and current riparian policy and management. While 

the science community has a role in this educational 

process, both the policy and management communities 

will need to actively engage themselves in understanding the new science and creating constructive ways to 

incorporate it into their practices. This symposium is 

only a first step toward informing these communities. 

Clearly additional follow-up educational efforts to 

inform policy and management groups will be needed. 

What aspects of policy/management may need 

change in the face of new science? Little policy/management analysis on this question was presented at 

the symposium. A first step for developing an answer 

would include a reassessment of current riparian policy 

and management to distinguish parts that have a strong 

scientific basis and should be retained (the “baby”) 

from parts that are inconsistent with current science 

and should be revised (the “bathwater”). Participants in 

this symposium suggested that policies that are based 

on ecological processes that operate in riparian areas 

at the reach scale (e.g. characterized by the FEMAT 

curves) may still have scientific validity, while those 

that encourage static conditions in riparian areas 

across large areas may no longer be consistent with 

recent science. This analysis should examine whether 

aspects of policy that lack a strong science basis can 

be addressed with piecemeal fixes or are systemic, 

requiring more fundamental changes. Policies applying 

to federal, State and private lands would probably each 

need to be analyzed separately because the specific 

details of each are different. Outcomes of these 

analyses could be used to develop options for change 

in riparian policies that would make them consistent 

with current science. Options may differ among 

policies that apply to federal, State and private lands. 

Potential ramifications for land management practice 

of implementing these options would need to be part 

of this analysis. Selection of which options to implement should consider not only their consistency with 

current science but also how desirable their outcomes 

are likely to be in ecological, social, economical and 

political terms. 

Research Community Actions to Close the 

Science-Policy Gap:

One of the lessons from the experience of the FEMAT 

report is that policy and management can incorporate 

scientifically based information if it is quantified or 

clearly defined in terms that these communities can 

understand. For post-FEMAT riparian science findings 

to be adopted, they will need to be couched in terms 

that policy and management can use. The availability 

of data on spatial and temporal distribution of riparian 

condition and how they relate to aquatic productivity, 

needs to be carefully examined. Especially important 

will be demonstrations of how well ecological models can predict dynamic riparian characteristics (in 

probabilistic terms). Gaps in existing data on riparian 

processes should be identified and filled as high priority research to provide an adequate science base for 

policy and management.

Simply having a revised science base may not 

be enough to convince policy makers and managers 

to embrace it. Both of these user communities are 

pragmatic and need to show that the benefits of incorporating new science justifies the cost and uncertainty 

of changing policies and management practices. 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Management experiments will be needed to demonstrate that application of the new science can produce 

practical outcomes that are an improvement over 

current practices. Such experiments could also provide 

the opportunity to try out alternative management and 

policy options that apply the latest science derived 

from science syntheses, and landscape-scale models. 

John Calhoun and Gretchen Nicholas pointed out that 

the Olympic Experimental State Forest (OESF), with 

its mandate to test innovative forest management 

options, offers a potentially valuable venue for these 

kinds of landscape-scale management experiments. 

Coordinated adaptive management experiments on the 

adjacent lands in the Olympic National Forest Adaptive Management Areas could complement work on 

OESF. Recent formal agreements between WDNR, 

the Olympic National Forest, PNW Research Station, 

and Olympic Natural Resource Center could serve 

as a vehicle to facilitate these investigations. Similar 

management experiments in other parts of the Olympic 

Peninsula and further afield in western Washington, 

the Cascade Mountains and Oregon Coast Range could 

expand upon the applicability of results from OESF.

Adaptively changing forest policy and management to incorporate the current science could face 

potential challenges. Restoring dynamic riparian and 

aquatic ecosystems at landscape scales will require 

approaches that cross land ownerships and land use 

patterns. Success will depend on gaining buy-in from 

policy makers and land managers with differing 

mandates. The public will need to be informed for 

them to accept changes in policies and management 

that incorporate the new science. For example, the 

public will need to better understand that extreme 

events, such as floods and debris flows that previously 

have been perceived primarily in negative terms, may 

have desirable long-run benefits for restoring fish 

habitat and aquatic systems. Long time frames over 

which riparian and aquatic habitat develop (decades to 

centuries) mean that restoring these ecosystems will 

require patience, a virtue that is often in short supply 

when policy and management changes must achieve 

public acceptance. Development of ecosystem models 

may help calibrate public expectations by showing 

what desirable environmental changes may take a long 

time and what short-term milestones may indicate 

whether conditions are improving or deteriorating 

along the way. Without public acceptance, attempts 

to revise policy and management in light of the new 

science may be difficult at best. Finally changing 

policy and management will require overcoming the 

formidable inertia of the status quo. Convincing people 

and institutions to adopt new ways of doing business 

may be difficult because it entails venturing into new 

territory where well-worn ways of “getting what you 

want” may no longer apply. 

Dealing with these challenges may require 

innovative approaches to policy and management 

e.g. communal decision processes that engage many 

stakeholders (federal agencies, State agencies, tribal 

governments and private owners of many stripes), and 

consider implementation approaches that can embrace 

multiple property ownerships. On the positive side, 

over the past few decades many of the stakeholders 

have gained experience in devising collaborative 

solutions, (for example the Forest and Fish Agreement). 

Innovative policy options are also becoming available 

to address the issues (e.g. ecosystem services concepts 

and market-based incentive systems, etc.), and the 

science and technology for dealing with these issues 

are advancing rapidly.

Discussion

To follow the principles of Kai Lee’s cycle of Adaptive Management (Lee 1993), policy and management 

experiments should periodically be evaluated to 
xiii

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

compare their outcomes with desired future condition 

that were originally articulated when the experiments 

were initiated (or, in ongoing management experiments, when outcomes were last evaluated). The scientists at this symposium suggested that another question 

may need to be added to this evaluation phase: is the 

desired future condition, set some time in the past, 

consistent with the current science consensus? The 

scientists at the symposium made a case that riparian 

policy and management goals for federal, state and 

private forest land in western Washington need to be 

reexamined now because our scientific knowledge 

has changed since 1993. In addition, members of 

the science panel expressed concerns that this gap 

between the emerging science and the implementation 

of the riparian policy and management goals might 

potentially undermine successfully sustaining listed 

Pacific salmonid species and possibly reduce public 

confidence in efforts to protect and restore those 

species. For the more general concept of Adaptive 

Management, this result illustrates that the consensus 

of the scientific community itself is dynamic and can 

change over time and that tracking the current state of 

relevant science needs to be an integral part of adaptively managing ecosystems. 

Summary

In western Washington, riparian policy and management guidelines on federal, State and private forests 

are strongly influenced by the science of riparian processes that was articulated in the 1993 FEMAT report. 

However, our scientific understanding of riparian 

processes has evolved since 1993. Some aspects of the 

FEMAT report have been affirmed by the more recent 

science, while for other parts the scientific conclusions 

are changing. 

Policy and management representatives at the symposium were interested to hear about the new science 

findings. The affirmation by recent science of the linkage between riparian and aquatic habitat at the reach 

scale indicated that many of the original conclusions 

still provide firm ground on which to base policy and 

management. However, new science that fish population viability at the basin or landscape scales depend 

on maintaining dynamic and heterogeneous riparian 

conditions have not been assimilated into policy and 

management for western Washington riparian forests. 

Discussions about the potential implications of this 

gap between of the new science and policy and management were only suggestive, because an in-depth 

analyses have not been conducted.

To address these inconsistencies among riparian 

science, policy and management, discussions at this 

symposium suggest that the policy and management 

community should consider doing a more in-depth 

analyses of current forest policies and management 

practices to assess what areas may have to be reconsidered in light of the new science findings. Parts of 

policy and management would have to be identified 

that should be retained or revised in light of the new 

science. Then options for change would need to be 

developed and fully explored to assess how they might 

play out in Northwestern ecosystems, in management 

practice and whether they would be socially, economically and politically acceptable to the public. There is 

also a need for educational efforts to explain the new 

science to the general public so that they can better 

understand why riparian policy and management may 

need to change in light of new scientific findings.

The science and technology community is actively 

working to address some of these challenges, and there 

was optimism that new analytical tools may be within 

reach. Participants in the symposium identified highest priority research needed to fill critical gaps as: 1) 

articulate how the science related to riparian management has changed and what this means to the policy 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

and management community, 2) quantify spatial and 

temporal variability of riparian condition under both 

“natural” conditions and management options, in collaboration with land managers, and 3) collaborate with 

forest managers to design and implement experiments 

to field-test whether riparian policy and management 

options based on dynamic assumptions can produce 

outcome that are significantly different from those 

based on static assumptions and habitat targets.

This symposium was a wake-up call from the 

science community that a shift has occurred in the 

science that underlies riparian forest policy and 

management in western Washington. How this new 

science plays out in the ecological, social, economic 

and political landscape will probably depend on how 

the policy and management community reacts to 

this change. Participants suggested that a pro-active, 

adaptive management approach to incorporating this 

new science might potentially be less disruptive than 

waiting for courts or legislation to impose solutions to 

close this gap between science and policy. If action is 

taken promptly, an adaptive management approach that 

engages many stakeholders may offer a cooperative 

path to bring science, policy management into consistency on this important topic. Delay will make judicial 

or legislative solutions more likely.

References:

Benda, L.; and others [In Preparation]. Toward 

spatially explicit riparian management.

Bisson, P.A.; Dunham J.B.; Reeves, G.H. 2009.

Freshwater ecosystems and resilience of Pacific 

salmon: habitat management based on natural 

variability. Ecology and Society 14(1): 45, 18 p. 

Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team 

[FEMAT]. 1993. Forest ecosystem management: 

an ecological, economic, and social assessment. 

Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture; U.S. 

Department of the Interior [and others]. 

California Board of Forestry. 2009. Anadromous 

Salmonid Protection Rules, Title 14 California 

Code of Regulations (14 CCR). For text of “Final 

Statement of Reasons” see: http://www.bof.fire.

ca.gov/regulations/proposed_rule_packages/

ANADROMOUS_SALMONID_PROTECTION_

RULES_2009/asp_fsor_10_9_09_.pdf. 

Lee, Kai. 1993. Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating 

Science and Politics for Environment. Washington, 

DC: Island Press. 

Liquori, M.; Martin, D.; Benda, L.; Coats, R.; 

Ganz, D. 2008. Scientific literature review of 

forest management effects on riparian functions 

for anadromous salmonids. Report of Sound 

Watershed Consulting to the California State Board 

of Forestry and Fire Protection,Sacramento, CA. 

Available: http://www.fire.ca.gov/CDFBOFDB/pdfs/

FINALBOOK_1.pdf
Contents

1 Introduction

3 Welcome and Opening Remarks 

 John M. Calhoun, University of Washington School of Forest Resources 

 Olympic Natural Resources Center

7 Setting the Stage 

Fresh Perspectives, Encouraging Diversity and Scientific Analysis in 

Support of Formulating Policy

 Brian J. Boyle, University of Washington School of Forest Resources 

11 Appendix

Presentations

 Speaker Abstracts and Presentations followed by Question and 

 Answer sessions with audience

13 What are the principal working hypotheses and key assumptions that 

underlay current riparian strategies on federal, state, and private lands 

in western Washington?

 George Ice, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement

25 Gordon H. Reeves, US Forest Service, PNW Research Station, and Jim 

 Sedell, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

33 In light of current scientific understanding, what is the degree of both 

confidence and uncertainty for each of these working hypotheses and 

assumptions?

 Lee Benda, Earth Sciences Institute

47 Bob Bilby, Weyerhaeuser Company

57 A.J. Kroll, Weyerhaeuser Company

73 Gordon H. Reeves, US Forest Service, PNW Research Station

83 Recap of Day One and Overview and Desired Outcomes of Day Two

 Douglas F. Ryan, US Forest Service, PNW Research Station

87 Panel Discussion

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying assumptions or 

working hypotheses, would this revision have important consequences 

for management strategies or policy goals?

89 Introductory Comments to Panel Discussion 

 Craig Partridge, WA DNR

91 Norm Schaaf, Merrill and Ring Company

95 Gretchen Nicholas, Washington DNR

101 Dave Heller, USDA Forest Service

105 Steve Stinson, Family Forest Foundation
109 Which are the critical assumptions in terms of both scientific uncertainty 

 and management/policy implication?

Question, Answer, Comment Session moderated by Craig Partridge, 

WA DNR

133 Conference Attendees
Introduction
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3

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Thank you all for coming; it’s an extraordinary group. 

I want to provide some opening comments outlining 

what the symposium objectives are and the desired 

outcomes. First of all, we want to inform the riparian 

objective management research programs for DNR or 

federal agencies and others. We intend to produce a 

piece of work based on your input over the next two 

days that will document in various ways steps that can 

help those agencies and others to more intelligently 

design their riparian research programs in service of 

adaptive management obligations that they have under 

various plans.

I want to start though, by talking just a little bit 

about the origins of Olympic Natural Resource Center 

because it really connects to what we are doing here 

today and illustrates the continuity of public interests 

and scientific investigation that brought us to this 

place at this time. In the late 1980s when this region 

and most of the northwest was involved in the spotted 

owl wars, for lack of a better term, the Department 

of Natural Resources ownership on the Olympic 

Peninsula contained substantial reserves of old growth 

forest: federal land grant trust that had been managed with fiduciary responsibilities for income to the 

beneficiaries. That was the status quo. The other side 

of that issue was that those management practices for 

harvesting, accelerated harvesting in some cases, of 

old growth for beneficiaries, was no longer supported 

by the general public, and so the Washington State 

Lands Commissioner at that time had a problem. And 

I would like to introduce you to that Land Commissioner, Brian Boyle sitting here in the front row. Brian 

had a problem and lawsuits abounded; programs were 

paralyzed and nobody was happy. We have shadows 

of that still, but it was really intense at that time so 

Brian sought help and advice by appointing a commission of stakeholders and experts to meet, learn about 

the issues and make recommendation to the Board of 

Natural Resources and the Commissioner of Public 

Lands on how to resolve this conflict. The group 

became known as the Old Growth Commission. There 

were thirty members and they included stakeholders, 

beneficiaries—for example representatives of small 

communities dependent on the DNR’s management 

activities, experts in relevant fields from wildlife and 

forest ecology; Jerry Franklin was a member the group 

for example. Legislatures that could contribute; Jennifer Belcher was a member of the Old Growth Commission, and she at that time was the chair of the House 

Natural Resources Committee in the Washington State 

Legislature. At that time, I was the Region Manager 

for DNR in the Olympic Region and so it became my 

job to help support that group and help inform them. 

Craig Partridge from the department, who is still there, 

represented the commissioner and the agency in the 

process as well. After about nine months of learning 

and discussions, we were at Pack Forest at a retreat 

with this group and we began to try to formulate some 

recommendations; enough of this learning business we 

had to finally make some recommendations. It became 

the sense of that group that we could not do either/

or. That is, we couldn’t ignore the public and the legal 

challenges against the status quo management of these 

older forests and we could not forsake the fiduciary 

responsibility to manage them for revenue to the beneficiaries. And so, like any commission, they wanted 

John M. Calhoun, University of Washington School of Forest Resources 

Olympic Natural Resources Center

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Overview of Symposium Objectives and Desired Outcomes
4

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

it all. They didn’t want the department to choose one 

or the other, they wanted us to do both; conserve old 

growth ecological functions and continue to produce 

revenue to the beneficiaries. The department was to 

find a way to achieve some sensitivity to the growing 

environmental concern. This was expressed in several 

ways: achieve sustainability of ecological values particularly addressing spotted owls. The salmon issues 

were looming and so riparian issues became important 

as well as that time. 

As we were standing around a map talking about 

what we could do I proposed that if we had an area on 

the west side of the Olympic Peninsula where most 

of the old growth issues for DNR were focused that 

we could designate for deviation from the standard 

sort of policies and procedures of status quo forest 

management and conduct some long-term landscape 

scale experiments, if we did this we might be able to 

find ways to integrate ecological sustainability across 

landscapes with commercial management of these 

forest resources given enough time and space. And 

so we proposed an experimental state forest and Jerry 

Franklin said ‘and you need a research station located 

within that experimental state forest that could focus 

research on that proposition to discover whether or not 

that could be accomplished.’ So the two recommendations were an experimental state forest, which we have 

now in the Olympic Experimental State Forest (HCP) 

and the research station which you are at right now, the 

Olympic Natural Resources Center. Jennifer Belcher 

went back to the legislature and developed enabling 

legislation to create the center. The center was not created by the University of Washington, but created by 

the Washington State legislature. It was assigned to the 

University of Washington, College of Forest Resources 

and the Legislature appropriated the money to build 

the center. 

We began working with federal and state funds to 

pursue research that would try to address the issues 

that were at hand; how could we get both values from 

the forest. How could we get sustainability of ecological resources we were interested in and revenue from 

the forest at the same time? When Brian decided not 

to run for re-election because he’d had enough of that 

kind of stuff, I guess, Jennifer Belcher was elected as 

Lands Commissioner and she decided to implement 

or develop a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) and 

under provisions of the Endangered Species Act to 

include all of the state lands in Washington State that 

supported spotted owls; all of western Washington and 

part of eastern Washington. With this area the plan 

was to address all species of interest in a multi-species 

habitat conservation plan. This was a very ambitious 

undertaking and by that time salmon issues were 

becoming prevalent in our thinking. Jennifer asked me 

to go down to Olympia and lead the habitat conservation plan project for the DNR which I did, from 1993 

to 1995. We gathered the best scientist we could to help 

us, some of you are in this room, to provide advice on 

conservation strategies to help us achieve conservation 

strategies that would satisfy the federal services. 

I can remember distinctly the riparian issues. The 

whole set of riparian conservation strategies were 

discussed amongst the scientists. The fact that we 

were just beginning to learn what we needed to know 

became apparent. We had, as our basic model, FEMAT 

and the federal effort to form conservation strategies 

on federal lands for riparian areas. Those were not 

adopted verbatim for DNR lands for a number of 

reasons. But the underlying science was the same for 

both efforts. The area where we had the least scientific 

support for conservation strategies was in the head 

wall streams; Type 5 streams as they are known in 

Washington state. Our science team could not provide 
5

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

evidence to support specific conservation strategies for 

those streams. 

We are somewhat in the same position now, 

although I hope that we can discover today and tomorrow what advances might have been made. Riparian 

issues were critically important in the OESF plan. 

We designated the OESF as a separate planning unit 

within the state wide HCP, which had a separate set of 

conservation strategies, including conservation strategies for riparian areas. What we have in the OESF is 

a tremendous opportunity that we are about to take 

advantage of and launch into with your help in the next 

couple of days. Under our state forest practices act, 

if you are covered by a federal HCP, those rules are 

assumed to be adequate and take precedence. So you 

have some relief or additional conservation strategies 

available then the state forest practice act. On the 

OESF we wanted to focus research and experimentation on riparian areas. We wrote that flexibility into the 

conservation strategies. We have the freedom to learn 

and to do research and to apply different practices on 

riparian zones within the OESF that we don’t have any 

other place on state or on federal lands in Washington. 

And so that’s an opportunity and a responsibility. 

DNR is interested in developing a research and 

adaptive management plan in riparian areas as part 

of the implementation of the OESF. We hope that this 

process we are undertaking today and tomorrow will 

help inform that process. We have specific advantages 

in this forest in the fact that it’s of a scale that will 

allow landscape wide research. There are 270,000 

acres of state trust land within the OESF and many of 

those acres are configured into large blocks with entire 

watersheds. That is a tremendous opportunity I think. I 

want to repeat that the Type 5 stream identification and 

protection remains a critical unresolved issue which 

requires more investigation.

To sum up, the purpose of this symposium is to 

inform the riparian adaptive management research 

program for DNR and federal agencies and others. 

The way we‘ve chosen to do it here is to invite a select 

group of policy leaders to participate. But it’s not a 

policy conference. The majority of participants that we 

have invited to this symposium are leading scientists 

that have relevant experience and information to share 

with us in this subject area. This is not a stakeholder 

meeting; there are no stakeholders here although the 

phone’s been ringing off the hook ever since this 

symposium has been announced. We are not trying 

to make money on this thing and bring a lot of people 

in for a fee, and we’re not trying to satisfy all the 

stakeholders. We’re not interested in a series of canned 

speeches either. If you look at the agenda, you will 

see that we have a very few formal presentations. The 

presentations that we have asked for are meant mainly 

to stimulate conversations amongst the scientists and 

policy makers that are here.

The symposium is sponsored by the DNR and 

USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Olympia Lab. 

The planning team has been working for nearly a year 

to put this together. The team includes myself (UW 

ONRC), Doug Martin (Martin Environmental), Doug 

Ryan (USDA PNW Olympia Lab), Mark Teply (WA 

DNR) and Matt Loganbraugh from NOAA.

We have invited you all here for this process. The 

process is loosely structured; a design to encourage 

maximum interaction among participants. We will 

record the proceedings via streaming video and the 

streaming video will be hosted on ONRC’s website 

(www.onrc.washington.edu). The presentations will be 

fully represented including the discussions. We will 

also produce a hard copy report of the proceedings.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

Solutions to complex national resources problems 

require a struggle over ideas and perceptions. To be 

successful there must be serious organizational commitment to change the institutional obstacles that have 

been created by custom and myth. For example, saying 

“we want to go where science leads” is an example of 

myth. 

Our political system for “managing” natural 

resources was originally established with only the 

faintest recognition of the nature of the challenges 

it would be called upon to address. It’s not simply 

scarcity of resources, as some suggest. In fact, scarcity 

is usually not a problem, except in the most benighted 

lands of Africa. Abundance is the problem-abundance 

of conflicting goals and opportunities to use the same 

resources, in new ways, and to produce new products 

that may or may not have an impact on what was there 

before.

The big problem for scientists is our recent 35-year 

history of prescriptive public processes, geared to 

a litigious society, which have put great burdens on 

resource policy-makers to meet the multiple requirements of public acceptability, openness to value-based 

perceptions and so-called scientific “validity.” This 

terrible trio is impossible to satisfy.

We simply haven’t organized to deal with natural 

resources on an ecosystem basis. Instead, we are organized, and we organize information, on the basis of our 

historically-evolved political and business structure. 

Breaking through this gridlock requires a collaboration 

that is similar to the search for the human genome.

Presentation

Since Bob Lackey was originally slated to speak, and 

I have much admiration for his work, I will attempt to 

bring some of his observations into my remarks. I’m 

sure you know that Bob argues the fundamental differences between “Is” and “Ought” statements. Science 

deals with “Is”, in other words fact; whereas policy 

deals with “Ought”, or preference. But as Bill Clinton 

once said, “it depends on what Is, is.” 

And science sometimes has a concept of what 

is, that is not consistent with what really is. I’m not 

trying to be confusing, but even though scientists can 

recognize that there is a clear demarcation between 

the factual knowledge that science can provide, policy 

wonks may see a real world of Is’s that, while not 

supported by science, are true. Furthermore, these 

Is’s may become the basis of preferences and may in 

addition frustrate scientists. As examples, I mention 

local knowledge and tribal knowledge, which are often 

based on long-term observations, or even on stories 

and memories, rather than on a rigorous examination 

of controlled conditions over time.

Scientists are constantly being coerced to operate 

in a feeling, rather than a knowing environment. The 

news media are awash with bellicose pundits, and 

Brian J. Boyle, University of Washington College of the Environment School of Forest Resources, Northwest 

Environmental Forum

Setting the Stage

Fresh Perspectives, Encouraging Diversity and Scientific 

Analysis in Support of Formulating Policy

The challenge of finding fresh perspectives for science analysis in policy 

A Cautionary Tale — 
8

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

the understated is increasingly undervalued in society’s discourse. So the scientists who sign a full page 

advocacy of some issue might seem to be simply 

playing by the rules of today’s game.

But what Bob Lackey is arguing is that there is a 

serious downside to this, and one aspect is the dismay 

that scientists such as he will have for those who play 

that game. Nevertheless, it is an effective way to play 

with science advocacy, pushing the preference scale in 

the media so as to push policy into a corner.

Policy is, of course, politics. And politics is often 

not reasonable or based on fact. George Bernard Shaw 

wrote that “The reasonable man adapts himself to 

the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying 

to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress 

depends on the unreasonable man.”

It’s fairly easy to conclude that unreasonableness 

is a good tactic by which to drive policy. We all have 

had experiences with intransigent people, who are so 

hard to deal with that policy makers finally cave in and 

give them their wish. Court cases are rife with cases 

where judges seem to be hand in glove with the most 

unyielding and unreasonable groups who will always 

prefer to delay projects rather than to give an inch from 

their position. 

So is careful science analysis doomed to be lost 

in a cesspool of unreasonableness and bellicosity? 

Conferences like this are devoted to the concept that, 

if policy and science can improve their ability to 

converse, there will be a sea change in the durability of 

policy. But this misses the interference of myth.

Politics is based on myth. The myth of superior 

background-of heroism, or of the ability to change 

what appears unchangeable. Natural resources politics 

have been couched in the myth of the West, and the 

myth of the West is strongest in the East, strangely 

enough. Look at the New York Times inveighing 

against Bureau of Land Management or Forest Service 

on wild horses or natural gas drilling. Do they know 

something we don’t know?

We establish myths for ourselves, and these myths 

perpetuate our perceptions of ourselves, our jobs and 

reasons for being, and the organizations to which 

we belong, as well as about the natural world. Our 

organizations create myth around themselves-myth of 

identity, and of their value to society. The advertising 

world calls it “branding.”

Branding is designed to alter peoples’ perceptions 

of products, and often, reality, and get them to embrace 

something that they did not realize they valued. One 

of the myths reinforced by agencies and officials 

experienced in natural resources discussions is that 

their perceptions of value are realistic. The myth of the 

Forest Service has been perpetuated in film and icons 

like Smokey the bear. 

I did a study of Forest Service Management in 

the early 1990’s, called the Policies and Mythologies 

of the Forest Service. It revealed through interactions 

with employees that Forest Service stated policies of 

ecosystem management could not be accomplished 

within their organizational structure and reward 

system. Having this knowledge did not cause them to 

deviate from the policy.

Solutions to complex national resources problems 

require a struggle over ideas and perceptions. This 

struggle, exciting in concept, is often frustrating and 

unproductive in practice. To be successful there must 

be serious organizational commitment to change 

the institutional obstacles that have been created by 

custom and myth. 

The statement “we want to go where science 

leads” is an example of myth. Natural resource policymakers and the public generally agree that natural 

systems operate according to natural principles. So 

“going where science leads” has appeal as a rational 

way to reach decisions. 
9

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Or, certainly not going where science points you is 

clearly seen as folly. However, science generally does 

not want to lead policy preference-making, and many 

policy people would be shocked if scientists said to 

them, OK, get out of the way and we will lead.

But something has to give. Our political system for 

“managing” natural resources was originally established with only the faintest recognition of the nature 

of the challenges it would be called upon to address. 

It’s not simply scarcity of resources, as some suggest. 

In fact, scarcity is usually not a problem, except in 

the most benighted lands of Africa. Abundance is the 

problem — abundance of conflicting goals and opportunities to use the same resources, in new ways, and 

to produce new products that may or may not have an 

impact on what was there before.

Bob Lackey in 2007 observed that there is “no 

scientific imperative to remove, or maintain, any dam 

for any ecological reason, including salmon recovery.” 

All the policy options have ecological consequences. 

But if one is to believe the Seattle City Council (a 

noted body of dam and salmon experts) the dams must 

be removed. They later quietly buried that imperative, after three of their numbers were subsequently 

removed from office.

The big problem for scientists is our recent 35-year 

history of prescriptive public processes, geared to 

a litigious society, which have put great burdens on 

resource policy-makers to meet the multiple requirements of public acceptability, openness to value-based 

perceptions and so-called scientific “validity.” This 

terrible trio is impossible to satisfy.

These processes are creating an increasingly 

unmanageable and intractable gridlock, where participants are progressively less willing and able to engage 

constructively to work through the complexities. 

Participants can become stuck, doggedly-repeating 

their own particular viewpoints, with scientists and 

scientific information employed as weapons.

My own experience when I chaired Washington’s 

Forest Practices Board is that public hearings are 

populated with people paid to attend – staff, lobbyists, 

association members – and an occasional farmer or 

such who became curious and wandered into the room. 

A discordant melody of science facts and examples 

was used to prove and disprove the same proposal. The 

result is that decision-makers became more inclined to 

discount these debates and depend on trusted people or 

their own instincts for reaching a conclusion.

Policy staff are left with giant amounts of testimony to sift through, analyze, interpret, and present 

to the decision-makers. This corruption of the original 

intent of a public process is also a corruption of the 

idea of infusing science into the discourse of ideas that 

might lead to high quality public decisions.

Over the years, as a result of this corrupted 

process, many efforts have been mounted to construct 

new venues, such as the Forest and Fish process. Some 

negotiations succeeded to some degree. Others failed. 

Science is arguably more effectively considered in 

such processes than in the usual public debate. But 

there are still many flaws, and the devil is usually in 

the details, such as with watersheds and riparian areas 

in the Forest and Fish process. 

The knowledge of the thousands of variables 

needed to describe a watershed through the pertinent 

range of temporal and spatial scales is dispersed 

among organizations and in data bases that are owned 

by different organizations with different responsibilities, jurisdictions and mythologies. These are also the 

same entities that are charged with cooperating to save 

the fish and respect ownership prerogatives.

The owners of the information often lack the tools 

to access and analyze these dispersed and complex sets 

of data, and make them available to others in a useful 
10

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

way, and their own organizations often tie their hands 

and prevent creative solutions.

Data is a dry subject. But data is the “Is” that 

needs to be discussed. When we consider the origins 

of data-gathered for a single purpose, often collected 

without regard to other potential users – we uncover a 

huge problem.

When we then confront the boundaries between 

agencies, industry, tribes, publics, that have been exacerbated by decades of battles over power and values, 

we find that water and fish recovery decisions that 

might be easily made are instead extremely difficult 

because usable information is not available, or often, 

not acceptable.

This problem becomes even more complex when 

people propose to integrate historical and cultural 

information into resource decisions. We simply haven’t 

organized to deal with natural resources on an ecosystem basis. Instead, we are organized, and we organize 

information, on the basis of our historically evolved 

political and business structure.

This requires a collaboration that is similar to the 

search for the human genome. The genome discovery 

was only an interim goal, leading to human survival 

characteristics. In the case of natural resources, 

organizations are in their infancy in terms of collaboration for discovery that will lead to more facts-based 

decisions. 

This means that organizations of all types, not 

withstanding their brands and myths, must devote 

physical, biological, climate, social, informational, 

computational and other sciences to solving complex 

natural resources problems.

I see opportunities to work with small landowners, whose land values are most affected by riparian 

regulation, and most likely to convert to urban uses as 

a result. Creative management and creative regulations 

can work hand in hand to deliver desired environmental and economic conditions on their lands by logging 

selectively.

I also suggest that the new forest landowners in 

this area, the TIMOs, are motivated by investment 

returns, not timber output. They could provide major 

mitigation pools on their properties, and would also 

quickly respond if payments for ecosystem services 

were made available.

Salmon recovery and stream restoration money 

could be re-directed to ecosystem services along with 

long-term management agreements that would save 

forest and farms lands in private hands. This of course 

would require science collaboration that supersedes 

organizational obstacles. Maybe we could even create a new mythology of science and policy working 

together.
Appendix

Presentations

Speaker Abstracts and Presentations 

followed by Question and Answer 

sessions with audience
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13

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

The issues and assumptions that underlay riparian 

conservation strategies on state and private lands in 

western Washington have evolved over time. Here we 

review how historic water quality and fisheries issues 

have combined with science and policy to create the 

current conservation strategy. Riparian strategies are 

based on layers of hypotheses and assumptions, including: fish habitat and water quality are best protected 

with riparian zones that have mature forests; mature 

forest characteristics can be described using minimum 

numbers of trees and basal areas per acre; vegetation 

closest to a stream provides the most riparian benefits; 

and appropriate widths for riparian conservation can 

be established based on the region of the state, site 

productivity, stream type and width, and harvesting option selected. Emerging ideas about dynamic 

ecosystems and disturbance ecology are challenging 

static riparian conservation strategies and point toward 

variable distributions of riparian conditions.

Presentation

Introduction

A discussion about the principal working hypotheses 

and key assumptions that underlay current riparian 

conservation strategies on federal, state, and private 

lands in western Washington is, by necessity, something of a history lesson. What makes this discussion 

a little bit intimidating is that many of the people 

involved in these negotiations and processes are 

participating in this conference. So consider this an 

outsider’s view of that history. What will be described 

is a little bit like peeling an onion-trying to unravel the 

layers of assumptions that have led to current riparian 

conservation strategies.

Watersheds and watershed studies often offer 

unique stories that we learn from. It is the cumulative results of these stories that help us understand 

watershed functions. Here we will discuss this evolution in concerns and strategies. Part of unpeeling the 

“assumptions onion” is understanding how things 

have evolved and the interactions between our current 

scientific understanding and policy considerations. 

Conservation strategies are not always solely a result 

of our scientific understanding. Strategies also come 

from historic events, legacy conditions, and organizational mythologies. We will discuss both the Clean 

Water Act and the Endangered Species Act and how 

they have influence riparian conservation strategies. 

Finally, management goals are important as we try to 

evaluate whether the assumptions that underlie current 

riparian conservation strategies are properly designed 

to achieve those goals.

Beginnings of Forest Riparian Conservation 

Strategies

To start this discussion, let’s go back to the largely 

unregulated 1960s and 1970s, when the importance of 

forest management impacts on water quality and fish 

were first being recognized in the Pacific Northwest. 

A classic Oregon State Game Commission publication 

by Lantz (1971), based on early results from the Alsea 

Water Study, provided recommended guidelines for 

stream protection and logging operations. Some of the 

guidelines that the Oregon State Game Commission 

recommended at that time are shown here:

George Ice, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc.

What are the principal working hypotheses and key 

assumptions that underlay current riparian strategies on federal, 

state, and private lands in western Washington?
14

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

• Streamside vegetation should be protected and 

remain standing in all logging operations where 

fish, wildlife, and water quality considerations 

are involved or affect downstream areas.

• Commercial conifers do not necessarily have to 

be left, shrubs and other less valuable species 

can be.

• Stream clearance requirements, and their 

enforcement, are essential. Every effort should 

be made to prevent logging debris from falling 

into streams. If any debris does get into a channel, it should be removed in order to maintain 

adequate dissolved oxygen levels in surface 

water, provide access to spawning grounds for 

adults, and keep migration routes open for 

outmigrant juveniles.

These guidelines addressed key concerns of 

the times. In the original Alsea Watershed Study, 

Needle Branch was completely clearcut with slash 

left in the stream, then site-prepared with a very hot 

broadcast prescribed burn. Dissolved oxygen was a 

contemporary issue on large streams and rivers, where 

paper mills and other manufacturing or municipal 

sources discharged untreated waste materials into the 

waters, resulting in high biochemical oxygen demand 

(BOD). In the original Alsea Watershed Study some 

decreases in dissolved oxygen were observed, and 

there was concern that slash was getting into streams 

and degrading habitat. This finding supported a key 

concern for sanitary engineers at the time. There were 

also concerns that fish passage might be impaired by 

slash and wood accumulations, perhaps a legacy of the 

massive wood accumulations that resulted from the 

1962 Columbus Day Storm and the 1965 Christmas 

week floods. This was further compounded by the high 

residual wood levels seen for harvests of unmanaged 

forests during the period. Thus, it was recommended 

that slash be taken out of streams.

The severe prescribed burning in Needle Branch, 

along with hand and machine clean out of slash, 

exposed that stream to direct solar radiation. The result 

was a large increase in streamwater temperatures, 

especially compared to nearby Deer Creek, where 

buffers were left along fish-bearing reaches. Data for 

Needle Branch for the year before harvesting, the year 

immediately after harvesting after slash clean out and 

prescribed burning of the watershed, and over the time 

of riparian vegetation recovery showed streamwater 

temperatures first increasing with increased solar 

exposure and then decreasing with developing riparian 

shade.

Clean Water Act, Nonpoint Source Control 

Programs, and Endangered Species Act

Thirty years ago some of us were just beginning our 

careers. New legislation during that time included the 

1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendment 

(later known as the Clean Water Act). The Clean Water 

Act (CWA) provided legal tools and responsibilities 

to the states to manage water quality. There was clear 

recognition in the CWA that there were differences 

between point source discharges from mills and more 

dispersed nonpoint point sources (NPS) and how best 

to control them. Point source controls were developed 

using discharge elimination permits and standards 

for effluent quality. Nonpoint source controls were 

designed around best management practices (BMPs). 

For states in the Northwest, this evolved into state forest practice rules (although the Oregon Forest Practices 

Act predates the CWA). Some of the goals of the CWA 

included an interim goal of fishable and swimmable 

quality streams across the U.S. by 1983 and elimination of all pollution in navigable streams by 1985. The 

Endangered Species Act was also enacted at about the 

same time. The listing of endangered and threatened 

species under this legislation influences how we manage for specific at-risk species.
15

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Evolution of Washington’s Forest Practices Act 

Rules

One of the first programs in the United States designed 

to control NPS contamination was the State of 

Washington’s Forest Practices Act in 1974. In 1975 

amendments to Washington’s program added additional emphasis on controlling pollution from forest 

activities. In 1979 EPA Region 10 approved these 

forest practice rules under Section 208 of the CWA as 

a means of controlling NPS pollution from forestry. 

A series of monitoring, research, and experimentation, beginning with the Washington Forest Practices 

demonstration project, was then undertaken to assess 

the effectiveness of the rules and components such as 

the riparian practices. The research asked the questions: Is this program effective? Is it controlling water 

quality? That issue evolved into the Timber, Fish and 

Wildlife (TFW) program. TFW included a series of 

experiments conducted by the state to understand 

whether water quality was being protected (along with 

other questions). Various elements of the forest practice rules were examined, including riparian management, asking: Are these rules effective in meeting 

our objectives? It’s interesting to look back and see 

the many methods of answering this question, from 

qualitative audits where teams went out into the field 

and evaluated effects, all the way to tightly controlled 

experiments.

In 1999 the Forest and Fish (F and F) Agreement 

led to additional changes in the forest practice rules. It 

is important to look at the F and F goals to understand 

why the rules were evolving. One of the goals was 

to provide compliance with the Endangered Species 

Act for aquatic- and riparian-dependent species on 

non-federal forest lands. Another was to restore and 

maintain riparian habitat on forest lands and to provide 

a harvestable supply of fish. The word ‘harvestable’ is 

an important modifier; it indicates a high level of production that will provide more than minimum numbers 

of fish. This goal helped meet the requirements of the 

Clean Water Act (fishable) and addressed the legacy of 

treaty agreements with tribes in Washington. Another 

goal was to achieve water quality requirements while 

keeping the timber industry economically viable in 

the state. This need to optimize for multiple goals is 

consistent with other state programs. For example, 

the Oregon Forest Practices Act encourages economically efficient forest management and the continuous 

growing and harvesting of trees, consistent with sound 

management of soil, air, water, fish, and wildlife 

resources. As in Washington, there is an effort to 

balance between economic viability and essential wildlife, fish, and water quality protection. Idaho has this 

goal: to ensure the continuous growing and harvesting 

of forest trees and to maintain forest, soil, air water, 

vegetation, and aquatic wildlife habitat. Again, there 

is an interest in both economic viability and providing 

water quality protection.

Key Assumptions

Trying to look at the different assumptions used to 

define the current riparian conservation strategy and 

how these assumptions evolved can be difficult. This 

paper is not unique in trying to capture that history 

and the legacy of how these decisions were made. 

Three primary documents help us look at this: (1) 

Review of the scientific foundations of the Forest and 

Fish Plan (CH2M Hill 2000); (2) Final environmental 

impact statement: For the proposed issuance of multiple species incidental take permits or 4 (d) Rules for 

the Washington State Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan (NMFS 2006); and (3) Westside RMZs and 

the DFC model: Documentation of their conceptual 

and methodological development (Fairweather 2001). 

Fairweather is particularly interesting because it goes 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

undercover and tries to document the negotiations and 

how different caucuses argued one way or the other. 

It’s an interesting view of the process by which these 

riparian management zones were eventually developed. We’ve all seen lists of key riparian functions. 

These lists include woody debris recruitment, sediment 

filtration, stream bank stability, nutrients moderation, 

and other functions. Interestingly, especially in the 

Review of the scientific foundations of the Forest and 

Fish Plan, there is a discussion about the development 

of inventories throughout the State of Washington that 

helped guide the focus of what changes in riparian 

rules should occur. Two of those suggested inventories 

resulted from concerns about streamwater temperatures related to shade and the need for woody debris 

recruitment. Inventories suggested that there may be 

shortages of large wood in some stream reaches. Thus, 

those issues became drivers for the process in the 

negotiations for how to develop or change the riparian 

rules.

Some of the working hypotheses that led to the 

Forest and Fish (F and F) riparian rule modifications 

included the belief that key riparian functions are 

needed to provide material and energy at desirable 

levels to meet fish and water quality goals. There was a 

need to provide sufficient wood and shade, and a need 

to manage such that riparian systems could moderate 

sediment loads to streams. There was also an assumption that mature riparian forest conditions provide 

desirable riparian functions, especially for wood 

recruitment. You need large trees in order to recruit 

large wood into streams.

These conditions can be approximated by certain 

characteristics that can be described for riparian areas. 

Key questions included: How wide should riparian 

zones be? What basal area targets should be achieved? 

How many trees should be left and what minimum 

sizes should be counted? How does the spatial distribution of those trees relate to their delivery to streams? 

These characteristics can help us describe a desired 

future condition. A final working hypothesis is that 

there are opportunities to vary these riparian prescriptions based on site class, the productivity of a site, 

stream size, and steam type. Thus there are modifications to these assumptions that will best define where 

we will get the most return for our investment in 

riparian management zones. Interestingly, Washington 

developed regional goals; an eastside goal and a westside goal. Here we are focused on the westside goal.

In the negotiations about the riparian rules there 

was recognition that a mature forest could be described 

as somewhere between 80 and 200 years of age. At 

some point there appears to have been a compromise 

that said, “OK, between 80 and 200 years; we’re going 

to go with about 140 years as being about half way 

between those values.” Another assumption was: “if 

we do not have riparian stand data, let’s use adjacent 

upland data to define the characteristics.” It was 

assumed that about 81 percent of riparian upland basal 

area would be a reasonable estimate of what the basal 

area for the riparian zone should be.

There were very serious negotiations in the past 

about the development of a cooperative to collect 

stand-growth data for riparian forests. One key question that this type of cooperative could address is 

whether growth patterns in uplands are a good surrogate for the patterns we can expect in the adjacent 

riparian area or if the morphology of the riparian area 

is more important in determining stand dynamics. 

Another key question this cooperative considered was 

“How does mortality differ in riparian areas (e.g., 

windthrow rates, channel avulsion, beaver activity, 

etc.) compared to upland sites?” Additional questions 

about wood recruitment delivery mechanisms and 
17

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

wood depletion rates were also considered. Unfortunately, lack of funding resulted in this cooperative 

never being initiated.

Again, we can look at a neighboring state to see 

how assumptions compare. Oregon has also developed 

desired future conditions for riparian areas. In Oregon, 

the desired future condition for streamside areas along 

fish-use streams is to grow and retain vegetation so 

that over time average conditions become similar to 

those of mature streamside stands. Mature streamside 

stands were again defined as something between 80 

and 200 years (demonstrating either similar conditions 

or sharing of information and opinions). Interestingly, 

there is a split in the prescription goals for riparian 

management areas in Oregon. Liz Dent with the 

Oregon Department of Forestry notes that for state 

lands Oregon uses a goal of riparian conditions consistent with 120 year old stands (compared to 140 years in 

Washington), but for private lands the goal is 80 year 

old stand conditions, on average, across the landscape, 

which is consistent with the earliest development of 

mature stand features. Here we get an intersection of 

science and policy. This is consistent with observations 

by Fairweather about how the riparian rules under the 

F and F Agreement were developed: a combination 

of science observations, professional judgment, and 

political compromise.

Figure 1—Zones for defining key management restrictions under the Washington Forest Practices 

Rules (BFW is Bank Full Width and CMZ is Channel Migration Zone) (courtesy of Washington Forest 

Protection Association).
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Three distinct management zones were developed 

for riparian forests in Washington: core, inner zone, 

and outer zone (Figure 1) (WDNR 2007). Multiple or 

stratified riparian zones are becoming more commonly 

used by states to optimize the trade-offs of economic 

(minimize cost) and environmental (maximize riparian 

Figure 2—Examples of other state riparian protection zones for: (a) Florida showing a Primary Zone (harvest and ground 

disturbance restrictions to protect water quality) and a Secondary Zone (ground disturbance restrictions only) (the widths of the 

various zones depend on soils and stream type and size, and stringers are used around intermittent streams, lakes, and sinkholes) 

(FDOACS 2008); and (b) Minnesota showing a Riparian Management Zone (RMZ) (providing shade and other riparian functions) and Filter Strip (ground disturbance protection) (the width of the RMZ and Filter Strip vary depending on site conditions 

(slope) and stream type, size, and harvest practices) (MFRC 2005).

(a)

(b)
19

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

functions) goals; for example Florida and Minnesota 

(Figure 2). In Washington’s case the multiple zone 

approach was driven by stakeholder demands and 

hard choices made by certain caucuses. For example, 

according to Fairweather the ‘core zone’ was an 

unconditional requirement by EPA and Washington 

Department of Ecology (WDOE). EPA and WDOE 

demanded, as an unconditional requirement, that there 

be some sort of core no-harvest zone. National Marine 

Fisheries Service considered the site potential tree 

height buffer to be a non-negotiable requirement. Thus 

constraints were placed upon development of strategies 

that influenced the final guidelines, which included the 

50 foot no-touch area adjacent to streams, the inner 

zone that provided recruitment for large wood, and the 

outer zone. This all came down to a one site potential 

tree height, but it was based on those unconditional 

demands for certain riparian zone characteristics.

There is scientific justification for stratifying management because of the law of diminishing returns. 

There is an effective distance for large woody debris 

recruitment, and a higher percentage of wood is likely 

to be delivered from near-stream sites. Functional 

wood, the stuff that’s big enough to benefit fish habitat, 

is going to come from closer to the stream, so you have 

this effective distance where you’re getting delivery; 

this, again, influenced the distribution of trees that 

were left. Science was helping design the most efficient ways of achieving the goals. Negotiations were 

informed by the Riparian Aquatic Interaction Simulator model (Welty et al. 2002). According to some who 

talked to me about this process, everyone was going 

back at night to do their calculations and see how much 

wood was being recruited under different scenarios. 

There was also debate about what minimum number 

of trees was needed. The discussion ranged from 30 

to 80 trees and the negotiations settled on a minimum 

of 50 trees, then 7 trees were added to account for 

windthrow.

This is a strategy that we can go back and look at. 

There is always a debate among scientists and there 

should be among policy experts. Is windthrow good 

because it results in delivery of wood to the streams, 

or is windthrow bad because it changes the functions 

that these riparian management zones are providing? 

Nonetheless, seven trees were added to account for 

windthrow. Some gaming was done to account for 

different assumptions. Approximately 84 percent of 

potential recruitment is one of the calculations that 

resulted from this gaming process. One important 

component of these rules was an adjustment for the 

size of the stream. There is an assumption that smaller 

wood will provide function to smaller streams, and 

there is research to support this (Bilby and Ward 1989). 

You can look at some of the other assumptions; for 

example, smaller streams can recover more quickly, 

and smaller streams have less capacity to move wood. 

In small streams boulders may serve as habitat features.

There was a management concern that large 

numbers of small channels with wide riparian management areas would have a dramatic economic impact 

on the forest community. Non-fish-bearing streams 

were addressed with yet a different set of assumptions. 

There was recognition that riparian protection for nonfish-bearing reaches provides protection for some sensitive sites. Equipment exclusion zones were prescribed 

to prevent sediment impacts, and some partial 50 foot 

no-touch riparian management zones were adopted. 

The potential for wood and water quality impacts and 

habitat quality considerations for non-fish streams was 

part of this process. Those negotiating the rules had to 

make assumptions about thinning and what management opportunities it provides. A model, a variant of 
20

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

ORGANON, was developed based on findings from 

the University of Washington’s Stand Cooperative to 

help in the analysis of trade-offs.

Testing Key Assumptions about Riparian 

Conservation Strategies

Thus we consider a summary of key assumptions. 

The law of diminishing returns told us that as buffers 

became wider the marginal benefits to streams diminished. You have core zones without harvesting, then 

changing leave tree requirements as you move away 

from the stream. It is assumed that stream temperature 

concerns can be addressed by maintaining shade, 

and this can be largely achieved within the core area. 

Desired future conditions include appropriate age (a 

140 year old stand) to be approximated, and things like 

basal area and tree number can be used to define the 

characteristics of this type of stand. Functional riparian wood is derived from an effective riparian buffer 

width. A large fraction (not 100 percent) of potential 

wood recruitment will maintain stream habitat for 

fish. Smaller pieces of wood are functional in smaller 

streams. Less and less wood is functional in smaller 

streams. Wood recruitment for perennial non-fishbearing streams can be achieved by retaining trees 

along parts of the channels. Upland forest growth and 

yield data can be used to calculate riparian system 

development. In addition, it is assumed that windthrow 

is going to remain within some expected level and not 

compromise the wood recruitment functions.

We can use some preliminary data to test some 

of these assumptions. We can go to projects like the 

RipStream study in Oregon (Dent et al. 2008) and look 

at the temperature changes that have occurred under 

the Oregon Forest Practice Rules. We can then assess 

how Washington’s rules will compare in performance 

to Oregon’s rules. To date, based on RipStream, there 

appears to be a relatively small response in temperature under the Oregon Forest Practice Rules. We can 

look at Plum Creek Timber Company’s Fish Habitat 

Conservation Plan, with 50 to 75 foot riparian management buffers and up to 30 percent removal in the 

buffers, again focused on the outside of the riparian 

areas (Sugden 2007). In a study of 30 sites in Montana, 

27 had no significant increase in temperature. The 

others experienced increases of 0.3°C, 0.4°C, and 3°C. 

The one site experiencing a large temperature increase 

occurred where there was a massive blow down of the 

riparian area. Thus we are seeing some evidence that 

at least some assumptions about the core regions of 

buffers are holding up reasonably well.

Risks Associated with Current Strategies

We need to close by looking at the potential risks 

of current riparian conservation strategies and their 

underlying assumptions. Lack of management in 

the inner zone may delay opportunities to develop 

large wood and prevent desired forest stands from 

regenerating in the future. It was recognized early on 

that in using the simulator model you could advance 

opportunities for wood recruitment by focusing 

growth on fewer trees. There is a risk of losing some 

opportunities to create those desired future conditions 

because of restrictions on management in the core. Silviculturists have been warning us for years that there 

may be potential reforestation problems at some sites, 

particularly where salmonberry and other brush communities grow along riparian areas and where there are 

restrictions on vegetation control practices. We need to 

think about those risks and some disturbance elements 

such as wildfire and disease. Based on recent research, 

there is a possibility that by limiting disturbance we 

may be losing opportunities to enhance fish productivity (Wilzbach et al. 2005). By disturbing small sections 

of streams, opening them up to light, and increasing 

primary productivity we may benefit fish. Hardwoods 

may also serve a useful role in forests. There is a need 
21

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

to provide a range of riparian forest conditions rather 

than a single prescription.

One final risk to consider is economically unfavorable conditions. As more and more of the forest 

is dedicated to “no-touch” restrictions, there is the 

problem of competition. Forest conversion becomes 

more attractive when returns from forest lands are 

severely restricted compared to other land use activities. Investments in Washington forests might also 

suffer if there are competitive disadvantages compared 

to other states or nations, further degrading forest 

management opportunities and incentives to retain the 

land in forests.

Summary

Historic issues and conditions, along with landmark 

legislation, helped form the early forest practices 

acts and rules. As issues and our understanding have 

evolved, so have riparian conservation strategies. 

These strategies are always a compromise between 

research findings and policy considerations. Research 

suggests that existing riparian strategies are achieving 

many of their goals to protect fish habitat and water 

quality, but emerging ideas about disturbance and 

dynamic ecosystems may result in future modifications and refinements to these strategies.

References

Bilby, R.E.; Ward, J.W. 1989. Changes in 

characteristics and function of woody debris with 

increasing size of streams in western Washington. 

Transactions of the American Fisheries Society

118: 368–378.

CH2M HIll. 2000. Review of the scientific 

foundations of the Forests and Fish plan. Olympia, 

WA: prepared for Washington Forest Protection 

Association.

Dent, L.; Vick, D.; Abraham, K.; Schoenholtz, 

S.; Johnson, S. 2008. Summer temperature 

patterns in headwater streams of the Oregon Coast 

Range. Journal of the American Water Resources 

Association 44(4): 803–813.

Fairweather, S.E. 2001. Westside RMZs and the DFC 

model: Documentation of their conceptual and 

methodological development. TFW-RSAG1-01-001. 

Olympia, WA: prepared for Riparian Scientific 

Advisory Group (RSAG) and Cooperative 

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research (CMER) 

Committee.

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer 

Services (FDOACS). 2008. Silvicultural best 

management practices. Tallahassee, FL: Florida 

Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Lantz, R.L. 1971. Guidelines for stream protection 

in logging operations. A report of the Research 

Division, Oregon State Game Commission.

Minnesota Forest Resources Council (MFRC). 

2005. Sustaining Minnesota forest resource: 

Voluntary site-level forest management guidelines 

for landowners, logger and resource managers. St. 

Paul, MN: Minnesota Forest Resources Council.

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). 2006.

Final environmental impact statement: For the 

proposed issuance of multiple species incidental 

take permits or 4(d) rules for the Washington 

State Forest Practices Habitat Conservation Plan. 

Seattle, WA: National Marine Fisheries Service and 

US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Sugden, B.D. 2007. Accomplishments of the Plum 

Creek Timber Company Native Fish Habitat 

Conservation Plan at 5 years. 605611 in Watershed 

Management to Meet Water Quality Standards and 

TMDL: 4th Conference Proceedings. Publication 

701P0207. St. Joseph, MI: American Society of 

Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

Washington State Department of Natural Resources 

(WDNR). 2007. Forest practices illustrated: 

A simplified guide to forest practice rules in 

Washington State. Olympia, WA: Washington State 

Department of Natural Resources, Forest Practices 

Division.

Welty, J.J.; Beechie, T.; Sullivan, K.; Hyink, D.M.; 

Bilby, R.E.; Andrus, C.; Pess, G. 2002. Riparian 

aquatic interaction simulator (RAIS): A model of 

riparian forest dynamics for the generation of large 

wood and shade. Forest Ecology and Management 

162(23): 299–318.

Wilzbach, M.A.; Harvey, B.C.; White, J.L.; 

Nakamoto, R.J. 2005. Effects of riparian canopy 

openings and salmon carcass addition on the 

abundance and growth of resident salmonids. 

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic 

Sciences 62: 58–67.

Questions and Answers

Q: There is an unstated assumption that the best 

buffers can be figured out regardless of land forms. I 

think that land forms are really important in how those 

riparian zones really function with the stream system. 

I think we are going to have to, and we have the 

opportunity as we research and monitor our riparian 

zones, to look at how they are operating relative to 

land forms and educate ourselves better. But certainly 

we can say that small streams and headwaters only 

need small wood because it’s a small stream. But if 

that streams system is to gather up some big wood and 

sluice it down into the fish-bearing streams or larger 

streams, then leaving and recruiting only small wood 

in all of those little headwater streams is going to mean 

someday we won’t have that large wood elsewhere 

downstream. I just think that landforms are something 

we can work into the research we are doing.

A: I agree. There may be some creative way to condition for appropriate riparian zones within classes of 

landforms.

Q: With regard to your risk, it seems like the biggest 

risk that you didn’t mention is time and the current 

status of riparian zones. Those two things for me put 

the situation at risk for most of the managed forest 

regardless of who manages them. George showed great 

pictures; they generally have a young forest next to 

the stream and all the modeling shows that you don’t 

get any serious recruitment. Certainly for the larger 

streams, there are still a collection of streams in the 

less than four percent gradient, going all the way up to 

fairly large rivers that were very important to salmon, 

and the riparian areas are not going to be functional for 

recruiting for a very long time under current riparian 

protections schemes. I think that’s a concern.

A: I tried to cover that in the first risk, which was the 

lack of management allowed. Management provides 

the opportunity to accelerate development of large 

wood. So I agree with you that time interacts in a 

couple of ways. It interacts in looking at opportunities to manage for conditions that we want, but time 

is important in looking at our long-term trajectories 

and how different sized streams respond to different 

management opportunities.

Q: Almost all of your slides showed standards and 

guidelines that would apply at the site level—a particular setting. My question is, do you see from your 

viewpoint any movement towards generating standard 

or environmental targets that go beyond the site level 
23

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

to landscape level targets? I’ll throw out an example, 

the old 50/11/40 rule that you used to hear about for 

the protection of spotted owl habitat. You don’t see 

anything like that, I think, in place on state and private 

lands for the protection of aquatic systems yet. But I’m 

asking: are you seeing any movement in that direction 

on the state side?

A: Landscape-level guidelines are certainly in discussion. Many of us were down in California a week 

ago at a meeting talking about riparian management. 

A landscape perspective was one of the topics being 

discussed in California; how we can put the landscape 

perspective in some sort of package. We have not gotten there yet – discussions continue.

Q: You gave great examples of how Fairweather and 

Washington’s rules started with the science foundation 

and then veered away with what people think ought 

to be out in the riparian zones. It’s been bothering me 

a lot lately. What I’m driving at is we went from good 

science to this so-called mystical mature state of a 

certain basal area, even to find what that basal area is, 

something like 300 square feet per acre, and we are 

still being driven by that under Forest and Fish. In fact 

forestry is debating how to deal with DFC and how to 

alter DFC. And they are so far off the science. If anyone in this room can show me the data, I cannot find 

other than very poor correlations between basal area 

and riparian functions; I would like to see it. There are 

only a few papers that even relate riparian functions: 

wood recruitment, shade, temperature, erosion, and 

basal area. Yet the whole Washington State system is 

being driven by DFC basal area targets. I think that 

something to think about is that policy and the politics 

just drove us totally away from the principles of science that drive riparian function.

This is another corollary to Kate’s question: the 

underlying assumption is that fish populations are 

supposed to reflect current management, and we 

haven’t really seen that. We all know that things have 

really changed from the 60s and 70s; we would have 

expected that fish populations should have gotten better if those populations actually reflect current management. So Kate put out one hypothesis: we are still 

waiting for the wood to grow back. There are different 

mechanisms. I wonder; we keep tweaking this stuff, 

maybe we need to be waiting. For the last thirty years 

fish populations have not reflected big changes in how 

we manage the land.

A: We have always been reluctant to look at salmon 

populations as a measure of riparian protection effectiveness, because they are influenced by so many other 

external factors besides just forest habitat. NCASI and 

others are now supporting a research project trying 

to look at different management schemes, national 

forests, private forests, and see if there is a difference 

or if salmon responses are similar under all watershed 

conservations schemes. If we don’t see a difference in 

salmon responses between different levels of management, we’re going to have to look at other mechanisms 

that may be causing salmon declines. At some point 

we are going to have to ask the fish if they are seeing a 

difference in the management practices.

Q: I’m sure the Rockefeller Commission never had in 

mind that the drinkable, swimmable, fishable waters 

would be solved with chlorination and hatcheries. 

If the goal of the Clean Water Act is water quality, 

then we need to define water quality. I suggest that 

water quality, in terms of the top list of things you are 

concerned about, would look different east of the Mississippi than it does west of the Mississippi. You would 

be hard pressed, east of the Mississippi, to find sediment on that list of problems and you’d be hard pressed 

to avoid it here. If we are using that as a goal, we need 

a definition of what water quality is. In some areas it 

might be mercury levels in a lake; in landscapes that 

might be irrelevant.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

A: I think the question of water quality is evolving. It 

used to be the colder, the less sediment, and the higher 

dissolved oxygen, the better. Now we are starting to 

recognize that maybe some nutrients are useful to have 

in streams, maybe the very coldest streams are not the 

optimal, wood recruitment is important now, whereas 

it used to be “don’t put anything in" The concepts of 

water quality and habitat are still evolving and we are 

still working through that process.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Presentation

What I want to do is talk about the Northwest Forest 

Plan and some of the underlying assumptions that led 

to riparian management practices on federal lands. 

First, I want to be clear; FEMAT and the Northwest 

Forest Plan did no new science. What we did was 

science assessment; we looked at what was available in 

the scientific literature, some underlying assumptions, 

looked at the paradigm in which we were moving 

forward with the Northwest Forest Plan and made 

some suggestions. FEMAT did not make any decisions 

about what was implemented on the ground. That 

was a political decision. We crafted and evaluated a 

series of option and what was selected was done by the 

administrations, not scientists. 

For the Northwest Forest Plan, we were charged 

with looking at a large geographic area from the BC 

border, down to northern California. At the time, 

there was one anadromous fish listed, the central 

valley Chinook salmon, and two sucker species in the 

Klamath basin. We were told to come up with a set of 

options to deal with potential listings of anadromous 

salmonids; we worked closely with NOAA to get some 

sense of how extensive the listings were going to be. In 

1991 there was a paper that put fish on the map in the 

American Fishery Society, ‘Salmon at the Crossroad’. 

The paper identified a whole host of populations that at 

the time were in need of attention because of declining 

numbers or that had gone extinct. 

There were some previous efforts that lead to 

FEMAT. The Gang of Four work was the first time 

fish were inserted in the old growth debate. That was 

followed by PAC Fish, which was the Forest Service’s 

attempt to deal with fish and old growth. The Scientific 

Assessment Team later made recommendations to 

Judge Dwyer. FEMAT was built from these efforts. 

Since the time of Northwest Forest Plan, we have had 

over 30 ESU’s and fish species listed. We were trying 

to anticipate the magnitude and extent of the problem, 

trying to craft options that would put the burden on 

federal lands to handle as much responsibility for the 

recovery of fish and their fresh water habitat as possible so that there was less responsibility on state and 

private lands. That point was driven into our thinking 

constantly. 

Key things in terms of NWFP: we really wanted 

to focus on ecological processes and we wanted to 

talk about time. When we talk about the Aquatic 

Conservation Strategy, ACS, we really focused on 

dynamic environments and what that means. What did 

ecosystem management mean-we were interpreting it 

to be a dynamic environment, we wanted to talk about 

natural disturbance regimes in terms of the frequency 

of distribution and magnitude. We were beginning to 

look at a different ways of determining wood sources 

for streams, not just coming from the stream-adjacent 

riparian zone but in terms of coming in as a result of 

catastrophic events. One of the things to keep in mind 

is that oftentimes we bring the same mindset to the 

table that created the problem. It was one of the things 

I felt we did nicely in FEMAT is that we took a different tact-an approach that recognized the dynamic 

nature of the riparian system. 

What was the underlying foundation of riparian 

management? What were we protecting? We were not 

Gordon H. Reeves, US Forest Service, PNW Research Station

Jim Sedell, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

What are the principal working hypotheses and key 

assumptions that underlay current riparian strategies on federal, 

state, and private lands in western Washington?
26

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

protecting some sort of idealized set of conditions that 

we expected to be out there. The Rosgin classification 

scheme that some people would adhere to was if you 

have this type of channel you have this type of conditions. Thinking about that, it’s not a very dynamic 

view of the world. It simply says if you have this channel type you should have these conditions. Some would 

say, that is not what Rosgin is all about but I disagree. 

If you’re doing a watershed analysis, you go out and 

look at the channel and you should have this width to 

depth ratio, etc. If you don’t, you try to make it meet 

those set of conditions. So this is a very static view of 

the world. 

Another elegant, articulation of how streams 

work is the River Continuum Hypothesis and again it 

is really good at telling us that as we move down the 

channel, the stream network, things should change but 

it doesn’t talk about dynamics. 

In 1992 Bob Neiman published a paper, buried in 

a book from a meeting at UW, that was one of the first 

attempts to articulate what a dynamic perspective of 

aquatic ecosystems might be. It stood up the idea that 

systems are not static, they are dynamic, beginning 

in the headwaters and there are periodic events happening; fire, landslides, whatever it is and so you see 

infrequent but large magnitude type events. You go to 

middle portion of the network—and this is often where 

much of our focus is—it turns out that this is the most 

dynamic part of the network (if you believe this idea), 

and it’s because of the periodic disturbances here and 

the number of headwater streams that are influencing 

this portion of the stream network. This is not an area 

with a stable environment. 

The question is: what’s the range of conditions 

and the change pattern and how do you maintain this 

type of pattern in your network? This is certainly what 

the fish evolved with. One of the things we can do 

is look at the fish; what are they telling us. You start 

looking at the life-history of the fish and it suggests 

that anadromous salmon and trout are well adjusted 

to these dynamic places. They didn’t evolve in a static 

environment. 

I’m going to focus on two important components 

of FEMAT, the Riparian Reserve Network and the 

Watershed Analysis, because I think these are the most 

relevant for the issues being discussed at this meeting. 

One major mistake that we made in FEMAT was using 

the term Riparian Reserve Network; it’s been interpreted in a different way than we thought it was going 

to be. I can tell you I argued that this was going to be 

a problem because it sent the wrong message about 

what we are trying to achieve. The reason it happened 

is that because we were trying to distinguish our effort 

(FEMAT) from the previous efforts and we simply ran 

out of names. 

Prior to the Northwest Forest Plan on federal land, 

Augusta Creek on the Willamette National Forest was 

an example of the most advanced riparian management 

system on federal lands. The riparian management 

areas were basically 100 feet on each side of the stream 

with some kind of constraint on amount of harvest. 

The justification for this was from a series of studies—primarily McDade et al. – that were interpreted 

to say that 80–90 percent of the wood recruitment to 

streams came from within 100 feet of the streamside. 

Additionally, we kept getting pushed on not having a 

“one size fits all”. So, we proposed to move away from 

a distance measure and make the size of the riparian 

management zone relative to what the tree conditions 

were along a given streamside area. So we suggested 

that the distance from the channel to be equal to the 

height of trees that could grow at the site. We believed 

that this would accommodate what the natural site 

potential was and not move away from a single distance measure. 
27

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

This was an attempt to put together the science 

in a way that had not been done before in talking 

about riparian function. Were we 100 percent correct? 

Probably not, it was a first approximation, a different 

way of trying to make sure we could look at the riparian zones. Again, this was based on a site potential 

tree height, not absolute distance, which was a major 

change from what was done before. 

If we go back and look, the justification for the 

100 feet, and talk about sources of wood, McDade et 

al. only looked at one source of wood: stream adjacent 

source wood, or wood that came from the immediately 

adjacent riparian zone. This would have include pieces 

of wood that resulted from bank erosion and natural 

mortality sources. If you look closely at the paper, 

you find that McDade et al. did not include landslide 

derived sources of wood; they consciously decided to 

not consider them. Thus, the interpretation of data of 

McDade et al. saying that you are going to get 80–90 

percent of the wood from 100 feet along the stream 

is a misinterpretation and an inaccurate interpretation of the results. There are other sources of wood 

which were coming from these headwaters streams. 

This is not to say that in some places McDade et al 

is not going to be true, but if you just make a blanket 

assumption about an interpretation of wood recruitment from McDade et al. you can misrepresent it. 

In the Oregon Coast Range, we now know that in 

some places 50 percent or more of the in stream wood 

originates from landslide-derived sources. So, if the 

assumption that most wood comes from the immediate 

stream side is not correct and in terms of effectiveness 

of a 100 foot riparian zone we are talking about 80 of 

50 percent. So in FEMAT, we started looking at the 

underlying assumptions about the sources of wood in 

the literature that was the basis for setting up riparian 

zones, and none of them, with the exception of Murphy 

and Koski in Alaska, considered other sources of wood 

other than the immediately adjacent stream side. This 

didn’t seem to fit into a dynamic perspective; this led 

to the inclusion of headwater streams in our riparian 

ecosystems. Seventy to -eighty percent of the area had 

been excluded from involvement in riparian zone management prior to this, representing maybe 95 percent 

of the stream miles So we are talking a substantial 

proportion of the stream network that was left out of 

management consideration. A lot of these headwaters 

are dynamic in space and time. Work from Christine 

May and Bob Groswell described change over time 

in these systems in terms of delivery of sediment and 

wood to the channel. In Cummins Creek where we 

saw, by volume, stream side pieces were about a third 

of the total volume and two-thirds came from upslope 

sources. Lee Benda has done some work in Northern 

California and in Washington where similar or higher 

were percentages of upslope wood. 

Looking at the underlying assumptions that went 

into the previous forest plan about the dependence on 

McDade et al; it didn’t bear out. The science that’s 

been produced since the Northwest Forest Plan has 

identified that there are other kinds of attributes; 

sediment, wood, become key ecological parts of the 

landscape along with sources of nutrients and food 

for fish bearing streams, bio-diversity hot spots for 

amphibians. We didn’t even recognize much of this at 

the time. One of the things we need to recognize: we 

are not leaving buffers out there to protect existing 

conditions. We are trying to leave buffers out there to 

protect ecological processes. Usually when we have 

the biggest controversies over stream protection from 

certain forest management activities, it is after a big 

event. What we would argue is that we want to set the 

landscape so that when these big events happen, the 

net results are going to be a plus for the fish. These 

events are usually the big landslide or floods. 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

We can look to our terrestrial counterparts for 

more insights about dynamic processes. We know that 

under natural disturbance regimes that there is a process called succession and there is going to be changes 

in both biological and physical structure over time. 

Under forest management we’ve changed that successional trajectory in terms of shortening rotations. 

When you drive down the highway, you see very few 

actual clear cuts in Oregon, but you see these legacy 

trees left there. Those legacy trees are to jumpstart this 

recovery process so we get some desired semblance of 

older forests under this type of management. That is 

the idea we were trying to work with, with the riparian 

buffers. We can start to compare in terms of attributes, 

using similar ideas from what Franklin and others have 

used on the terrestrial side. Look at the magnitude and 

the frequency of the events and the legacy. We can 

compare. In many cases we are not going to go back 

to the natural disturbance regime. We are replacing 

fire and other major disturbance with timber harvest. 

Timber harvest is the new disturbance regime on the 

landscape. 

The question becomes: how do we make these 

manmade events more similar to natural events so we 

get the desired attributes? The key was that we have to 

put the coupling back in this—the connection between 

all parts of the ecosystem that worked together and 

the channel. The legacy is what is left from those 

disturbance events. In many cases, we’ve reduced the 

input of wood into the system because we’ve removed 

the trees-the wood-from the headwater streams and we 

are just delivering sediment. The system is not able to 

work in the same way in terms of its response when 

you have sediment, versus when you have sediment 

and wood. The whole idea in terms of buffers on 

headwater streams is to move away from something 

where you are just delivering sediment, to something 

where you are delivering sediment and wood. Then 

recognizing that this may not be immediately favorable 

to fish, but over time the system has the pieces it needs 

to move into a more productive state. We also recognize how systems respond will vary tremendously; 

you cannot come up with a ‘one size fits all’ type of 

prescription. The coast range will have something very 

different than the Andrews Forest and still different 

from Northern California. You can start to look at the 

importance of these events and understand how they 

happen and build management options around that. 

The other interesting thing that we started to do in 

trying to get people to think differently is talk about 

cumulative effects. Right now we would argue, under 

the guise of ‘protecting’, we have these cumulative 

effect thresholds. We think we manage to some magic 

threshold and if we stop right there, things will be OK. 

If we get 25 percent of the basin clear-cut or eroded, 

we’ll just move over and do the next one. I would argue 

that what we end up with here is basically mediocre 

conditions everywhere. These are some of the things 

we need to think about. Fish certainly can adapt to this 

type of pattern. 

There are all kinds of assumptions in the Northwest Plan that never were realized. Watershed analysis 

was supposed to be a key part in this whole thing. 

Gordon Grant had extensive conversations with people 

in Washington State, because Washington at the time 

was looked at as having the best watershed analysis 

process available and we were looking to model it after 

that. Watershed Analysis expectations were that it was 

to be relatively quick and inexpensive process. It was 

expected to be fish-centric but it turned out not to be. 

It was not considered a planning tool because of Forest 

Service rules; more a recommendation than an actual 

planning tool. 

When riparian management areas got as large 

as they did there was a group at FEMAT working 

with amphibians and a host of other vertebrates and 
29

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

invertebrates and plants. As a result there were more 

than eight hundred plus organisms to be considered in 

FEMAT. Over 80 percent of them became associated 

with Riparian Reserve Network and that just became 

too much to try to design any type of adjustment in the 

buffers. 

Another big thing that went by the wayside was 

the 50/11/40 rule for spotted owls. No one knew how 

to adjust boundaries of the riparian reserve network 

and meet this requirement. As a result of these things, 

very little happened with regard to adjusting the outer 

boundaries of buffers and working within buffers; we 

did not have the foresight to see it coming. Now we 

have a set of tools, we’ve gained a tremendous amount 

of knowledge in the sixteen to seventeen years since 

FEMAT. We now know about biological hotspots, 

physical processes, and are starting to put these 

together in a way that frees up areas for more intensive 

management that were never intended to be locked up 

as they were. 

We went through a ten year assessment of the 

Northwest Forest Plan relatively recently. We assessed 

the condition of the watersheds. In the vast majority of 

watersheds, under the Northwest Forest Plan and found 

that the overall physical condition of a statistically 

significant proportion of the watershed improved in the 

first ten years. Some went up, some went down. The 

ones that went down were the ones that had recently 

had large wildfires. The change in conditions of these 

watersheds had nothing to do with management, but 

with large disturbance events. This was expected. We 

saw about a two to four percent increase in the number 

of large trees in riparian areas. This was accompanied 

by road decommissioning which was the primary 

reason for improvements. After the ten year assessment and with the new science, what I concluded was 

that science on the basic framework produced since the 

Northwest Forest Plan supports the basic assumptions 

and expectations. 

It also provides opportunity for new explorations 

in policy and approaches that I think haven’t happened 

fast enough. I really welcome the opportunity here, 

because I think there is some real opportunity to do 

things differently that we really need to give some consideration to. When we do these evaluations we need to 

recognize that often doing assessments of the results of 

a federal or state policy in a mixed land ownership is 

problematic. 

One of the things that we looked at was the best 

potential habitat for different fish (an idea by Kelly 

Burdett). For example in coastal Oregon it turned 

out the lower parts of the network in many cases, are 

where you have the best potential to provide habitat or 

best productive habitat for coho salmon. Unfortunately, 

these areas are either urban areas or agriculture areas 

while most of the forested areas never could produce 

large number of coho. However, we are asked the question: why aren’t we seeing responses in terms of more 

fish returning to streams? One of the reasons may be 

that we are asking the part of the landscape that has 

the least capability of providing habitat or producing 

fish (the upper reaches of watersheds), to produce fish. 

We need to keep those types of things in mind as we 

move forward. It turns out in Coastal Oregon, the best 

potential areas for coho are private non industrial and 

private industrial forest areas. 

This is where we have some latitude for room to be 

creative. If you are asking private landowners to make 

the biggest contribution to introducing or recovering 

coho, and we have federal lands involved then we can 

start to look to the federal lands to provide something 

to the private landowners in exchange for are asking 

them to leave a buffer (in terms of the timber volume 

they would forego). Ecologically, we are probably 

way better off, doing it that way. We’re starting to get 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

creative in how we mix and match what goes on; what 

happens on the various land ownerships.

 Finally we need to put the big picture together. 

Many of us looked back at the Northwest Forest Plan 

experience and began grousing about what happened. 

One of the things we were concerned about was that 

we were told in no uncertain terms that we could 

only look at federal lands; we know what happened 

on federal land is going to be strongly influenced 

by what happened elsewhere. So we put together a 

project with OSU and the Forest Service called CLAM 

(Coastal Landscape Analysis Modeling). We looked 

at the aggregate effect of policy for state and federal 

lands, both ecologically and from the social economic 

perspective. We started making projections about 

what things would look like. One of the things we 

discovered that the Northwest Forest Plan assumed that 

we are arguing right now is that old growth and fish 

productivity don’t necessarily go together. At least in 

coastal Oregon, streams that are staying in old growth 

forest are not the most productive for fish. It’s interesting that the 120–140 age trees in buffers came up. 

The little bit of research we’ve done seems to indicate 

that as the optimal time frame for major disturbances 

for coho production and steelhead production. At that 

point in time, those streams are living off the legacy 

of that past major disturbance event. It’s the big wood 

and the sediment that were produced from those events 

that are making the system productive at this time. It’s 

not the current condition of the buffer that determines 

productivity.

One of the things we need to think about is how to 

look at the aggregate effects of these FEMAT policies. 

For example, putting the onus on the federal lands to 

recover coho in Oregon is simply to be ineffective. 

We can hold on to some existing populations, but we 

are not going to make big gains in terms of recovering 

populations. Finally, I think we need to get away from 

a static aquatic perspective. I can’t tell you how much 

satisfaction I felt when I walked out of that Pink Tower 

and thought we had drawn lines on the map that said 

‘here are the key watersheds and those are going to be 

places where if everything else goes to hell in a hand 

basket, are going to save fish’. Well in thinking about 

that, that’s a really preposterous thing to conclude 

because it doesn’t fit with a dynamic view of the world. 

What we need to be thinking about is protecting these 

important areas in the short term. But in the long term, 

and this is the underlying assumption in FEMAT in the 

aquatic conservation strategies, is that these policies 

would develop the next generation of good habitat and 

good refuge. 

Questions and Answers

Q: FEMAT was designed to use adaptive management 

to work with/manipulate buffers-it hasn’t happened 

because they don’t trust the science or the scientists; 

why hasn’t it happened?

A: It became such an overwhelming task. When we 

left the Pink Tower we weren’t that tightly wedded to 

survey and manage and other things that were part of 

FEMAT. We failed to recognize how many things were 

going to come in on top of it. The terminology (riparian reserves) did not help; it sent the wrong message. 

We need to be very careful of the message. Saying 

‘disturbance’ instead of ‘dynamic’ sends the wrong 

message. We have to be very careful. 

Q: Certainly in the first few years of the Forest Plan 

the term ‘reserve’ made many people hesitant to 

change boundaries. I think there was a paradigm 

shift that came along with the Northwest Forest Plan. 

Pre Northwest Forest Plan, the burden of proof was 

on riparian dependent resource managers to prove 

damage; after the plan, the burden of proof was on 

extractive uses to prove continuity or consistency with 

riparian objectives. Fast forward to today, really what 
31

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

happened was people quit spending time trying to 

officially change the width of riparian reserves. Now 

management is occurring within that boundary to 

varying degrees, typically based on site conditions and 

objectives. I agree that ‘reserves’ didn’t fully reflect 

what was intended, but I think what has happened is 

that over time there has been a basic level of trust that 

we can go in and manage without ravaging the place. 

Regionally, more and more management activities are 

driven by riparian objectives.

A: People after a while got comfortable doing things 

in riparian reserves. The burden of proof issue was a 

major one. Most people didn’t pick up on it. ‘Where 

is the burden of proof?’ Is it incumbent upon people 

who want to make a change to show that it has an 

effect or on someone who wants it to remain the same 

that it does not have an effect? The burden of proof 

issue is something we seldom talk about, but I think 

it is very crucial and a key part of how we approach 

these problems. The other thing is (I alluded to it but 

didn’t explain it) if you look at Option 9 as evaluated 

by scientists, it included a two tree heights buffer 

along perennial fish bearing streams. The second tree 

height was a movement corridor for large mammals 

and other organisms. On non-fish bearing streams the 

recommendation was half a tree height. In the political 

process it would become a full tree height. That is one 

reason the Northwest Forest Plan has never met its 

one billion board feet harvest projection. No one ever 

calculated 1 billion board feet with an extra half a tree 

height. No one ever calculated what the cost of expanding a half a tree height in terms of the PSQ. It was a 

political decision to expand it, but no one ever adjusted 

the expectations of timber harvest as a result of it.

Q. You mentioned the four corners of Aquatic Conservation Strategies – talked about two. One of the 

others is the Adaptive Management Areas. Most of 

us would think that from an aquatic standpoint we 

haven’t stepped up to the plate regarding adaptive 

management, but we’re starting to see in other areas 

‘intensively monitored watersheds’ pop up. What is 

your take on why the Forest Service has not been very 

successful with Adaptive Management Areas?

A: Chuck Meslow developed the concept of having 

adaptive management areas as an educational tool and 

also to provide economic relief to areas hit hard by 

the plan. Dealing with the science, there were eight or 

nine Adaptive Management Areas identified and each 

one had a certain topic associated with it. The one 

for riparian areas management happened to be on the 

Little River on the Umpqua National Forest. They tried 

to get people who’d been working on FEMAT involved 

in it. FEMAT scientists were running away as fast as 

they could. The process was that they tried to bring 

all the interested parties to the table. And the basic 

thought was that they were going to provide everything 

for everybody. There was no clear way to see how 

priorities were going to be established or decisions 

were going to be made. People became frustrated. And 

finally, there was no financial support. The money 

began to dry up and eventually just withered. If we 

could resurrect them and do them right, they’d provide 

invaluable lessons and insights. We’ve basically lost 

13–14 years of opportunity to do it right. That was one 

part of the plan that didn’t work.

Q: I want to move from the science back into the 

policy question: working in the private sector, I’ve not 

been a disciple of the FEMAT report; I haven’t read it 

and the revelation to me that there was no new science 

was new to me and a little bit of a surprise. But that’s 

OK.

A: I didn’t say there was no new science—I said we 

didn’t produce science.

Q: What we find is that FEMAT is being utilized now, 

outside of the Forest Service realm, as the standard 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

for riparian conservation or at least the science that 

supports FEMAT is used that way. This gets into the 

realm of both science and policy. If FEMAT did not 

produce any new science, what is the appropriateness 

of using the report as a ‘science index’ for the generation of new policy that could be based around the 

findings of that report?

A: I’ll reiterate: FEMAT did not do science. FEMAT 

did science assessment and I think science assessment 

is as valuable as doing science in terms of trying to 

articulate how people can look at science and use it. I 

presume you are referring to the FEMAT curves; that 

seems to be how FEMAT has been defined. Is that 

fair?

Q: I’d open it up to any of the findings that are within 

the report, but certainly the curves are the most quoted 

or misquoted aspects of the report.

A: I think what you’ll see is there may be some 

quibbling over tweaking the curves, but the curves 

in general are very based solidly on current scientific 

thinking. The policy then becomes: how much do you 

want to move off those curves. Are you willing to say, 

for example, do we want to go to half a tree height, 

or three quarters height, or 100 feet or whatever it is? 

Are we willing to forego some part of the ecological 

process? Consider the law of diminishing returns...

where do you want to make those decisions? Those 

are policy decisions and then the question becomes, 

what’s the consequence of losing 20 or 30 percent of 

that ecological function. I think the science assessment 

and the findings supported by the assessment within 

FEMAT are absolutely strong. The question: ‘can we 

tell you if you lose 20 percent of that riparian function, 

what that means?’ We don’t have that. Those are policy 

calls. There is a beauty to be able to show policy makers what they are trading off. That’s how I would view 

using those curves. You bring that into the whole mix 

of economics, social needs and so on – that is not a 

science call and you aren’t going to answer those 

things from the curves.
33

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

Background

The period of the early to mid 1990s saw benchmarks 

in the watershed sciences including in the design and 

application of “watershed analysis” technologies (e.g., 

Reid and McCammon 1993, WDNR 1997). Application of the watershed sciences, including via watershed 

analysis, underpins many modern environmental 

policies in federal and state resource management 

agencies throughout the Pacific Northwest including 

in habitat conservation plans (HCPs), FEMAT and the 

Northwest Forest Plan, and Washington State’s Forest 

and Fish program. Much of the science and technology 

related to the nuts and bolts of measuring and predicting watershed processes relevant to channels, riparian 

zones and hillsides (e.g., surface hydrology, mass 

wasting, large woody debris, sediment transport, fish 

habitat morphology) have held steady during the last 

15 years. 

The more holistic concepts related to the watershed “big picture” including the roles of disturbance 

and physical heterogeneity in terrestrial and aquatic 

ecology that originated in the 1980s through 1990s 

(Sedell and Dahm 1984, Swanson et al. 1988, 

Townsend 1989, Reeves et al. 1995, Benda et al. 1998, 

Poff et al. 1997) has remained mostly in a conceptual or qualitative stage during the era of watershed 

analysis and beyond. Thus, the aquatic component of 

watersheds is often still viewed in terms of central 

Lee Benda, Earth Sciences Institute

In light of current scientific understanding, what is the 

degree of both confidence and uncertainty for each of these 

working hypotheses and assumptions?

Physical Processes

Evolution of Watershed Science and Technology from the 1990s through the first decade 

of the 21st Century: Implications for Forest Management

tendencies (e.g., mean states) even though they are 

considered, conceptually, to be in dynamic equilibrium 

(small fluctuations around a stable mean condition). 

This perspective is one of de facto steady state (static) 

since temporal variability is not quantified and thus 

ignored. In addition, stream systems are viewed as 

broadly homogeneous (across specific channel types) 

within and among watersheds because of unresolved 

spatial variability in channel and riparian environments. Evidence for a static and spatially homogeneous 

perspective in forest management and regulatory 

policies include: 1) uniform one size fits all streamside 

buffers, 2) disturbances (floods, fires, erosion, wind) 

viewed as dominantly destructive, 3) stream restoration using “design” [dream stream] standards, 4) use 

of single value (average) environmental thresholds for 

habitat quality and related watershed processes such as 

sediment, in-stream large wood and stream temperature, and 5) the assumption of high levels of accuracy 

and precision in measurements of stream parameters in 

monitoring programs. 

Improved Quantification of Dynamics and 

Variability in Watershed Processes

Despite the entrenched environmental paradigm of 

stable watershed environments (until perturbed by 

anthropogenic activities), the conceptual basis of 

watershed science particularly pertaining to stream 

systems, has been shifting from one characterized by 

average conditions and spatial homogeneity to one 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

that emphasizes physical dynamics (disturbance) and 

heterogeneity. This is due primarily to an increasing 

emphasis on watershed dynamics and variability in 

theories, field studies and analytical tools. Thus, it is 

recognized that physical disturbances (e.g., storms, 

fires, and floods) dynamically create and maintain 

certain attributes of habitats and positively influence 

aquatic ecosystems, particularly in upland terrains. 

Disturbance driven fluctuations in discharge, sediment 

supply and in-stream large wood in both managed 

and unmanaged watersheds lead to variable channel 

morphological conditions (Beschta 1984, Benda et 

al. 2003, Madej and Ozaki 1996, Reeves et al. 2003, 

Martin and Grotefendt 2007), some more favorable 

to aquatic organisms than others. The implications of 

watershed dynamics on aquatic ecology are significant 

including temporally varying habitat suitability and 

life history adaptations to dynamic environments such 

as straying and high fecundity (Reeves et al. 1995).

The importance of spatial variability in stream 

systems manifest over a range of spatial scales is also 

becoming a central tenet in aquatic ecology. Spatial 

variability of habitat forming features is driven by 

alternating canyons and floodplains, tributary confluences, landslides, and log jams, among other factors 

(Townsend 1989, Bisson and Montgomery 1996). 

Consequently, new analytical tools and models are 

becoming available that highlight variability in aquatic 

habitats at the reach to watershed scale (Burnett et 

al. 2003, Miller et al. 2003, Buffington et al. 2004, 

Steel et al. 2004, Miller and Burnett 2007, Benda et 

al. 2007). Additionally, river network perspectives, in 

which tributaries and their confluences are viewed as 

major components of aquatic systems, are replacing 

more linear river perspectives (Fisher 1997, Benda et 

al. 2004, Rice et al. 2008). In an interesting parallel to 

the field of landscape ecology, meter to kilometer scale 

variability in aquatic habitats is forming the basis of a 

landscape view of rivers, called “riverscapes” (Fausch 

et al. 2002). Thus, principles of dynamics and physical 

heterogeneity are underpinning current thinking in 

riverine ecology (Weins 2002).

Implications for Forest Management

One of the most dramatic changes in watershed 

science and technology related to watersheds that 

have occurred in the last decade are the advances in 

concepts and in analytical tools related to dynamics or 

disturbance (fire, erosion, mass wasting, floods) and 

physical heterogeneity of channel, riparian, and hillslope environments. These advances are being aided 

by the increasing availability of: 1) more sophisticated 

models of watershed processes, including incorporating a stochastic climate (hydrology, erosion, stream 

temperature, in-stream wood, aquatic ecology, etc.), 

Figure 1—The use of central tendency and spatially homogeneous environmental perspectives, in addition to an absence of 

analytical tools (until recently), encouraged the use of uniform 

one-size-fits-all protection measures, such as fixed width stream 

buffers along fish bearing channels (A). A similar approach is 

being considered for non fish bearing streams (B). Application of 

ecological concepts and analytical tools focusing on dynamics and 

heterogeneity may support a more diverse and patchy riparianchannel protection and management system (C,D).
35

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

2) faster more powerful desktop computers, 3) geographically extensive digital data covering topography, 

hydrography, climate and vegetation etc., 4) advanced 

GIS systems, and 5) visualization technologies like 

Google Earth.

There are a number of implications for forest 

management and environmental regulatory policies as 

a result of improved conceptual and theoretical frameworks and new analytical tools. These include:

New analysis tools are being used to identify 

spatial variability in aquatic habitats and in watershed 

processes concerning hydrology, erosion, riparian 

processes, vegetation, and road transportation systems. 

This is promoting a perspective for strategically targeting protection in environmentally “hot” areas (e.g., 

high erosion potential with direct links to habitat) or in 

channel-riparian biological “hotspots” (such as tributary confluences and wide floodplains). Application 

of this approach could result in a patchy and spatially 

variable stream-riparian protection system rather than 

a spatially uniform approach (e.g., fixed width buffers) 

(Figure 1); 

Watershed dynamics or disturbance could be 

incorporated into forest management and regulatory 

policy, even if only conceptually. This may include 

managing for mass wasting sources of large wood 

(and sediment) to stream systems, designing riparian 

protection to limit fire and enhance food production 

(for aquatics), and managing headwater streams as a 

“population” of environments that may have temporally varying forest characteristics;

 The ‘process’ of habitat formation should be the 

focus rather than the ‘state’ of habitat condition that 

is oftentimes a moving target. For example, instead of 

measuring the number of pools at the scale of stream reaches 

over time, riparian forest ages can be monitored to 

evaluate the changing potential of wood-formed pools 

at the scale of entire watersheds over decadal time 

periods;

It is not feasible to maintain a fixed set of environmental conditions over time. Forest and riparian 

management strategies should focus on ‘resilience’ 

or the ability of a watershed system to cycle through 

periods of low to high disturbance (e.g., fires, landslides, floods, timber harvest etc.) to capitalize on the 

formative aspects of natural or even human modified 

disturbances.

Creating single value (e.g., average) quantitative 

regulatory thresholds for parameters such as sediment, 

turbidity, temperature, in-stream wood and applying 

them uniformly across streams and watersheds is 

problematic. Low levels of accuracy and precision in 

predicting watershed behavior should be acknowledged 

as well as the limits of in-stream detection. 

A Challenge 

Although various state and federal agencies and private resource management companies in the PNW are 

dabbling with one or more of the forest management 

implications of spatial heterogeneity and disturbance, 

there has been no comprehensive incorporation of 

these principles into resource management and regulatory policy. The challenge is for an organization to 

incorporate the principles of watershed dynamics and 

physical heterogeneity into forest management policy 

including applying them to resource use, conservation, 

monitoring, restoration, and education. 

Presentation

What you heard in previous presentations reveals that 

there is a Riparian Management Paradigm. It’s basically protecting the system, kind of uniformly. Fish 

bearing streams have been the focus, although the 

emphasis on state and private lands is moving to the 

headwaters. The feds have already gone there. You’ve 

seen the FEMAT curves; my view is that they remain 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

conceptually sound, but it doesn’t preclude creative 

options. Regarding diminishing returns; these curves 

define what proportion of something gets protected 

as you move away from the stream (woody debris for 

example). The FEMAT target is 100 percent contribution; they go all the way out to a full tree height or two. 

For policies that take into consideration economic and 

other issues, the target is often not 100 percent so the 

curve shape is important.

I’m going to sketch a little bit of the big picture 

of the science. We have a history of looking at stream 

environments in a non-varying, broadly homogeneous 

way. Generally we include the river continuum in a 

linear perspective. There have been some interesting 

developments. Before 1990 the idea of watershed 

dynamics, not just fire and landslides, but also stream 

system dynamics was coming on line. Swanson and 

other in the region, Gordie in 1995, wrote some papers 

that were mostly qualitative and I did much of it myself 

in those days. There has been an increasing emphasis 

on quantifying the dynamic nature of watersheds. That 

is sort of new. The idea of spatial variability across 

scales; people were recognizing that in the late 80’s. 

Pete Bisson wrote a paper on spatially varying riparian 

zone management in 1987. It was still sort of qualitative. We didn’t have good ways to characterize it, 

including in the watershed analysis days. Now there’s 

a focus on river networks, the branches and tributaries confluences. Because it’s happening later in the 

sequence (2000 plus), it’s a quantitative perspective for 

the most part. 

We have technology nuts and bolts; these are 

the things you can use to understand slope stability, 

landslides, stream temperature, wood recruitment. 

There have been some tweaks on those dials, but the 

major improvements have been increasing analytical 

detail because of fast computers and more information in them; more field studies, vast literature and 

lots of data bases. The technology is cross pollinating 

with the conceptual framework, creating a whole new 

perspective and they are feeding back and forth with 

one another. 

Watershed analysis came on line in Washington 

State and at the Forest Service in mid 1990. FEMAT 

was there after that. Washington Forest and Fish 

came along. Of course slope stability, stream buffer 

prescriptions started and continue on today. There was 

a tendency to create environmental regulation based 

on ‘average’ conditions. It is fundamentally, technically wrong to do that, but nobody actually knew or 

had the ‘work arounds’ to do a different approach. 

That approach is still what people are working under 

today, but because of this movement toward quantitative analysis, I suspect that the central tendency in 

environmental regulations will have to go away, to be 

replaced by something else. This is why we are here: 

the implications for forest management because of this 

evolutionary trajectory. 

So what makes the idea that you can take big picture concepts, combine them with powerful analysis to 

show how things work in dynamic and spatially variable perspectives? It’s these things we are all familiar 

with, that we are being bombarded with everyday that 

is basically changing the way we live. 

Advances in defining dynamics and variability are 

being accelerated by: 

More sophisticated models of watershed processes 

(including dynamics), 

Faster more powerful computers, 

Geographically extensive digital data (of everything—topography, hydrography, climate, 

vegetation), 

Advanced GIS systems, and 

Visualization software such as Google Earth 

(satellite imagery etc.).
37

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

To illustrate what these tools can do, (refers to 

slides) a fire model was applied to 400 sq mile in SW 

Washington. It shows the pattern of fire across the 

landscape. You can see the variation in the histogram 

forest ages. At times young forests dominate, at other 

times old growth forests dominate. These red dots 

are landslides occurring in known locations where 

the topography is seen by the computer. It creates 

debris flows, forest fires are raging and trees burning along the stream. You can see there is the woody 

debris volume – the blue is low volume, the red is high 

volume. Even when you stop the movie, you can see 

how the models represent the effects of spatially varied 

topography, will give you amazing variability across 

the landscape. That’s just an illustration of where these 

tools are taking us. 

Considering the whole system: with environmental 

variability everything is on the table and so in California the group of people assembled to look at the 

literature, were struck to look at the riparian function 

at these different nodes across channel dimension 

(buffer width), along channels. This issue of channels 

on the influence of headwaters on large streams and 

headwaters themselves, we can see that Forest and Fish 

are basically targeting these interactions. Example: 

for aquatics, the FEMAT curve can be adjusted based 

on site specific details and policy interpretations. The 

curves can’t be adjusted for policy, but the way you 

interpret them can be. You can take all the curves for 

wood, heat, biotic, erosion and if you know things 

about land forms, stream size, location and climate, 

you might be able to get a better handle on how these 

curves shift around. And you don’t have to if your 

target is 100 percent, but that is not generally how 

that’s factored among the state and private arena. 

I’ll shift a little bit now, the whole issue of these 

new tools I was describing and the new databases 

that are readily available off the internet-it is really 

the emerging issue for forestry and for any land 

management across the region: expanding open source 

databases and tools. They may be coming to a neighborhood near you by various agencies or we have our 

own thing we are working on as well. For example, 

there is an increasing spatial scale considered by the 

environmental initiative so in many regards the large 

scale regional policy focus is driving the need for large 

open source analysis tools and database. For example 

the Northwest Public Power Council, Bonneville 

Power Authority and Salmon Enhancement Recovery 

Board are looking at huge areas of twenty million 

acres. The Northwest Forest Plan is in there, actually 

overlaps some of the others and then you have Oregon 

Dept. of Forestry that is overlapped by Northwest 

Forest Plan. The private sector is scattered everywhere 

and then you have major NGOs that have taken an 

interest in the conservation of salmon at the multicountry scale-Wild Salmon, Ecotrust, are looking 

at the entire Pacific Rim. So they have conservation 

programs that extend from the San Francisco Bay Area 

into Far East Russia. They are driving the issue at an 

unprecedented scale. 

What are the policy characteristics of these conservation efforts? Certainly, increasing spatial scale. 

Forget the watershed: it’s the landscapes, hundreds 

of watersheds, entire states, regions, countries. It is 

multiple agencies and all the things that are embedded in that. Federal, state,watershed councils – it’s 

universal objectives and central planning. It would 

be counterproductive for these folks to have different 

tools and different databases although that has been 

the history and will continue to be the history for some 

time. There will be an evolution here; there will be a 

move toward universal systems, as you can see right 

now on the internet, digital elevation models on USGS, 

the national hydrology data set with stream layers, 

information on vegetation and on and on. 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

I’m going to give an example of something we’ve 

been working on that tries to address that policy-scale 

question. It’s a set of analysis tools that produce a 

watershed catalogue. It focuses on aquatic habitat and 

channel indices and you can see what some of those 

are; biological hotspots, habitat hazard potential (work 

by Kelly Brunet and others), models of habitats you 

find across entire states, habitat diversity core areas. 

It is interested in all the things that watershed analysis 

was interested in: sediment loading, wood loading, 

thermal loading and then different kinds of tools for 

forests and fires. In some area fire is obviously a big 

deal. And post fire conditions. It is a whole series of 

tools that are many of the things that classically, watershed analysis covered. But watershed analysis only 

covered thirteen percent of Washington State and it 

is basically dead. Partly, because it was too expensive 

and not as good as it could have been, the technology 

wasn’t quite there and it took too long to do. We see 

now in ten years or more after, the technology has 

come to the point where if you did watershed analysis 

today it would be very different—increasing spatial 

scale—an example of an emerging watershed technology at geographically extensive spatial scale. 

What does this platform do?

• Simplifies GIS Tasks, you don’t have to be a GIS 

expert.

• It creates uniform stream/hill data layers-this is 

getting to be more and more interesting to people 

like FEMAT and Northwest Forest Plan people 

that want to have the same layer of data for Oregon 

as for Washington. It provides data to people who 

want to model other things. It contains analysis 

tools for utilizing spatial data. And this is an 

interesting aspect; this is the sort of Wikipedia 

concept emerging in various corners of the internet: everybody contributes to the tool development. Databases and tools constructed in a certain 

location would immediately become a community 

tool that everybody gets access to. West Frasier 

Timber Company in Canada is having two million 

acres done with LIDAR and they want a whole 

series of tools and all those tools are available to 

everybody when they get done. The idea is that 

it’s a constantly growing set of tools funded by the 

community. 

• It creates watershed databases that are primarily 

public but can be proprietary such as the example 

just mentioned in Canada. 

Here is the current watershed catalogue developed 

over two years, in total, forty million acres in Washington, Oregon, California, and far eastern Russia. 

These are the people who’ve contributed to it: 

• NOAA in eastern WA.

• USFS (Shasta-Trinity, Siuslaw, Willamette, 

Deschutes NFs) – their interest is to integrate it 

with fire models to look at effects of aquatics and 

water quality because it sits right at the head of 

California’s major water supply conduit. And the 

Forest Service wants to do some serious thinning 

up there but they’re constantly being stopped 

because they haven’t evaluated this or that. This is 

one way they want to move forward. 

• Oregon Dept. Forestry (all lands) 

• EPA (TMDL), Mad R. –

• Private (watershed analysis, Mattole-PL) –

• Private (HCP) –

• Watershed Councils –

• West Fraser (Alberta, Canada) –

• Wild Salmon Center (Hoh River) –

• WSC (Sakhalin Island, Russian Far East)

The key objectives are to increase detail of watershed properties such as habitat, roads, fire hazard etc. 

and to simplify watershed and landscape analysis and 

to make it less costly. We want to create consistent 
39

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

information across large areas; a uniform data structure. This is important for large environment policies 

across the region-it gets everyone on the same page. 

We create a self-sustaining and renewing watershed 

science databases, not a classic watershed analysis 

where someone does an analysis with a consultant 

and you get a report that gets put in your desk. Then 

a fire happens or other big storm or they log and it 

and it becomes immediately out of date and nobody 

can re-do it because it’s too expensive. This software 

goes with the program; all stakeholders can update it 

themselves and change data values if they validate it 

in the field. Ultimately, all that spatial data should be 

an issue of diversity of resource management options – 

how this gets translated to policy is critical. 

Increasing, resolution of spatial data and analysis 

broken into segments 10M long segments nails down 

the confluences and indentifies the local contributing 

hill slope-very small slices of land. You can really find 

out where your potential risky areas are. It routs all 

that information downstream. So this is an evolution: 

1990 it was ninety meter, in the mid 90’s is was thirty 

meter and today it is at ten meter. This is not great, 

but it’s a good screening tool. You could look at Coho 

spawning habitat over the whole state and get a pretty 

good sense-it’s not too bad, but this is where we’re 

headed; within five years, a big chunk of the region 

will have two meter LIDAR or better. Once you have 

that, these tools become more powerful.

We now have improved analysis of spatial data. 

Here’s your stream in one hundred meter stream 

segments. You know your incoming hillside on both 

side, but you also know what’s on the slope. You know 

if there are roads, stream crossing, erosion potential, 

fires risk, burn severity, vegetation age, clear cut. You 

know all that information is queried and translated into 

the stream. So you have a stream map with roads, road 

density, culvert numbers, fire risk, burn severity. You 

also have all the aquatic parameters in there and now 

you are able to do a spatial overlay analysis that you’ve 

never been able to do before. ‘Where is highest fire 

risk overlapped with highest erosion with the highest 

and most sensitive aquatic habitat?’ You can look at 

one million acres and get a map. It’s not perfect but it’s 

a good screen at that scale. 

People are making automated, open source tools. 

They are on the web. Everything is menu driven to 

create habitat, to look at landslides, to search for road 

crossings, for culverts. I’ve done 30 watershed analyses over the years-I’m quite aware of the limitations 

we were faced with. In the future you’ll get increasing 

detail. You can look at the entire watershed in terms 

of fire risk, and then you can take the tools and ask for 

aggregate values at any sub watershed scale. Imagine 

taking this at a national forest scale, looking for habitat 

potential, erosion potential, and fire risk. For riparian 

environments specifically, these tools will go through 

and look for areas that technical people can agree that 

have influence on riparian processes such as confluence or sections, valleys, transition, sedimentation 

zones. These are areas you’d expect to have characteristics where you may do things differently. The 

10 meter scale isn’t too bad for this, but with LIDAR 

you’re able to see a lot.

What do we mean by hotspots? Take wood recruitment rate as an example. Things are well behaved and 

then we detect a spot where we have an abrupt change 

in gradient, the valley floor widens, the channel bumps 

against the hill, stream side land sliding in these areas 

occurs that would be considered interesting by a 

geomorphologist and be biologically interesting. In the 

Sacramento River we are using these tools to analyze 

high erosion potential, sediment delivery potential, 

river sedimentation and confluence effect to create 

maps like this. Even though the standard approach is 

about uniform – one size fits all buffers-there is a lot 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

of special variability evident because flood planes are 

being mapped, channel migration zones, mass wasting 

areas are being mapped. You could expand on that. For 

example with post fire environments, there is a burn 

severity map. This map of the Methow fire shows 4000 

square kilometers, 25 percent of it burned in six years 

in an area that is important for threatened and endangered Steelhead and possibly other species. These tools 

take this map and translate all the information into the 

channels so you have a map of fish bearing streams 

that are reflecting the sum of the severity of the watershed. You can take that information and look at other 

things like tributaries to help design either firebreaks 

or address other kinds of gaps. This same technology 

can be used to design responses to “gaps”. 

The headwater issue is most challenging. In 

practical terms, this is where the application of spatial 

variability concepts and tools may prove to be most 

effective. For slope instability in the old days, using 

watershed analysis you’d do it by hand. The maps 

could not evolve; they just sit in a report. In the last 

five to ten years there have been great improvements 

in how we look at variation. You can also overlay mass 

wasting with fish habitat. If you do that on the Hoh, 

you find something interesting, if you overlay debris 

flow with intrinsic potential for Coho, where do you 

get hotspots? There are lots of potential sites that have 

direct connection to fish habitat. But overall if you 

look at these hot spots, there’s not that much connection to the main Coho habitat. However, if there are 

off channels that would not get picked up by the DEM. 

Of course everything has to get field validated. It’s a 

larger scale planning tool.

Headwaters have highly variable wood transport 

distances. We did an analysis for a private timber company on the coast. People were saying: ‘wood comes 

out of these headwaters and we want you to protect the 

whole headwater’. We conducted some studies in that 

area and we used the public wood transport model and 

we plugged in that map and produced that image. That 

gets people thinking ‘maybe it matters what headwater 

stream I’m looking at’. 

The same approach is valid for thermal loading. 

Only in the last year or so have there been basin scale 

temperature screening tools that don’t require a lot of 

careful calibration. We built a tool that puts a full force 

or direct sun on and then it takes it all off. You say 

‘which channels are sensitive to thermal loading’; we 

use the hottest part of the day in our tool. It’s sensitive to topographic shading, tree height, stream size 

and orientation. It’s a very crude screening tool about 

where you might want to think about headwaters in 

term of thermal loading. 

Headwaters can be “upland” sources of LWD. 

This is in the upper Sacramento-this is wood delivery 

potential. If you run this tool over the whole river 

basin it’s a minor proportion of the whole area that is 

important as a LWD source. It would be a much higher 

proportion in the Olympics or the Oregon coast. It’s a 

way to start thinking of upland sources of wood and 

how you can protect them. You take these images and 

export to Google earth for enhanced visualization.

There are also tools for roads. The upper Sacramento has four thousand road crossings-how do you 

prioritize something on that scale? There are a series 

of tools that look at the intersection characteristics 

between streams and the roads. Once you overlay a 

habitat map, you are going to look at all the intersections and classify them according to that combined 

data. It also can calculate the cumulative habitat length 

above each road crossing; that’s interesting if you 

are thinking about expanding access to streams. A 

Canadian company wants a tool that every time they 

hit their cursor on a road, it tells them how many road 

stream crossings above and below have occurred. 
41

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Here is the question that I’ll leave you with: what 

is benefit versus risk? There are surely elements out 

there that find this scale of analysis to be a highly 

political risk and I totally sympathize with that. I think 

there are lots of benefits from my technical point of 

view. I find these tools a great help because I take 

them in the field with GPS and can do all kinds of 

things with them. It is much better and more complete 

information than I had before. However, I can see 

that some elements may feel that it’s risky to provide 

more information because there has been a history of 

using information as a club. I sympathize with that. 

The databases and the tools are all becoming Open 

Source and are becoming improved in accuracy. So 

it’s a happening thing and the question is how do you 

deal with it to make it a benefit as opposed to a risk? 

I’ll give you a concept; the idea is that you want to 

enhance communication and collaboration. People 

get burned out with the idea of more communication and collaboration among stakeholders because it 

never works, it won’t work, but think outside the box. 

For all stakeholders in the mix, regardless of what 

platform you use or who organizes it, there will be a 

universal data structure watershed catalogue and a set 

of tools that are community based and that everybody 

contributes to. The cost for creating and maintaining 

new tools drops as people share the internet. This is 

the web/internet model. The question is: can you bring 

it here. I would argue, you would want to bring it here 

because it’s going to come. The real question is-how do 

you get involved to form it? 

References

Benda, L.; Miller, D.J.; et al. 1998. Dynamic Landscape 

Systems. River Ecology and Management: Lessons from 

the Pacific Coastal Ecoregion. Naiman, R.J. and Bilby, 

R.E., Springer-Verlag. Chapter 11: 261–288.

Benda, L.; Miller, D.J.; Andras, K.; Bigelow, P.; Reeves, 

G.; Michael, D. 2007. NetMap: A new tool in support 

of watershed science and resource management. Forest 

Science 52: 206–219.

Benda, L.; Veldhuisen, C.; Black, B. (2003a). Tributary 

confluences, debris flows, and channel morphology, 

Olympic Peninsula, Washington, Geological Society of 

America Bulletin, 115: 1110–1121.

Benda, L.; Miller, D.; Dunne, T.; Poff, L.; Reeves, 

G.; Pollock, M.; Pess, G. 2004. Network dynamics 

hypothesis: spatial and temporal organization of physical 

heterogeneity in rivers. BioScience 54: 413–427.

Beschta, R.L. 1984. River channel response to accelerated

mass soil erosion. Pages 155–164 in Proceedings, 

Symposium on Effects of Forest Land Use on Erosion 

and Slope Stability. East-West Center, Honolulu.

Bisson, P.A.; Montgomery, D.R. 1996. Valley segments, 

stream reaches, and channel units. Pages 23–52 in Hauer, 

F.R., and Lamberti, G.A. editors. Methods in Stream 

Ecology. Academic Press, N.Y.

Burnett, K.; Reeves, G.H.; Miller, D.; Clarke, K.; 

Christiansen, K.; Van-Borland, K. 2003. A first step 

toward broad scale identification of freshwater protected 

areas for pacific salmon and trout in Oregon, USA. In 

Beumer, J.P., Grant, A., and Smith, D.C., editors. Aquatic 

Protected Areas: What Works Best and How Do We 

Know? Proceedings of the World Congress on Aquatic 

Protected Areas. Austrain Society of Fish Biology, North 

Beach, WA, Australia, Cairns, Australia.

Fausch, K.D.; Torgersen, C.E.; et al. 2002. “Landscapes 

to riverscapes: Bridging the gap between research and 

conservation of stream fishes.” BioScience 52: 483–498.

Fisher, S.G. 1997. “Creativity, idea generation, and the 

functional morphology of streams.” Journal of North 

American Benthological Society 16(2): 305–318.

Madej, M.A.; Ozaki, V. 1996. Channel response to 

sediment wave propagation and movement, Redwood 

Creek, California, USA. Earth Surface Processes and 

Landforms 21: 911–927.
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Martin, D.; Grotefendt, A. 2007. Stand mortality in buffer 

strips and the supply of woody debris to streams in 

Southeast Alaska. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 

37: 36–49.

Miller, D.J.; Luce, C.H.; Benda, L.E. 2003. Time, space, 

and episodicity of physical disturbance in streams. Forest 

Ecology and Management 178: 121–140.

Miller, D.J.; Burnett, K.M. 2007. A probabilistic model 

of debris-flow delivery to stream channels, demonstrated 

for the Oregon Coast Range, U.S.A. Geomorphology 94: 

184–205.

Poff, N.L.; Allan, J.D.; Bain, M.B.; Karr, J.R.; 

Prestegaard, K.L.; Richter, B.D.; Sparks, R.E.; 

Stromberg, J.C. 1997. The natural flow regime: 

A paradigm for river conservation and restoration. 

BioScience 47: 769–784.

Reeves, G.H.; Benda, L.E.; et al. 1995. A disturbancebased ecosystem approach to maintaining and restoring 

freshwater habitats of evolutionary significant units 

of anadromous salmonids in the Pacific Northwest. 

Symposium on Evolution and the Aquatic System: 

Defining Unique Units in Population Conservation, 

American Fisheries Society.

Reeves, G.; Burnett, K.M.; McGarry, E.V. 2003. 

Sources of large wood in the mainstem of a fourth-order 

watershed in coastal Oregon. Canadian Journal of Forest 

Research 33: 1352–1362.

Reid, L.M.; McCammon, B.P. 1993. A procedure for 

watershed analysis. Review draft prepared for the 

Interagency Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment 

Team, July 14, 1993. 139 p.

Sedell, J.R.; Dahm, C.N. 1984. Catastrophic disturbances 

to stream ecosystems: volcanism and clear-cut logging. 

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Current perspectives in microbial ecology. Michigan 

State University, East Lansing and American Society of 

Microbiology, Washington, D.C.

Steel, E.A.; Feist, B.E.; Jensen, D.W.; Pess, G.R.; Sheer, 

M.B.; Brauner, J.B.; Bilby, R.E. 2004. Landscape 

models to understand steelhead (Oncorhynchusmykiss) 

distribution and help prioritize barrier removals in the 

Willamette basin, Oregon, U.S.A., Canadian Journal of 

Fisheries and Aquatic Science, 61: 999–1011.

Swanson, F.J.; Kratz, T.K.; et al. 1988. “Landform 

Effects on Ecosystem Patterns and Processes.” 

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Townsend, C.R. 1989. The patch dynamics concept of 

stream community ecology. J. North Am. Benthol. 

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Standard Methodology for Conducting Watershed 

Analysis. Washington Department of Natural Resources., 

Olympia, Washington.

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Questions and Answers

Q: People take the same data and come up with different answers: how are you going to deal with that in 

your open source web tools portion of the scheme?

A: That does not have an easy answer. As you said, 

you can look at a debris flow hitting a stream. My 

perspective says, wow, this is going to be key habitat 

in five years and it’s going to last for 50. And yet 

somebody else looks at the landslide sitting in the 

stream and has complete heartburn – sees the same 

thing as resource damage. So inside these tools there 

are movies that show the dynamics; published papers 

that have CDs. In other words it’s an educational tool. 

The assumption that watersheds are really stable until 

you disturb them by logging and the fire disturbance 

paradigm is part of that problem too. So the public 

and some technical people subscribe to that view 

of things: either that or they use it to advance their 

agendas. If you don’t have enough information, that 
43

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

is an unwinnable fight-you’ll never win. But here is 

the thing, if you bring everybody along, in this case 

using the landslide example; there is lots of data out 

there, lots of evidence and models that illustrate what 

is going on. If you see a landslide sitting in the stream 

and you have a natural history perspective that it has 

some value, I think you can change the argument with 

better information. I don’t have a good answer but I’ll 

flip that back to you and say: how are you going to get 

out of that problem? How is the forest community of 

stakeholders going to get out of that except through 

education? One common situation is to build walls 

around your position. I’ve seen that done in certain 

sectors; I don’t think it’s a sustainable way.

Q: Think about ways we might be able to put some 

sideboards/referees into the system so that when we do 

accumulate that much data/information, eventually the 

preponderance of the information that weighs one way 

ought to be given some credibility. 

A: Right, I agree. And so to answer with a little bit 

more detail: in the system that we’ve been building, 

every tool or parameter has a hyperlink, a technical 

manual associated with it. And you have it on your 

screen with a mouse click. It is 400 pages now and 

other people can contribute to it. It has all the references in there (for debris flows for example). It’s like if 

you get the data, you don’t need the technical support 

for it. But anybody else using can get the technical 

support; it says look at all this evidence for the fact 

that these things (landslides) can be constructive. It’s 

a way to force the hand of people in a direction that is 

technically supported.

Q: Does the tool provide references to the literature?

A: It does; not in great detail because we don’t have 

the resources. But right now it’s 400 pages and for 

example, for debris flows there might be 5–6 pages 

with 30 references. But you could expand on that as 

you know. It says landslides can be destructive, yet 

there is a natural history perspective and here is the 

citation, here’s the evidence, here’s the field data. I 

think you could improve on that.

Q: How much of the references integrate these studies, how much on components versus how much on 

integration? 

A: It’s mostly reductionist by process; you know, wood 

recruitment is a process but then it has mortality, bank 

erosion, land sliding. Landslide prediction is a process. 

Of course there is reference to photos of post fire land 

sliding. Here are photos of a 1936 fire in the Olympics 

that caused all kinds of landslides. I would say that the 

documentation / technical reference that would go with 

the data would have to be improved and added upon 

by some users who would be considered part of the 

process, then it would become very robust. Right now 

there are only a handful of us assembling this.

Q: A follow up to that: could the system be used to 

present hypothesis, say to look at a landscape scale 

experiment? 

A: There is some gaming potential now that is going 

to grow. So the wood budget that’s in there now has 

the ability to be gamed: you can change the forest age 

or input parameters. Some of those things are more 

sophisticated for people who are into that. But it was 

supposed to be designed for also a lighter touch. For 

example the BLM is running all kinds of simulation 

for wood recruitment because they want to inform 

their new forest plan in Oregon, to do some more 

aggressive harvesting. They’ll come up against some 

technical reviews and so they want tools that will 

allow them to look at woody debris and debris flows. 

And if they thin next to the stream is it at 5 percent or 

is it at 2 percent or is it a 50 percent. So the idea is that 

the platform is an evolution and will never stop. So if 

someone wants to game something, that tool will be 

built in.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Q: Does it have optimization potential? 

A: Yes it does, but right now we are just scratching the 

surface. We anticipate opening up for interaction with 

people who can technically collaborate. That’s where 

we are at, at this point. It needs that-more intellectual 

power. 

Q: What is the mechanism that this Netmap uses to 

display uncertainty about things that we don’t know? 

How are things displayed that are going to play out in 

the future such as climate change on physical processes? 

A: It doesn’t have anything explicit to do that. It’s 

basically running off of general principles that you can 

find in literature. So actually, what it does is, it takes 

a relatively simplistic view, totally and admittedly it 

takes a relatively simplistic view. What we need to 

do, and it is in the pipeline, is to produce outputs in 

terms of probability distribution. If you changed the 

climate for example, you’re going to find a changing 

probability distribution of anything: flow, fire, wood, 

sediment. But there is no way the community at large, 

in my opinion, can deal with probability distribution. 

So we completely backed off on that. If you want to do 

a real sensitivity analysis for climate in a real sense, I 

would argue that the probability distribution is correct. The problem is you’ve created a technology that 

nobody can use; you can use it in the Ivory Tower or at 

PNW and talk about the big picture. And then I would 

hope that with this more simple view of the world, 

those kinds of perspectives would overarch that. There 

is not any explicit detailed sensitivity analysis, it just 

goes in the literature, and virtually everything in here 

is published and supports the tools. It says “what is our 

general understanding of shallow seated land sliding, 

or wood recruitment or heating”? And I think if you 

wrote it down, you’d find out that we are pretty much 

in general agreement with the big picture. This is only 

supposed to take those ideas and make them manifest 

with all the ideas for which we don’t have perfect 

science. It is an admittedly simple approach using 

accepted general principles which means there is lots 

of uncertainty still. 

Q: Some of the physical processes are relatively well 

understood, some less well so, the temperature models 

for example, whether you get all the process right or 

not is a problem. How do you deal with displaying/

understanding uncertainty and the limitations associated with the physical process underneath some of 

them?

A: I think there is an underlying assumption of using 

what’s out there today even though it’s approximate. 

These tools are meant to be a screening tool. I don’t 

care if its 100 percent off. In fact you know anyone 

who works in geomorphology knows that if you are 

within 100 percent of anything you are doing great. In 

fact some people think in order of magnitude. General 

patterns are the focus. This is interesting, because of 

the underlying philosophy that says certain high levels 

of complexity in the watershed sciences are not going 

to be resolved; you just don’t go there. We are not 

ready to go there, and of course, people take that and 

beat you over the head with the uncertainty until they 

win the fight. But that uncertainty in some regards 

is unresolved and our objective is coarse screening. 

Now since this tool is supposed to continue to run and 

be alive, as soon as somebody finds a better way to 

do it – then the old would be yanked and the new one 

put it. The idea is that it will be a tool set that would 

never become outdated. As soon as LIDAR comes on, 

all the 10 meter goes out and the LIDAR comes in. 

But I agree, you are absolutely right that there is large 

uncertainty and you might be getting a wrong answer 

for erosion or land sliding. Like deep seated land sliding; you go to the literature and there’s no good tools. 

Massive landslides during last year’s rain storms; we 

can’t work on that, we don’t know enough to predict 
45

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

or prevent it. They’re applying LIDAR data to that 

assessment problem but I still suspect that we will not 

be able to move beyond an extremely large amount 

of uncertainty, maybe never, because of subsurface 

interactions that are driving these things. But that’s 

OK to admit that and move on. Some things we won’t 

be able to handle at all well.

Q: I’ll provide some feed back to that from a land 

management standpoint: incorporating that uncertainty 

in your models would have value, especially if you are 

looking at management to achieve trust responsibilities and through the public review process. There is 

growing need to demonstrate that you have addressed 

the uncertainty. There would be value in incorporating 

that; there is a growing audience that would see value 

in that.

A: With the hyperlink manuals, I could see an entire 

set on uncertainty. But that would require other 

expertise, time and efforts to do, and we don’t do that 

very much. 

Q: You mentioned modifying the FEMAT curves 

across the landscape. How would you use a tool like 

Netmap to do that?

A: If you want to consider upslope sources of wood 

for example, including debris flows, these tools can do 

that. If you want to adjust for temperature, these tools 

can do that or you can go to USGS website, download 

their steam temp model and use that. Some headwater 

streams would be sensitive to thermal loading and 

some aren’t. In FEMAT if you read the most recent 

material on FEMAT that Gordie authored, it’s full of 

information on disturbance and variability. The forest 

service just hasn’t taken it to that step. It’s conceptually in there, it just isn’t done. If you wanted to start 

messing with things like the width of the riparian 

recruitment zone for mortality and bank erosion, you 

have to do what people are doing in California and 

Alaska They go out and conduct field studies and measure everything and find out that it is 100 feet and not 

150 feet for say bank erosion mortality. But remember 

if the targets 100 percent (FEMAT target) you are 

basically at tree height. So you don’t even have to go 

out and measure it because it’s basically a tree height at 

the very farthest point. But in California, three timber 

companies for example, hired us to survey 100K of 

rivers/streams to determine where wood was coming 

from using new technologies that was developed in 

2000. Headwaters, I think, is where the greatest benefit 

and gain is to be made. 

Q: So back to mainly operating with the static stream 

idea; there was a concept to reference stream condition. That was based on landscape position, slope and 

geology and with these we should be able to predict 

what a stream is supposed to look like in an unmanaged state. The type of work that you and Tom Dunne, 

especially considering the probability distributions 

that you talked about, is very valuable. Do you think 

that reference stream condition or that idea makes any 

sense anymore? I was shocked to see in the upcoming American Geophysical Union meeting in San 

Francisco, that there is an entire session on defining 

reference stream conditions.

A: The future into the past: I saw that too and was 

kind of stunned. Some people just have it in their 

mind, although I think you could go in there with a 

paper on probability distribution and say, this is the 

reference state. I think they might welcome it. Then 

the issue is there. It is an average condition for any 

channel, even if there is a probability distribution there 

is an average. But the only way to see that average, is 

to go to all the channels that are like oriented, and that 

might be hundreds of channels, measure them all and 

calculate the distribution and take the mean. It’s kind 

of useless at the site level because you might come to 
46

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

the site and there’d be a big log or knot or landslide 

upstream 20 meters and then it looks different.

Q: I’m going to ask a completely unrelated question; 

your model says that large headwater streams don’t 

move wood very far maybe 30 meters. If you leave a 

buffer on a stream like that and a significant portion 

of the buffer blows over, what is the value of leaving a 

whole bunch of big wood on a little stream that’s not 

going to move it anywhere?

A: I don’t know; that’s kind of separate question of 

what’s the role of wood. You have more experience 

here on the Olympics on that very question. Somebody 

said that the wood piece made scale with the stream 

size, that smaller pieces do the work on smaller 

streams, you get that aspect., There is another aspect 

coming out of the Oregon Coast Range, mostly, but 

even in the Olympics, is that if it’s a debris flow prone 

stream you want the bigger pieces. 

Q: If it’s not a debris flow prone stream?

A: Yes, I think there is an argument made that small 

material might function there and you actually have 

some data to show some of that, I mean absolutely.
47

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Presentation

I was assigned to talk about riparian processes and 

aquatic habitat and response of aquatic populations. 

But what I really want to talk about is what I’ve 

listened to here. And I will spend a little time talking 

about riparian functions and effects on streams. 

I want to talk about the evolution of forest practices in Washington-George Ice touched on that this 

morning but I took a slightly different look at it and 

looked at it through the perspective of how have we 

used science over the last 30 years to inform changes 

in forest practices here in Washington and I would 

argue it equally applies to Oregon. I’m not as familiar 

with the forest practices in California and Idaho. I’m 

going to talk about disturbance and I think you’re 

probably going to get a lot of it today. And then finally, 

and this is somewhat cynical, but you’ll see where 

I’m coming from when I get to this final section-I am 

going to talk about all this attention to riparian management of forest lands and does it really matter for 

some of the aquatic resources we are most interested in 

protecting.

Managing aquatic habitat on forest land-the 

folks this morning were supposed to talk about key 

hypothesis. And George and Gordie did spend some 

considerable amount of time talking about a whole set 

of hypothesis that are sort of the underlying basis for 

forest management here in the Pacific Northwest. But 

really our management for aquatic systems applies 

not just to the forestland. There is a key underlying 

assumption that we can identify in the landscape, 

specific locations that interact most intensely with 

streams systems and that by protecting those few locations we are going to be able to create and maintain 

aquatic habitat conditions that are sufficient to support healthy populations of native aquatic biota. That 

really is the underlying assumption to the approach we 

choose for aquatic system management, not just some 

forest lands. This underlying assumption has a couple 

of corollary assumptions associated with it.

The areas requiring protection in order to protect 

aquatic systems are relatively small. If you are in 

commercial timber management this leaves a lot of the 

watershed area where you can practice commercial 

forestry while still maintain good aquatic habitat. 

The second assumption here is that we can actually design effective Best Management Practices that 

will protect the functional interaction between that 

sensitive location on the landscape and it’s relation to 

aquatic systems. 

So really I think these are the underlying assumptions for our approach to managing aquatic habitat 

here in the northwest.

Riparian influences on stream habitat: there is 

a laundry list and in a minute I’m going to show the 

FEMAT curves too, so I’m covering all the bases. 

Clearly we fully appreciate the important role that 

riparian systems play in maintaining, creating and 

modifying aquatic habitats. Everything from water 

temperature, trophic dynamics, litter input, stream 

primary production, bank stability, sediment delivery, 

Bob Bilby, Weyerhaeuser Company

In light of current scientific understanding, what is the 

degree of both confidence and uncertainty for each of these 

working hypotheses and assumptions? 

Aquatic Habitat – Populations and Riparian Processes
48

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

habitat, in-channel wood, channel form and material 

transport (sediment, organic matter, nutrients).

Here are the FEMAT curves; we’ve spent some 

time talking about them today. As I get into a discussion about the history of forest practices here in 

Washington State, I think the relevance of these curves 

will become more evident. I see the publication of 

these curves as really being a watershed event, if you 

will, and particularly in regulatory discussions about 

forest practices throughout the northwest. Before 

these curves were published we tended to think about 

individual factors like water temperature, and focus on 

that single factor. Here now we have a couple of thing 

going on. First, a more comprehensive identification 

with a full range of factors in the way in which riparian zones influence stream systems. And second, an 

explicit recognition that the intensity of these interactions varies with distance back from the channel, and 

that the shape of that curve varies depending on the 

function that you are talking about. Gordie talked this 

morning about having good data to actually generate 

these curves when they were doing the NW Forest 

Plan. I agree that there are certainly empirical data for 

some of these and we’ve seen some of that today. But 

there are some for which we don’t have good empirical 

information. Certainly water temperature has been 

well studied. There are two obvious differences in the 

water temperature data for samples taken on the South 

Central Coast of Oregon; you get higher maximum 

temperatures and you get high temperature fluctuations. You see two obvious differences here – one is 

you get higher maximum temperature and you get high 

temperature fluctuations. We pretty much understand 

the relationship between buffer width and shade provided to the channel. But as people look at this, it has 

become apparent that there is some variation, spatial 

variation, caused by a variety of factors. Different 

stand ages, different stand types; all have an effect on 

the shape of this particular curve. Wood debris, and 

I’m not going to belabor this, certainly there has been 

enough work done on wood in streams, the important 

role that it plays, that nobody questions anymore the 

important role of wood in streams. But it has a fundamental effect on the material transport system, whether 

you are talking about sediment transport or organic 

matter storage and there has been ample evidence that 

there is also a response in the biota in the streams to 

the availability of wood. 

There have been umpteen experiments where 

wood has been manipulated in some way, removed or 

added to the channel, and people have looked at the 

response in the biota. These are two examples; Bruce 

Wallace / Georgia, removed wood from stream and 

looked at the response of the invertebrate population 

and they saw not only changes in abundance, but 

fundamental changes in taxomic populations as well. 

Some work that Curt Fouts did in British Columbia 

a number of years ago, where they added wood to a 

stream channel and compared systems that had a large 

amount of wood and small amounts of wood and saw 

a large difference in fish biomass in those systems. 

Clearly wood is important. 

These are my interpretation of McDade Curves, 

but you’ve seen a number of these already. We do have 

good empirical evidence on buffer width and delivery 

of wood from the stream side buffer. And again we 

are only talking about delivery of wood from that 

one source. Basically the rate of input decreases with 

distance from the channel. Trees close to the channel 

have a higher probability of winding up in the stream 

when they fall, but again, even with wood input there 

is a high degree of spatial variability. Things like stand 

conditions, topography, rate of channel migration; all 

have influences on wood input and its relationship 

with distance to the channel. There is less sound 
49

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

information, empirical information, on some of these 

other functions. 

One afternoon, about three or four years ago, 

we were talking about the FEMAT curves and what 

evidence was available to populate those various relationships. We started talking about litter input. What 

factors do you want to consider to actually generate 

a litter input curve, what are some of the factors you 

have to account for? It turns out that this function is 

complicated: we’ve made the assumption that if you 

provide for wood and you provide for shade, you’ve 

got most of the other ones covered. Maybe that’s not 

true. With litter delivery, we decided that wind speed 

would be very important. Once a litter detaches from 

a tree, the distance that it travels is going to be greatly 

influenced by wind speed. Wind speed also influences 

litter production: after a big windstorm you have to 

go out and rake your lawn. Type of litter can have an 

effect on distance traveled: aerodynamically needles 

and leaves are different. Wind Direction can influence litter contribution to a stream; wind blowing 

perpendicular to the channel can deliver litter from a 

substantial distance. With winds parallel to the channel, only trees that are adjacent to or overhanging are 

going to be effective at delivering litter. Seasons will 

make a difference; more litter falls at certain times of 

year than other times per year. Forest characteristics 

are going to play a key role as well. For example tree 

height-a piece of litter that’s released forty meters off 

the ground has a potential at a given wind speed to 

travel much further than a piece of litter that’s produced twenty or fifteen feet off the ground. And also 

canopy architecture may play a role in this as well, in 

terms of the way it influences wind speed. 

We should have probably left it at this...said ‘OK, 

we’ve hashed it through thoroughly’ but like many 

things, it got completely out of hand. We went out in 

the woods and decided-let’s see if we can actually 

document some of these relationships. And the way 

that we did this was by taking a nylon sack, filling it 

with litter, either alder leaves or Douglas fir needles, 

and hoisting it up into the canopy, waiting for a 

particular wind speed and then pulling on two lines 

that opened a Velcro-closure at the bottom of the bag, 

releasing that litter and then capturing that material 

in these litter traps that were arrayed at set distances 

downwind from the location of the release site. We did 

this at numerous locations at a variety of stand locations. What we found was that clearly, wind speed and 

travel distance were related but we found that we got 

much greater travel at any given wind speed when we 

were talking about mature stands: large trees 140-160 

years old. In those stands we were releasing the litter 

at the bottom edge of the canopy, thirty meters off 

the ground. Contrast this with second growth conifer 

or hardwood stands where the bottom edge of the 

canopy was about fifteen meters off the ground. Travel 

distance was substantially less at a given wind speed in 

those younger stands. Alder leaves, in general, tended 

to travel further than fir needles in a given wind speed. 

We also characterized litter production as a function 

of wind speed. We saw the relationship we sought: 

it’s not very good but it was statistically significant. 

When you get more wind you get more litter produced. 

So we took this information, combined it with some 

published information on seasonal production of 

litter, then we took two wind data records that we had 

generated by placing anemometers at two sites. One 

was in a riparian area in an intact stand in the Washington Cascades. The other was about two kilometers 

downstream from that site in a stream side buffer. We 

took half hour wind speeds, applied these relationships 

that I just talked about to those wind records and then 

generated these curves. What we found was there was 

difference in cumulative litter input by stand type. 

Litter input occurred further away in the older stands. 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

But also interestingly, we saw there was a difference 

in litter delivered in the buffer and in the intact stand. 

In the buffer, as a result of the removal of the upslope 

stand you had consistently higher wind speeds, litter 

delivery actually occurred from greater distance then 

was the case in the intact stands. But the point here is 

that we saw significant amount of variability just looking at these two wind records in terms of difference 

with stand condition-the difference between needles 

and leaves, the difference between the buffered and 

the unbuffered site. But as we stared to think about 

this it became apparent that if we started to take a look 

more broadly across the landscape, across the region, 

a whole bunch of other factors which would contribute 

to spatially variation. Things like variation in wind 

behavior, variation in prevailing wind directions, 

topography of the riparian area-steeper sites are going 

to deliver litter from considerably greater distances, 

were affected. Essentially, the height above the channel 

is what you are interested in, in terms of affecting litter 

delivery. 

The point here is that we are talking about highly 

variable functions: the relationship between stream 

side buffer width and these various functions is very, 

very variable, spatially. It’s variable temporally too. 

But as everyone has said already-a one size fits all 

buffer configuration, a riparian zone management 

strategy, probably is not well founded on a technical 

basis. Also it raises the question of the whole idea that 

assuming there is some optimum riparian conditions 

that we need to find-assuming that if we can achieve 

the condition uniformly across the landscape, we’ll 

have the optimum for biological diversity and productivity. That does not seem to be the case based on what 

we’ve learned so far about riparian interactions with 

stream systems. 

A historical context: I wanted to bring this up 

because to my benefit-or maybe the curse-of having 

a very long perspective on this issue in Washington 

State, I think we’ve done a reasonable good job of 

incorporating new understanding about riparian 

stream interactions into the rules over the last 30 years. 

Partly these changes have been driven by improved 

understanding of the interactions between streams and 

their watersheds. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t’ mention there were some pretty powerful policy drivers 

as well that contributed to the evolution of the forest 

practice rules in Washington. The Clean Water Act, 

Endangered Species Act, Boldt Decision on tribal 

fisheries which also applied to habitat condition-all 

have been a primary driver in Washington as well. 

Basically the way the changes have occurred is that as 

we have understood better what some of the functional 

interactions are between riparian zones and streams, 

those functional interactions have been incorporated 

into rules and the rules have been changed accordingly. Back in the 1970’s, at that time there were not 

requirements for buffers along any stream. This is 

what a typical harvest looked like (slide) but with 

the enactment of the forest practice rules in 1975 in 

Washington, they decided that they needed to include 

something to address water temperature. Those initial 

rules only applied to streams that were below a certain 

elevation (2000 feet). You did not need to put buffers 

on streams above 2000 feet—they were not considered 

to be temperature sensitive and also you didn’t have 

to leave a buffer if there was some risk that blow 

down might occur. They were relatively modest rules 

required at that time. 

It was with the recognition of the role that wood 

played in channels that we really began to change 

the way we thought about riparian zones and the way 

that DNR started to protect streams. Before that time, 

(slide) this is what a typical commercial forest plantation would look like in western Washington. Management has occurred right down to the channel edge—as 
51

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

a result of that kind of management approach, there 

was less wood in streams in managed forests then 

there were in natural, unmanaged stands. There is a 

variety of work that has been done to demonstrate that. 

So in the 1980’s there was a substantial revision 

of the rules in Washington through the Timber Fish 

Wildlife process. One of the major changes in terms of 

how they managed riparian zones was to incorporate 

considerations for wood input and increase in buffer 

width. More importantly there was consistent application of buffers on streams throughout the state-it 

wasn’t just applying to these temperature sensitive 

streams anymore. The biggest changes in rules, 

however, have occurred since the early to mid 1990’s, 

starting with the development of watershed analysis 

and moving through the Forest and Fish process. Here 

we again see an expansion in the proportion of the 

drainage network that receives buffers, part of this 

expansion is due to improved understanding of how 

fish are distributed in watersheds. Initially we had 

greatly underestimated the headword extent of fish. 

Fish streams tend to get bigger buffers than non fish 

streams. The other thing that happened in Washington 

is now we do actually require buffers on larger non 

fish streams, those that have perennial flow. This is a 

pretty good comparison of the application of the rules 

(slide) pre Forest and Fish with some retention on non 

merchantable timber in the stream bottom, and what it 

looks like after we have 50 foot buffer on streams. 

The other thing – and this gets back to the whole 

question of disturbance that Gordie brought up-we’ve 

extended protection beyond the riparian zone, recognizing that there are other locations on the landscape 

that do interact intensely with stream systems, at least 

periodically. Clearly one of the big ones is unstable hill 

slopes. 

I’m going to talk a little bit about the role of disturbance, but right now I think the general opinion among 

many folks doing work in this area is that many of the 

characteristics of our stream systems are dictated to a 

large extent by rare, high intensity disturbance events 

and then the process of recovery that occurs after that 

disturbance. Take a look at a fairly typical disturbance 

sequence-this is a fairly consistent response-time is 

on a log scale (slide) the disturbance itself typically 

causes disruption of habitat conditions, direct morality of critters living in the stream system, a decline 

in productivity that last for relatively short period of 

time—usually—followed thereafter by a rapid rebound 

in productivity that is caused primarily by increase 

light reaching the channel, increased availability of 

nutrients. As a result, increased primary production 

and an increase in productivity that lasts a relatively 

short period of time (ten years or so) until the canopy 

closes over the stream channel again, reducing light 

input. And then you get a long slow period of increasing habitat condition, improving habitat condition, as 

the materials that were deposited in the channel as a 

result of that disturbance are worked by the stream 

and developed into high quality habitat which occur 

140–200 years post disturbance in many cases with a 

diminution in habitat quality thereafter. 

Using a debris torrent example, immediately after 

the event, things don’t look so good. This is the state 

where you see some direct morality, reduction in productivity but within four to five years as that material 

is worked by the stream you begin to see development 

of more defined habitat, more complex habitat condition, channel conditions, open canopy, lots of light 

reaching the channel and in this state you typically see 

relatively high levels of biological productivity that 

lasts until the canopy closes (example of data slide). 

Three streams in Mount St. Helens – immediately 

following the eruptions you see very low levels of 

productivity, but within three to four years afterwards, 

these three streams, two of which were in the blast 
52

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

zones, one of which was in the mud flow, show a rapid 

increase in Coho production, to a very high level when 

compared with other streams in the region. And then a 

slow decline through time as those sights shaded over. 

The mature forest systems where we typically see, 

from a physical standpoint, the highest quality habitat, 

here you have abundant wood provided by the initial 

disturbance event, plus you have riparian stands that 

are now beginning to contribute some wood. You have 

lots of the other inorganic material that were provided 

by the disturbance still being worked over by the 

stream and a lot of these low gradients that typically 

are associated with debris torrent deposit still persist 

in the stream channel even 100–200 years after the 

occurrence of the disturbance event. This is where we 

typically see peak habitat conditions and as you move 

into true old growth conditions you see much of that 

material that was contributed by the disturbance being 

removed from the channel and a gradual decline in 

habitat conditions. 

Again the system now is set up for another disturbance to improve habitat, improve aquatic habitat. 

Obviously old forests provide habitat for things other 

than the aquatic system so there is certain value to 

them as well. But the point here is the stream channels 

are going to vary. They are highly variable-they are 

going to vary two ways, the first of which is spatial: 

they will vary due to basic physical characteristics of 

stream channel, gradient, confinement, in valley form. 

And then overlaying those basic spatial differences and 

underlying characteristics of this system is this whole 

pattern of disturbance followed by recovery, temporal 

differences. As a result over a wide area, a watershed, 

a region, you are going to have highly variable conditions regardless of whether or not humans have intervened in that landscape. This is what Lee Benda said 

doesn’t really work as a way of characterizing desired 

future conditions – a probability distribution. But in 

fact it’s the most realistic way to take a look at watershed condition, here using temperature as an example. 

So in a relatively unimpacted, unmanaged watershed, 

you can expect to see a range of mid-summer temperature as a result of disturbance, differences in channel 

conditions. Some sites are going to naturally exhibit 

relatively high temperatures, because they’ve been 

recently disturbed. Others are going to be quite cold. 

In a system where humans have impacted watershed 

conditions, you’ll see a shift in that distribution of 

conditions, in this case to the right toward warmer 

temperatures. So this might best represent the kinds of 

conditions that you’d like to see in a watershed if you 

are successfully protecting aquatic habitat. If you had 

this conditions, one way to monitor your progress back 

toward your desired conditions, is to take a look at the 

shift of the entire frequency distribution, in this case 

water temperature, but you can apply this to any other 

habitat attribute that you want. 

So going back to the key hypothesis: disturbance 

is truly important, and I don’t think there is much 

doubt about that in determining the conditions of 

aquatic systems. How do we actually incorporate 

that into our approach to forest management, aquatic 

protection of forest systems? The forest service has 

had some experience with this (slide): they took a look 

at Agustus Creek-fire frequency, the distribution of 

hazardous slope stability across the basin, and then 

said what we’re going to do is identify those location 

where we shouldn’t be cutting trees because of potential slope stability issues. And then on the rest of the 

area we are going to implement a harvest program that 

has sufficiently long periods of time, sufficiently long 

rotation times, so essentially timber harvest emulates 

the natural disturbance regime in the watershed. On 

public lands this may well be a viable approach. It’s 

probably not economically viable on commercial 

timberlands, but here in Washington, what we’ve 
53

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

evolved towards through time is a set of protective 

measures that include the riparian zone. So we have 

moved in the direction of accounting for disturbance 

to a certain extent in the application of forest practices 

here in Washington state by identifying and protecting 

unstable slopes. Probably you’ve got some additional 

work to do in determining whether or not we are 

adequately identifying unstable slopes and whether or 

not those unstable slopes when they do fail have the 

desired effect on the channel. We certainly have at 

least identified that this is a process that needs to be 

accounted for in forest management. 

To finish this up I wanted to bring in what has 

become a favorite hobby horse of mine in the last 

several years. We can argue how we ought to be 

managing streams and forested lands in the Pacific 

Northwest and I would raise the question-does it 

really matter? Particularly if we’re talking about the 

retention of some of the most charismatic aquatic 

organisms – salmon. This quote here is only the first 

half-“rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”-this 

is a phrase that a fellow who had an office next to mine 

used to use quite frequently. It’s applicable to a lot 

of things that Weyerhaeuser does, but it’s applicable 

in this situation, I think, and Gordie raised this issue 

earlier, because the process we are attempting to do in 

the Pacific Northwest is to address a lot of the environmental issues that we’re faced with in the region on our 

forestlands. Certainly on Forest Service lands, but it’s 

also true to a certain extent, on private forest as well. 

So we took a look at the relationship between salmon 

population and land use in eighty-four watersheds.

We had consistent data from 1984-2001. Our question 

was ‘do we see changes, not in the absolute number 

of spawning fish, but in their distribution across those 

eighty-four sites through time as land use change 

within those watersheds changed? Now we are not 

looking at absolute numbers but looking for changes in 

distribution. What we found is that we had twelve or 

fourteen watersheds, of those eighty-four, which over 

that period of time experienced urban development. 

Forests were replaced with high density residential 

or some kind of commercial development. Of those 

fourteen sites at the beginning of that period-the mid 

1980’s they in total were responsible for supporting 

somewhere around 20–25 percent of the total spawning aggregation of the eighty-four sites. By 2001, those 

fourteen watersheds were supporting about 5 percent 

of the total spawning aggregation. We also saw a 

statistically significant decline in those watersheds 

where there was an increase in agricultural land use, 

although that represented a very small proportion 

of the total area. With rural residential increase use; 

there was a slight positive trend. But by far the greatest positive trend is seen in those areas that remained 

in forests. Those forested sites went from supporting 

20–30 percent of the total spawning aggregation, to 

at the end of the study, supporting about 60 percent 

of the total spawning aggregation. Essentially as we 

converted land from forest, whether federal, state or 

private forest lands, into the more intensive human 

land uses we essentially lost the salmon from those 

watersheds and lost them very rapidly based on what 

these data showed. 

Private and state land forest conversion-everything 

in western Washington, except federal lands-is occurring at a rate of about 0.37 percent/year, about 25,000 

acres/year from 1988–2004. It may have slowed some 

in the last six months. Nonetheless it represents a fairly 

substantial rate of conversion from forest to other land 

uses, particularly in the Puget Sound counties: King 

County, Pierce County, Snohomish County, these are 

especially showing very rapid rates of conversion. 

But there’s actually something even more insidious 

going on here-take a look at the four watersheds 

where we did our Coho study which ranged from Lake 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Washington in the south to the Skagit in the North. 

About 70 percent of the land in those four watersheds 

is actually restricted now for some kind of forest land 

use. It is federal forest, state forest or it’s private forest 

land restricted to forest use. This sounds good. But if 

you take a look just at those areas that are accessible 

to salmon, below blockages, you get a very different 

story. Only 35 percent of the lands adjacent to channels 

that are accessible by salmon actually are zoned and 

designated forest. Sixty-five percent is already zoned 

in such a way that it could be converted at some time 

in the near future. 

Essentially what we’ve done is we directed forest 

conversion to those areas that are most important to 

supporting salmon. So we’ve got a problem not only 

with conversion. We’ve got a problem with where we 

are actually directing that conversion. If we’re going 

to retain salmon in the Pacific Northwest, the kind of 

discussions we are having here, I think, are important. 

But we need to understand what contribution forest 

lands can ultimately make to salmon and overall 

aquatic health. But I think that looking at forest land 

management alone is going to be insufficient. We need 

to really think very carefully about forest conversion 

and try to develop strategies that are going to help 

minimize the impact conversion will have. 

I don’t think it’s realistic to assume we can stop 

conversion or even slow it in any substantial way. 

I suggest one way of doing this is to identify those 

specific locations within a watershed, regardless of 

what the zoning is right now or what the prevailing 

land use is, that have high biological potential, that 

have high potential to support aquatic resource characteristics that we are primary interest in and move 

to protect these from human impacts. Conversely that 

would mean steering development into other areas, 

the areas that have low biological potential, are not 

gong to be very productive or maybe they are already 

compromised by current human land use within that 

location. Clearly this represents a substantial change in 

the way that we manage aquatic systems in the region 

today. Right now, we do it piecemeal, this set of rules 

for forest, this set of rules for agriculture, this set of 

rules for urban. But nobody’s taking a comprehensive 

look across all land uses and trying to come up with 

a strategy that’s going to enable us to identify and 

protect the most important sites. 

Basically the key points I’ve made here today are 

that we have seen changes over the past thirty years 

and I would contend those changes have improved our 

understandings of how aquatic systems work and how 

aquatic resources respond to the application of forest 

practice rule changes. We still have some way to go, 

but we have made substantial improvements. There is 

still some need, I think, to explicitly include some consideration of disturbance mechanisms in the way we 

manage the stream. We’ve even made some improvement, I’d contend, along those lines. Increasingly, 

however, the future conditions of our aquatic systems 

in the Pacific Northwest are going to depend in large 

part on how we deal with this conversion issue. Right 

now it’s a pretty scary thing particularly given the fact 

we tend to be focusing conversion in exactly the wrong 

places. Right now I don’t see that there is an easy fix 

for that.

Questions and Answers

 Q: I enjoyed your exercise looking at litter quality; 

taking some theoretical ideas to a practical task. You 

can actually model that with an EPA approved model 

so you could confirm your results. I wonder-it seems 

like we have a fixation on large wood rather than litter. 

A couple of reasons-large wood takes a long time to 

get back. So the time factor is one. And then there 

is substitution in that you lose litter contributions 

with some riparian disturbance but you get increased 

primary production.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

A: The first one: I’d be interested in seeing how the 

EPA models actually compare to some of the empirical 

data that we collected. The one difference that we’re 

actually looking at is drift underneath the canopy. 

There is probably a lot more variability in the wind 

speed that the litter experiences rather than in a 

more open situation. The other question: this balance 

between in- channel primary productivity and litter 

and the role that plays in supporting productivity. 

Really the high levels of primary production are prevalent only for a relatively short period of time immediately following the disturbance, or (in the old days) 

immediately following cutting to the channel edge. It’s 

a relatively short window of very high level of primary 

production. Primary production, of course, continues 

even in very low light levels, but at much reduced 

levels. In small headwater streams, even third or fourth 

order streams, litter terrestrial organic matter is the 

primary fuel for the trophic process in the channel.

Q: One thing that has occurred to me, when you look 

around the room, you ask yourself who is invited to 

this symposium and it’s either watershed policy folks 

or it is aquatic scientists. I believe that over the years 

that I’ve been involved, that we haven’t done a very 

good job of working with our wildlife colleagues on 

this whole question of riparian management. Yet as we 

start to examine our research over the broad scale, we 

start to appreciate more of the interactions that take 

place between aquatic and riparian plants and animals. 

You see that with the state of work on the importance 

of fish carcasses during the 90’s but what I suspect is, 

we still have a long way to go in terms of understanding the relationships between the riparian wildlife 

and aquatic resources. I’d like to get your take on it: 

what can be done to make policymakers appreciate the 

importance of studying these as an integrated ecosystem versus just having an aquatic orientation to our 

issues or a wildlife orientation to the issues?

A: It’s not just the policy folks. We are partly to 

blame for that partition as well. We aquatic folks work 

together, the wildlife folks work together; we talk to 

them sometimes. But I can count the number of times 

I’ve sat down and tried to design a study with some 

of the wildlife folks on less than one hand. But one 

place where we have recently had some success with 

some integration from a study perspective is with these 

intensively monitored watersheds. I’m involved in one 

in Oregon on the headwaters of the Trask; the Forest 

Service is involved as well. We have actually got some 

of the wildlife folks interested in that study and what 

we’re looking at is harvest on very small headwater 

channels and how harvest on them influences downstream conditions. We got the wildlife folks interested 

in looking at bird populations along these headwater 

channels and asking the question ‘does change in 

habitat structure and the change in food type and 

potentially food availability have some fundamental 

influence on the productivity of the bird population as 

well as species composition’. There’s an example of 

where we can use one experimental platform to bring 

in some of the wildlife questions as well as some of the 

aquatic questions.

Q: Is wildlife the only missing element to be addressed 

on these sites? 

A: Well, more or less as an afterthought we added 

riparian associated mollusks. With the sampling 

technique we were using we captured millipedes. We 

had no clue what they were-we sent them off, we had 

something like 5 species and a new genus. We have 

no idea what’s out there-there’s still oceans of things 

to learn about: the fauna and flora of these areasespecially the micro fauna and micro flora of these 

headwater areas. 

Q: If you took the general notion that some of the 

food for the fish is coming off the land, that’s a fairly 

important function. The reason that works is because 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

are probably going to harvest the most productive sites 

because they’ll rotate faster, so does that mean we’re 

going to be harvesting right on top of the best fish 

sites? There really was no correlation, but there was a 

really strong correlation with one thing and that was 

the percent of hardwood in the riparian area.

A: I agree with you Ken in that we haven’t done a very 

good job in terms of riparian management in thinking 

about trophic processes. It’s essentially been ignored. 

The whole question about alder and the role it may 

play in promoting watershed productivity is one that 

is particularly relevant because we’ve been involved 

in a very aggressive program of eliminating alder and 

planting confer because it is a superior source of large 

wood. We have not considered the role that alder plays 

in terms of enhancing trophic productivity. 

Q: There are very few studies out there that consider 

the forest management regime for improving fish 

productivity through the food chain. We came up 

with some wild ideas: creating gaps, promoting alder 

growth, and identified landscape or landforms where 

alder were more likely to be present. But as Ken also 

said: there’s no information and I think this would be 

interesting for ONRC to look at. How big of a gap, 

where would you put it? You might want to experiment with that, it has to be meaningful for the stream. 

Where would you put it on the landscape so you aren’t 

compromising large woody debris? We considered 

stuff like a certain size of a stream, aspect, junctions 

versus flood plains and stuff like that. It’s a very 

relevant question but also a relevant research subject to 

delve into for riparian management.

of the rapid growth of the alder-in fact it’s a nitrogen 

fixer. That really neat study on litter delivery, it took a 

lot of work and I can appreciate trying to do that sort 

of thing, so there’s delivery and then entrainment and 

then utilization as far as litter goes. Why do we really 

care about litter: the assumption is we care about litter 

because it has something to do with food for the fish. 

I’m reminded of the fact that most of the fish-centric 

evolved based on habitat: it’s always been the assumption that if you get the habitat right, the fish will come. 

Yet the very best salmonid fish growth that we know 

about occurs in place where there’s no habitat at all: 

hatcheries. In a hatchery it’s about food and yet we 

never seem to get food considered. And the idea that 

if you can measure how well the litter floats to the 

surface of the water, then the next thing is how well 

is it retained. Large wood comes into that for a lot of 

other things. The things that cause it to actually be 

incorporated into the organic cycle of a long or short 

stream reach or even a watershed; those are important 

considerations and yet I’ve yet to see any kind of 

management plan that has anything to do with food, 

whether terrestrial or aquatic. For example, we ask 

questions about site productivity from a forestry point 

of view. We are seeing that site productivity somehow 

translates into stream productivity, so we set out to 

measure site productivity in the upland site of the 

riparian area using alder as the metric; we measured 

the site productivity in the riparian and the upslope 

area, using typical forestry techniques. For the fish 

point of view it was age or weighted age as a measure 

of how well they’re doing. The concern was, OK we 
57

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

Riparian habitat plays a critical, but poorly defined, 

role in the maintenance of viable populations of many 

terrestrial species in forests of the Pacific Northwest. 

In general, riparian zone management has focused on 

the production and maintenance of high quality aquatic 

habitat, including wood recruitment, sediment storage, 

and water quality, to benefit in-stream populations, primarily fish. However, the way in which different riparian management strategies influence the population 

dynamics of terrestrial wildlife is less well understood. 

I discuss 3 case studies to illustrate the difficulties in 

assessing population responses to management when 

temporal and spatial scales of research and management are not aligned: the responses of passerine 

birds to different buffer sizes, population changes in 

snag-dependent birds in response to intensive forest 

management, and occupancy dynamics of streamassociated amphibians. Numerous research results 

exist for these topics, but very few studies have uncovered causal mechanisms that describe the link between 

management actions and population responses. In part, 

these results may be attributed to research methods 

that were poorly suited to questions of interest, but also 

because sampling of local populations cannot capture 

dynamics that may influence regional populations. 

Also, I discuss how current management-characterized 

by uniform, localized disturbances, primarily harvest 

of individual stands-has been substituted for historic 

disturbances-such as volcanic eruptions and forest 

fires-that are characterized by patchy effects that occur 

A.J. Kroll, Weyerhaeuser Company

In light of current scientific understanding, what is the 

degree of both confidence and uncertainty for each of these 

working hypotheses and assumptions?

Riparian Habitat / Populations

over thousands of acres. Most riparian management 

strategies do not recognize the role of disturbance 

events that occur on larger scales, and instead focus 

on retaining small scale disturbances, such as debris 

flows, to provide in-stream habitat features. As 

implemented, current forest practices rules dictate 

novel landscape patterns and our research base is not 

prepared to address the consequences of these 

practices. 

Presentation

We have a broad group of policy and science folks 

here today, and we can grasp intuitively the concept of 

populations, but as far as placing our physical hands 

on a population and calculating reliable estimates of 

population size, we are still stumbling around in the 

dark. People’s thoughts today are mainly focused on 

what’s going on in the stream system. We have wood 

recruitment, sediment storage, and water quality as 

the primary issues that drive management and policy 

actions. 

For riparian species- my focus today- we have 

amphibians as a regulated group and as far as the 

riparian wildlife side of things is concerned, they have 

to have a backbone: no insects. Also, I am primarily 

talking about species that are terrestrial in nature. 

Besides the amphibians, which I’ll get to at the end of 

my talk, certain ecological functions in these riparian 

areas must be considered. Primarily, one is interested 

in short-term refugia in the riparian zones during 

the actual operations when the forested uplands are 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

being removed. Bridge habitat may occur where these 

organisms are staying in riparian areas for a certain 

time until the succession starts in the upland area. And 

finally landscape connectivity, something we’ve heard 

about today, an extensive riparian network exists, 

and species are using the network to move around in 

the landscape; exactly how they are doing it, for the 

majority of species, we don’t know. So, ultimately, I 

will focus today on the implications of these different 

strategies for populations, what we do know, what 

we’ve learned in the fifteen years since FEMAT, and 

what we still would like to learn. 

Primarily, the focus is on the concept of source 

populations. Populations that, on an annual per capita 

basis, are net exporters of individuals as opposed to 

having individuals enter riparian areas and not doing 

as well in riparian areas as they do in other habitats. 

This is the notion of ecological traps; species preferentially selecting habitat that looks good and then 

suffering reduced reproductive success and survival in 

those areas. 

So what has changed in fifteen years? I’d say we 

have an adequate understanding of riparian obligates 

species: species that require riparian habitat to fulfill 

their life history. That is something that was on the 

way to being developed fifteen years ago and we’ve 

done a good job in that area. Part of it involves distribution by stream orders-in larger order streams you’ll 

have things like river otters that you won’t find in first 

or second order streams. The natural question to ask 

here is whether fish buffers are adequate for the maintenance of riparian obligate species? That’s something 

people ask me, and that is one of the issues I’m going 

to talk about today. By and large, we don’t really know. 

I’m going to focus on the exact habitat elements that 

these species are responding to in riparian areas as 

well as upland areas. Essentially this discussion is 

based on the implementation of Forest Practice Rules 

and what this means to the distribution of these riparian obligate populations. 

I think one of the key developments over the last 

fifteen years is essentially a golden age of quantitative 

methods. A lot of wildlife folks have worked on this 

issue. They’ve provided a set of tools that allow us to 

have greater insight into these populations than we had 

fifteen years ago. 

Primarily the way I look at the problem is that 

one has riparian populations and this framework for 

understanding them revolves on three key areas: 1) 

the habitat structure of these riparian areas: what 

habitat elements occur in those areas, what exists for 

management; 2) the ecology of the species that occur 

there (life history and distributions); and 3) this is the 

main focus of what I do at Weyerhaeuser, the research 

design, sampling, and analysis, how to establish studies that answer important questions. What I see far too 

often is that statisticians are being brought into these 

projects once the data is collected and by and large that 

is an extreme form of triage; in a lot of cases it just 

isn’t going to help. 

In general, our knowledge base about riparian 

species and how they interact with habitat varies in 

quality. We have some very good studies and we have 

some studies that aren’t so good: they don’t provide 

much insight. Generally, the knowledge base is insufficient in size; we don’t have as much information as 

we’d like. One of the key aspects of the knowledge 

base is our ability to separate process and sampling 

uncertainty. Again, this has been a common theme 

throughout the talks today. This problem was quite 

large 20 years ago; the techniques to describe different 

sources of uncertainty as part of the research design 

just weren’t available. There have been some key 

papers that have come out in the last seven or eight 

years that have pioneered techniques to allow us to do 

that. However, I still think it’s possible, at this point, 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

for us to ask what I would consider to be reasonable 

questions about populations based on studies that have 

been completed, data that’s available out there, and 

good ecological theory. 

Populations: most biologists measure abundance. 

This is the pattern that appears within a population 

that varies in size over time and space. But abundance 

is really a function of four different processes: the 

birth and death of individuals and immigration and 

emigration: individuals who are exiting the population, 

individuals who are entering the population. Again, 

another issue that we’ve developed a better appreciation for is the influence of density-dependence. How 

many or how few individuals are in a population; how 

abundance changes and how those four processes 

mentioned are working together. We have a large body 

of evidence (over 90 percent of the evidence of wildlife 

and habitat use is just habitat use information) describing where one finds the species, how many, how they 

are distributed over time and space. A very small 

percentage of those studies look at habitat selection, 

why certain organisms preferentially select habitat, and 

how that selection affects their reproductive success 

and survival, as well as those top four processes. I’d 

say those few studies are more valuable because they 

do provide some insight into those populations, but 

again that is something that has only been recently 

reinforced over the last five to six years. 

Rather than provide a broad survey of what’s 

changed over the last 15 years, I’m going to focus 

on three key areas because I think that will open up 

some questions among the group. I’m going to focus 

on three distinct taxonomical groups that I think have 

received the preponderance of the research interest in 

the Pacific Northwest. 

The first issue I will talk about is buffers and birds. 

A study came up at the end of Bob Bilby’s talk with 

the idea of integrating upland areas and the riparian 

areas. Scott Pearson and Dave Manuwal published a 

study in a 2001 article in Ecological Applications1

; it 

was part of the CMER riparian buffer studies. They 

were evaluating buffers and their influence on the bird 

community on 2nd and 3rd order streams in Washington. They found that buffers approximately 30 meters 

on each side of the stream did not retain all the species 

that were found on unharvested areas. They were 

concerned primarily with five species: black-throated 

gray warbler, golden-crowned kinglet, Pacific-slope 

flycatcher, brown creeper, and winter wren. They 

determined that there was a drop in abundance of 

these species and they recommended that a buffer 

greater than 45 meters be in effect on each side of the 

stream; this was their most conservative recommendation to retain these species. And their conclusion is 

that an unfavorable edge effect existed along these 

streams; these birds were declining in abundance. We 

know abundance changed-this was a relatively short 

term study (less than five years)-but why abundance 

changed is difficult to assess in a case like this. What 

happened, exactly? 

This is one of the best forest management papers 

I’ve seen in a long time-certainly one of the best in the 

Pacific Northwest-but again it just gives us information 

about the pattern and not the process. However, we 

have access to data especially in the Western US which 

allow us to say something about the potential population level consequences. 

The natural question is: what is happened to the 

birds? Where did these birds go; they weren’t killed 

by logging. As soon as the equipment rolls in, they are 

1

Pearson, S.F. and Manuwal, D.A. 2001. Breeding bird response to riparian buffer width in Pacific Northwest Douglas-fir forests. Ecological 

Applications 11:840-853.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

going to leave. Did they go to nearby riparian areas, 

did they go further away to more suitable habitat, did 

some of them die in moving across the landscape, did 

they have an inability to access suitable resources or 

find sites? We just don’t know. We notice some shortterm consequences with these different buffer strategies as far as abundance declining over a couple years 

of study. It would be interesting ten years later to go 

back to these sites and see what the abundance looks 

like and there has been some effort to do that. 

The government (USGS) maintains long-term 

transects across the United States on which they have 

been monitoring birds for a long time.2 We have data 

for 1968–2005. These data can help us to understand 

what might be going on with these populations in the 

long-term. I don’t want any of my presentation here 

today to suggest a cause and effect relationship, but 

these data are one tool that might allow us to understand the cumulative effects of some of these practices, 

especially for birds that we know are influenced by forest management. We have forty years of data, including how many birds occur per transect. The data are 

rolled up every year to calculate a per transect count 

(an average count per year over time). 

Example: American Robin in Illinois, this common bird is found throughout the United States; along 

these transects, they’ve been increasing over these 

forty years. The important thing I’d note is that looking at the trend line, one does not see a ton of variation 

along the trend line: there are lots of them (robins), 

there have always been lots of them, and there’s more 

and more with each year. 

This is a bird the federal government is worried 

about: the Cerulean Warbler in West Virginia. This 

bird is not nearly as abundant as the robin and it’s 

clearly declining in abundance. The data shows a little 

variance in its population from year to year, and they 

are very worried about this bird in the East. 

Here are data for the Black-throated Gray Warbler 

in the northern Pacific Rainforest region, forty years of 

data, including southern British Columbia, Washington, northwest Oregon; the areas west of the Cascade 

Crest. The first thing you note is that there is a ton 

of variation year to year in the count. Again, like the 

Cerulean Warbler, it’s never been a very abundant bird 

but if you were to go in on any time sequence and try 

to punch out five years to study this bird, you are going 

to get a lot of variation. Essentially you are going to 

be sampling from a population that displays a large 

amount of annual variation in abundance.

2

All figures from: Sauer, J.R., Hines, J.E., and Fallon, J. 2008. The North American Breeding Bird Survey, Results and Analysis 1966–2007. 

Version 5.15.2008. USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, MD

Pacific-slope Flycatcher: in southwest Washington, 

you can’t go to a riparian area that has conifer overstory and not hear a Pacific-slope Flycatcher. They are 

fairly abundant; trending upwards over time. There’s 

been a little dip in the last six years-again a lot of year 

to year variation.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Winter Wren: same thing. The amount of variation 

is even worse. If someone showed me this and asked 

me to do a four to five year study of Winter Wrens, I’d 

say not in a million years: you need to study them for 

decades. Say not in a million years: 

Brown Creeper: the data look a lot better. For 

some reason the species has been trending up. It could 

be they are doing a better job of detecting it along the 

routes, but I doubt it. 

Golden-crowned Kinglet: this bird is one we have 

concerns about. You can see that when surveys began 

40 years ago, it used to be all over the place, but variation is narrowing as the overall bird population goes 

down. That bird is in some kind of population decline. 

Next, I want to talk about the retention of habitat 

elements, which is critical for retaining species. 

Populations of wildlife don’t respond to habitat types. 

They don’t respond to Western Hemlock forest per 

se or Douglas-fir forest. They are responding to the 

structural elements of the habitat that we can manage, including snags, downed logs, shrubs, over- and 

midstory canopies, etc. Riparian areas provide all of 

the elements; in some cases they provide a lot of these 

elements. One of the natural questions to ask is ‘If we 

provide enough elements in riparian areas, do we not 

have to worry about habitat elements in the uplands?’ 

That has been a key assumption in a lot of riparian 

management strategies. One of the things that is lost 

in these strategies is that we don’t really have a very 

good understanding of how the spatial context of these 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

elements influences how the wildlife populations are 

using those elements and whether populations are 

going up or down or not changing as a result. 

Again, there is the upland versus riparian element 

of the issue: where is the transition? In arid parts of the 

west, over 90 percent of the terrestrial vertebrates are 

using riparian areas for some aspect of their life history. Obviously, water’s not as limiting as one moves 

west of the Cascade Crest so that number goes down 

quite a bit. But a lot of species are riparian obligates 

west of the crest. And finally, we just don’t have a very 

good handle of the landscape context. Most of our 

strategies are stand-based strategies: these strategies 

are paired with forest practice rules, and applied to the 

landscape. We change that landscape and we really just 

don’t know what that does to populations. 

We know that snag numbers have been greatly 

reduced. We can follow the same exercise with bird 

population implications relative to snags that we did 

with riparian buffers. Snags have been reduced in 

riparian areas and upland areas over the last fifty 

years. Large snags, snag-rich patches, primarily in 

low elevations – we’ve eliminated those features. As 

we trend up in elevation, the picture gets a little bit 

better. I think anyone would expect, before becoming 

involved with any kind of study, that with the dramatic 

decline we see in these snags, that you would expect 

cavity-dependent birds to follow those decline trends. 

These birds are nesting and, in a lot of cases, foraging 

in snags. 

But when one examines the data, it’s just not 

indicating that a significant decline is happening. 

For the Pileated Woodpecker (a bird not well sampled 

with this method due to its very large territories) you 

can see they never detected more than an average of 

one bird per route in the forty years that they’ve been 

collecting data. 

Nonetheless, it does provide a general index. Hairy 

Woodpecker: same thing, you see a little bit of an 

upward tick in abundance. 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Red-breasted Nuthatch: again a lot of year to year 

variation-there seems to be a little bit of an upward 

trend. 

Chestnut-backed Chickadee: there’s tons of these 

birds out in the woods, but again if you look at the 

annual variation, it seems to be declining over the last 

decade. 

There is one bird I have some concern about: the 

Red-breasted Sapsucker. This bird spends a lot of 

time in the alders. See what has happened over time 

–whether this has something to do with a bias toward 

alder I am not sure—but it doesn’t just like upslope 

alder patches, it likes riparian alder patches. 

What’s happening in all of these examples? Food 

limitation, territorial dynamics, basic indirect competition, issues on wintering grounds with other birds who 

are cavity-dependent, seasonal movements-we don’t 

really know. The way to track this issue is by banding 

birds, but the recapture rates for a lot of these birds 

are terrible so it’s hard to determine what is going on. 

An assumption that is overlying all of these graphs is 

that these routes are providing reliable samples-that 

people are identifying these birds correctly and also 

that the specific habitat along these routes isn’t changing from the general habitat at the landscape level. An 

OSU professor published a paper to show that this very 

thing is occurring back east. There’s no doubt over the 

last ten to fifteen years in the Pacific Northwest that 

we’ve had some tremendous changes in the habitat of 

the forested and rural areas. And the question of how 
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relevant these routes are to providing inferences about 

these populations is a good one. 

Also, snags are only one resource that we’re 

dealing with when we study what controls population 

numbers. This graph has been in the wildlife literature 

for fifty years. The Y axis is the percent contribution 

to the maximum population we could have on a target 

landscape or a planning area. Along the X axis is the 

number of snags. At some point you can continue 

to dump snags or any other resource into an area 

and you’re not going to move that population at all. 

At some place in this target region, it ceases to be a 

science question: it is a management question. Where 

do you want to set that target? We can provide some 

information about that but for 98 percent of the vertebrates out there we don’t know where that graph goes. 

A good opportunity for research. 

Questions about habitat elements remain and for 

quite a few of them we don’t have answers. For most 

species, a good understanding of the relationship of 

what habitat elements they are using has not been 

achieved. The question is: how many do we need, what 

kind of spatial or temporal distributions do we want? 

The question about landscape patterns is the elephant 

in the room, including the proximity to older forest 

types. This is especially relevant when you are dealing 

with checkerboard landscapes. We have more of those 

down in Oregon than we do in Washington. Checkerboard landscapes create fragmentation because of 

forest practices and again, patch context.

A relevant example of what I’m talking about 

is shown on this slide. This is a typical forest stand, 

recently harvested; we’ve got a geology leave area 

there, also an upslope unstable leave area. You can 

see the buffer along the fish bearing stream. The first 

question: can you put some of the habitat elements 

found along the steam in the upslope area? For some 

species, they are only going to use habitat elements if 

they are in an upslope area. We could shift some of the 

riparian habitat to the geology leave patch, although 

again we don’t have a lot of information on how that 

would work. Certainly for species that react adversely 

to increased edge to area ratios it’s going to work a lot 

better than sticking them out there where there’s no 

habitat area, no forested area. Or you could put habitat 

for species in the riparian area; I’ve put a heavy yellow 

arrow (there) because that is where they are going. 

We are engaged in a very large landscape engineering project with regard to wildlife, the long-term 

consequences of which are primarily unknown. I think 

this is an interesting area-what would happen if we left 

trees in a whole contiguous patch? What if we took 

some of these trees along the riparian buffer and added 

them there (between geology leave area and riparian 

area). As far as the operator is concerned, the same 

amount of trees are left, but you would have a continuous habitat configuration there. You aren’t getting any 

operational fall-down-you can see from the skid trails 

that logs were pulled in either direction. Engineering 

and unit layout can be the primary obstacle in many 

cases. 

We are having a hard time in the scientific community, the wildlife community, getting people to 

understand the statistical issues. We’ve made headway, 

although the example I’m going to focus on is one 

we could have handled thirty to thirty-five years ago. 

There is just unwillingness on the part of practitioners 

to address this issue. I don’t want to focus on saying a particular study is right or wrong; science is 

an incremental gain of knowledge, some of it more 

reliable, some less so. One of the things we can do 

constructively, what we’ve developed since FEMAT, is 

to conduct critical reviews. We can start asking some 

legitimate questions about how much of this knowledge we continue to bring forward or how much will 

be regarded as merely anecdotal. How can that be done 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

in an objective way that satisfies all the stakeholders, I 

wouldn’t know. 

People are often interested in the population total 

for a particular species. They’ve relied on sampling 

to provide the count – some kind of index of that 

population size. And that is not actually correct. This 

quantity beta provides an estimate of the detection 

probability and permits an estimate of the population 

size and a measure of precision: a standard error with 

a 95 percent confidence interval around the population 

total. Why does detection vary? In the case of trying 

to count chickens, you might have different kinds of 

chickens; they might be more likely or less likely to be 

counted, certain chickens you are going to see every 

time. Further, we have good reason to expect that 

detection probability will vary by species, gender, age, 

habitat types and other factors 

MacKenzie and Kendall (2002) are probably as 

responsible as anyone for a lot of these advances in 

quantitative techniques. They stated the following in 

a recent paper: that “detection probability tends to 

vary over time and space, and therefore the burden of 

proof should be on showing that it is equivalent, not 

the opposite”. We’ve operated, as wildlife biologists 

for the last fifty years, under the assumption that the 

probability is one, or does not vary over time and 

space. MacKenzie and Kendall are saying that ‘your 

assumption should be that it’s not one and you need to 

show that the assumption of no variation in detection 

probability is equivalent to one is correct. What does 

this mean for previous research? I don’t know – but 

whenever you read results of previous research, you 

should be thinking about MacKenzie and Kendall. 

The same is true for sampling communities as for 

sampling populations. Again, we’ve always treated 

populations as distinct groups that are living together, 

but we know from ecological dynamics that competition, predation, density-dependent factors and so forth 

are causing these populations to interact in different 

ways over space and time. As a result, your individual 

and species detection rates are going to vary. It’s been 

shown in a couple of recent papers and will continually be shown that methods that do not account for the 

source of variation can be severely biased. Again we 

are back to sampling our chickens, you add predators 

to the community, you get fewer chickens, you might 

also have different kinds of chickens that are now able 

to move into that space. Again, a good framework for 

addressing these issues has not existed in the past. 

Finally I’m going to get talking about actual 

stuff that lives in riparian areas for most of the time. 

And that’s the Forest and Fish rule amphibians, the 

Tailed Frog, the Torrent and Van Dyke’s Salamanders. 

Amphibians in western Washington are the one taxa 

we spend a lot of time worrying about. We have an 

extensive body of research about these amphibians. 

Not so much Van Dyke’s, but for the Torrent Salamanders and Tail Frogs, twenty-five years’ worth of 

research, well over one hundred published papers 

are available. We have no information about historic 

distribution or numbers, we have no idea where they 

used to be or how many there used to be in different 

areas. Estimating abundance for these species is not 

trivial, and that is why I was just focusing on our 

disappearing and reappearing chickens: not a single 

published study provides us with an estimate of how 

many of these things are out there or how many you 

find in individual streams. We have a bunch of counts. 

A paired watershed study, the Trask study that Bob 

Bilby is taking the lead on, is electro-fishing for these 

species, which is kind of a novel concept and I think 

it’s going to work. They are going to be providing an 

estimate of abundance with their research. 

We have a Type N Buffer study here in Washington where we are looking at variable width buffers and 

the effects on water quality and amphibians. We’re 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

going to be incorporating a method of estimating 

abundance. What we are finding is, not surprisingly, 

even before you begin the treatments you have a wide 

range of spatial variation in the abundance for these 

species. We have no information about population 

sizes and overall our statistical inference about what’s 

going on, especially with regards to forest practices, is 

weak. 

What do we ‘know’ about forests and fish and 

amphibians and buffers? Stoddard and Hayes did a 

study in the Central Oregon Coast Range and found 

that there was a positive effect of buffers greater 

than 46 meters when they sampled sixteen 2nd order 

basins. I published a paper earlier this year with some 

colleagues where we sampled about one hundred and 

forty streams from Central Oregon to Snoqualmie 

Pass in the Cascades and the Coast Range. We found 

no association whatsoever between buffers and the 

species occupancy for these amphibians in second and 

third growth forest; none at all. We sampled a range of 

stands from stands that were harvested the year before 

the study began to stands that were about ninety years 

old. No effect there at all. 

Positive and negative responses to buffers-some 

research suggests that leaving partial buffers in place 

is going to increase the primary productivity of 

streams and this change will benefit amphibians. We 

have an experimental study occurring in Washington 

that will evaluate that question. Certainly, having a 

buffer in place will alleviate the decking of slash and 

logs, which I can’t imagine is going to do anything but 

help these taxa. The question remains whether these 

amphibians actually need buffers. Obviously, I would 

say that their numbers (not their populations, because 

again that type of comment is inconsistent with what 

has been done in the past to study them) one should 

ask whether these buffers actually help maintain 

in-stream conditions, that is, appropriate substrates 

for these taxa,, large cobbles, cold water, low sediment levels. There is some connection between these 

amphibians and wood-again, what exactly is happening – I don’t think anyone is really sure, it is all 

correlative evidence. It’s important to note, we didn’t 

have any buffers present during the first and second 

harvest and most of the forest across the heart of the 

range of the species has been harvested twice. What 

we are finding, (we just did a third order complete 

basin survey over the last two years for about seventyfive basins) is that the occupancy rates are still pretty 

high for most of these species. They are still in all of 

these third order basins. The natural question to ask is: 

how does that compare to the historical numbers? The 

natural response is, ‘we don’t know and we’re never 

going to know’. 

Research does not support extensive buffer networks. Dede Olson3

 and some of her colleagues published a paper last year where they asked, as a working 

hypothesis how would one implement buffer networks 

on the landscape and study responses over time? 

The ecology of Forest and Fish rule and amphibians is very much a gray area. We are still, in the 

literature, arguing too much over the forest practices 

effect on these taxa. We’ve gotten slowed down by that 

quite a bit over the last decade. One must also consider 

interactions with fish, because the exact nature of these 

interactions is not well understood. Someone mentioned the issue of insect populations, and insects are 

what the amphibians are eating. They don’t eat wood, 

they don’t eat rocks; they are eating insects. Any study 

that evaluates whether bottom-up control of these 

populations is occurring would be a fantastic piece of 

information. 

3

Olson, D.H., Anderson, P.D., Frissell, C.A., Welsh, Jr., H.H., and Bradford, D.F. 2007. Biodiversity management approached for stream-riparian 

areas: perspectives for Pacific Northwest headwater forests, microclimates, and amphibians. Forest Ecology and Management 246: 81-107.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Finally, connectivity across the landscape – do 

these things disperse within streams, do they disperse 

across the stands? There are implications for what you 

are going to be leaving for both riparian and upland 

areas. Dede Olson asked whether fish impede dispersal; that’s an excellent question. We’re not sure. And 

what about geographic variation on the landscape? 

All these responses that I’ve talked about are relevant 

for the birds as well, any kind of wildlife taxa. We are 

talking about the implications from forest practices 

that are being implemented over millions of acres.

The last issue that I will discuss is disturbance. 

I’m going to provide some pictures to drive home the 

importance-or what we perceive is the importance 

for amphibians. Implications of disturbance, as other 

people have talked about today, tend to be dependent 

on scale, with small, medium and large disturbances. 

The bigger the disturbance, the more disruptive it is. 

We are talking about stand-replacing fires like the 

Yacolt and Tillamook Burns. The eruption of Mount 

St. Helens. Finally, Bob Bilby showed some pictures 

of debris torrents which occur frequently. The historical range of variation for all these events; we have 

developed an understanding of that concept. But what 

historic range of variation means for these populations, 

the return rate over time and the correlation between 

the size and the intensity of the event and its influence 

on populations, is not clear. 

This is an example from Mount St. Helens – it 

went off in 1980. The West Fork of Schultz Creek, the 

picture on the top, was taken in 1985. The picture on 

the bottom was taken in 2000. You can see the wood 

bridge for reference. 

This area was in the blast zone, super-heated 

air cooked everything. There is a hard-rock barrier 

downstream of this picture. Cutthroat trout were found 

above that barrier, so they somehow survived the 

super-heated blast. It’s likely some of the amphibians 

survived too. When I started with Weyerhaeuser, I 

went back to the old fish survey notebooks and sure 

enough, they started incidentally shocking juvenile 

Dicamptodons (Pacific Giant Salamanders) five years 

after the eruption, then both juvenile and adult Tailed 

Frogs eleven years after. This was at a time when the 

going belief was that tail frogs were old-growth dependent. Well they weren’t finding old-growth conditions 

11 years after Mount St. Helens erupted. And they 

weren’t just incidental-this wasn’t a declining population, like Bob Bilby talked about with regards to fish, 

 Mount St. Helens, Schultz Creek 1985.

Mount St. Helens, Schultz Creek 2000.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

crews were finding adults and juveniles. This was a 

recovering population. Of course, the natural question 

is: were they there before or not? We don’t know, but 

they certainly came back after and they are still there. 

When they go up every year and shock these fish—you 

can look at the notebooks—they are getting adults and 

juvenile Dicamptodons. Some of the biggest terrestrial 

Dicamptodons that I’ve ever seen are shocked by fishsurvey crews. Again these were incidental captures 

in ‘86 and ’92; if the fish technicians were actually 

looking for these things, they might have found them 

earlier. They might have found them the year after the 

blast.

That’s Schultz Creek in 2006–2007—an enormous 

amount of recovery is evident in this photograph. As 

most people in this room know, these systems are 

pretty resilient. 

This is a different picture: the important thing to 

note here is that you can see what Mount St. Helens 

did to everything around there. It’s all flattened, 

the streams, the slurry, the upland areas completely 

destroyed. Everything is on the ground, there are no 

snags. And this occurred over hundreds and hundreds 

of square miles. 

This is a picture of the Tillamook Burn – very 

similar except the fact that a lot of trees are still standing because there wasn’t a 250 mph wind gust following the blast. 

And finally these are recent pictures of coastal 

areas in Oregon and Washington. On the left you have 

a first order stream, on the right you have a third order 

channel. They provided quite a bit of wood to the 

channel. 

This debris torrent also delivered a lot of fairly 

coarse substrates. You can see the surrounding stands 

really haven’t been influenced at all, unlike those 

Mount St. Helens, Schultz Creek 2007.

Mount St. Helens 1980.

Tillamook Burn
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

previous pictures where the surrounding stands are 

gone. This is a riparian-constrained disturbance as 

opposed to the other disturbances, where the disturbance impacted both riparian and the upland area. 

There’s some large wood in the upland area, but by 

and large, you have a lot more continuity between 

these environments after severe disturbances then 

after smaller ones. This is our contemporary landscape disturbances. Smaller patch sizes, there isn’t as 

consistent an effect across the landscape, obviously 

because we just went in and harvested and removed 

the trees. We didn’t cook the whole place like we used 

to do—broadcast burn the slash. There is a lot quicker 

recovery from disturbance but again, I would say for 

most species the consequences of this kind of landscape management are largely unknown. 

Debris torrent, Oregon Coast Range. Debris torrent, South west Washington.

How riparian areas fit into that equation is critical, 

but poorly defined. We don’t have a good understanding of the population-level consequences of riparian 

management strategies. It’s that simple. Buffer size 

is obviously the main thing on everyone’s mind. For 

some species it’s not a question of whether buffers 

should be left, but only how large should buffers 

be? Again, available scientific information is going 

to take us only so far. Do buffer requirements scale 

with stream size? That is something that comes up a 

lot: if a species occurs in first or fourth order streams 

or uses those kinds of streams, does the buffer have 

to scale with the wetted width of the stream channel? Some people might consider that question to be 

esoteric when talking about a landscape that is being 

repeatedly managed; however, there are a lot of dollars 

involved with that question. 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Again, across stream orders, how are these populations distributed as far as their population sizes is a 

gray area. I was interested that other people suggested 

staggered designs before I did. It might be that we 

can come up with some different ways for wildlife, 

for leaving the same number of trees but not having this continuous buffer so we can reduce some of 

these negative edge effects. Again, that would take a 

fairly comprehensive research program, and a lot of 

people working together across ownerships to achieve 

something like that. It’s important to note that a lot of 

these designs preclude harvest of sufficient volume. 

Now, this isn’t just one biologist working for a timber 

company that is pointing out this issue. I thought that 

one interesting aspect of the Olson et al. paper from 

2007 was that they didn’t really talk to an engineer 

to determine if, given their buffer prescriptions, they 

could still pull any logs out of those units at all. The 

question becomes ‘if you say we need to leave this 

type of buffer,’ then someone will say ‘then it is not 

practical to take any trees’ so there is no question of 

buffers. You are just not going to harvest those stands, 

which gets very much to the strategies that people 

talked about before. Maybe we just start saying that in 

some of these second and third order watersheds, in 

places, we are just not going to harvest.

One thing, especially for the policy people to keep 

in mind-mainly what we are doing is using stand-based 

strategies. We don’t have landscape strategies per se. 

But as this picture indicates, this is a landscape pattern 

that is a result of stand-based strategy. It’s very much 

something that needs to be kept in mind, especially 

when you are integrating riparian areas into the overall 

picture. That’s the final thing: how do riparian areas 

interact with those contemporary patterns that we 

are forcing onto the landscape? We really don’t have 

a context, looking back over time, to see how these 

landscapes developed as far as their disturbance patterns are concerned. 

Questions and Answers

Q: Burden of Proof-where does the burden lie? I think 

that is an important issue that gets glossed over in 

many of these discussions. We should be very explicit 

in where the burden of proof lies. My sense is that you 

want to get up and argue that the literature doesn’t 

show an effect. Or conversely, could you show that it 

does have an effect? Depending on where that burden 

is, it’s going to dictate how your policies go and the 

type of actions you follow. Often stakeholders come 

to the table with two different burdens of proof. And 

yet we never address that and we end up arguing past 

each other. It’s one of the things we should be thinking about in the policy arena. Where are we asking 

the burden of proof to be put? One could argue very 

strongly, that yes, if I look at the literature I could not 

cite the literature that demonstrates there is an effect, 

I cannot prove that there is an effect; therefore what 

we’ve done is OK. Conversely can you show what 

you’ve done is OK; can you go back and have the same 

standard and prove that what you’ve done has not had 

an effect. I think that is a very important issue that 

is glossed over and often time contributes to a lot of 

confusion and contentiousness that we have here.

A: Conflicting reports. Someone brought up earlier 

the idea that we have one paper here and two papers 

over here that are in conflict. So I can see what you are 

talking about; it could be a very good study, but we all 

talk about variability. In the end, large, robust studies 

such as the Forest Service might conduct across the 

United States is better then using a single, less robust 

study when it comes to referencing “proof”. 

Q: Have the courts weighed in on where the burden 

of proof lies for the Forest Service? There is the Ninth 

Circuit Court decision that established that the Forest 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Service doesn’t have to prove “no harm” in all the 

management decisions. 

A: Well it’s important to know that scientific proof 

and legal proof are two different things. That’s a new 

concept to a lot of people unfortunately.

Q: I have a question about the birds: do you know if 

there are programs in place to monitor the presence 

of persistent organic pollutants in any of these forest 

dwelling birds? I say that because my sense is that 

the use of forest chemicals is gone down over the last 

decades, but now with outbreaks of bark beetles it 

may be on the upswing. Do you know if there are any 

monitoring programs in place to look at that?

A: Not that I’m aware of. That is probably going to 

come up as a concern with regards to amphibians. 

There have been recent studies of indirect effects 

from the use of agricultural pesticides increasing 

the populations of snails that harbor a parasite that 

infects amphibians and causes limb deformities and 

also in some cases death. The reason I also bring 

that up is we don’t have any information about the 

amphibians we have in the Pacific Northwest as far as 

their populations. We do know on a world wide scale 

the populations of amphibians are absolutely being 

crushed. One of the things we haven’t seen in the 

Pacific Northwest, with the exception of issues with 

Spotted Frogs and Bullfrogs—some direct impacts that 

we know are causing populations to go down—is any 

sudden decline in our amphibians. When I say Pacific 

Northwest I’m talking about Oregon and Washington; 

certainly in places in California, in the Sierra, the 

Yellow-legged Frog has got chytrid fungus. Chytrid 

has been in a lot of other populations and they’re all 

gone, literally. So it’s something that I think people 

are really missing the boat on. We are spending a lot 

of time talking about the Forest Practices Act, with 

some reason in certain areas, with regards to these 

amphibians; however, we should be monitoring the 

populations in areas even where there aren’t any forest 

practices going on, so that if chytrid or anything else 

enters these systems, we are aware of it. It hasn’t been 

found in salamanders in the Pacific Northwest. 

What is going to happen? Certainly the organic 

pollutants are part of that problem-it’s already been 

demonstrated to have some indirect effects. We do use 

a range of different herbicides to manage forests in the 

Pacific Northwest; what are the potential consequences 

of that is anyone’s guess. This chytrid problem came 

out of nowhere-that should be a cautionary tale. 

Q: Are there any new studies using banding going in 

riparian areas where you can actually get directional 

movement of birds?

A: Yes, they have the migratory pathway for a lot of 

these things. Where a lot of these birds go is fairly 

well established. There is a caveat to that: one of the 

hard things that they’ve tried to understand, especially 

for warblers and tropical migrants, is the migratory 

circuit. They know where they nest here in the US, but 

they don’t know where that specific group of individuals is going to winter. Also they’ve found other ones 

that they’ve banded on the winter grounds but they 

are not quite sure where they’re going to nest. So they 

know where they’re going as far as their temporal 

movements, and we have long term population monitoring that’s in place from banding studies. But again, 

it’s extremely variable just because of low recapture 

rates. You have examples of individual birds being 

caught three or four times, but that is extraordinarily 

rare. Most birds get banded and they aren’t seen again. 

Q: What about night sensing for amphibians for 

example the Tailed Frog?

A: Yes, scientists at Green Diamond, have had great 

success with that. In fact, what it kind of reminded 

me of is when you black light the desert for scorpions. 

They are everywhere! On our company’s ownership 

(Weyerhaeuser), if I were to suggest it-that would be 
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it. It’s not something that we’re going to discuss doing 

because of safety concerns, but it’s probably the best 

way to look for adult tail frogs. In the summer time 

when you want to be surveying for them, absolutely no 

doubt about it. Again, you have some problems with 

detection, because not every one of those Tail Frogs 

is looking at you. If you just want to know if they are 

there or not, it is the best way to go looking for them. 

Q: I agree with you that most of these salamanders are 

pretty hardy in Oregon and Washington. But how do 

you explain the fact that we never catch enough Van 

Dyke’s to know anything about them. 

A: I have no idea. That one is going to take some 

concerted effort. The first thing we have to do on that 

one we already discussed. Contemplating the study 

over the next couple of years, we have to develop 

different methodologies that might actually work that 

are unbiased methodologies, and sample during the 

appropriate time of the year. Phil Peterson says that 

sampling should be done in the Spring, other people 

want to do it at low water time. We have to figure it 

out before we actually start a study. You are absolutely 

right; the literature on Van Dyke’s is probably less than 

12 papers and it’s all ‘I found a few here’ or ‘I found 

a nest of Van Dyke’s, there is no comprehensive study 

of them that exists. Nevertheless, they are a regulated 

species.

Q: Bird species and frogs and other species in the 

riparian zone and the headwaters – are there other 

spatial pattern that are discernable at the watershed or 

landscape scales, vegetation age notwithstanding, like 

topographic position, slope steepness, what have you? 

A: The one consistent thing you see for the stream 

dwelling amphibians, is that there is some kind of 

stream gradient/population relationship. People have 

said: ‘that’s because you go out in these areas where 

forestry dumped all the sediment in the streams, it’s 

only flushed them out of high gradient channels’. But 

they went and looked for these things in Olympic 

Nat’l Park-obviously they don’t have forest management there-and they found the same relationship. 

Salamanders want to be on these gradients. Now with 

these amphibians we also find something with channel 

order. Torrent salamanders definitely like headwater 

channels. For others, we find that there is a pretty 

pronounced distribution of abundance through fourth, 

third, second and first order channels. Why that is, 

nobody knows. 

Q: And for birds?

A: In this part of the world, we don’t have a riparian obligate per se. We have a lot of bird species that 

favor those areas. I mean, the Pacific-slope Flycatcher 

I always think of as the buffer bird. When we leave 

those Forest and Fish Report buffers out in SW WA, 

you’ll see one of those birds. But there is no work out 

there that shows that one is more likely to find it in first 

order as opposed to the third or fourth order channels. 

Is there some change? There’s got to be, because there 

is a habitat amount effect that’s tucked in there as you 

are moving down from large order streams: you are 

increasing of the amount of available habitat. So you’d 

have to separate that somehow. I’m sure there is some 

kind of pattern in there.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Presentation

What I want to do is talk about both spatial and 

temporal scale because I think this is something that 

often gets lost and we haven’t, again, recognized that it 

has some real importance in terms of what we’re doing 

for management.

Turning to our terrestrial counterparts and thinking about how they look at the world-I talked about 

the idea of succession and that there’s an ingrained 

way the terrestrial people think—that there is this 

change in time both in terms of physical and biological 

processes. They think about this at the small scale and 

what they also recognize is that this has implications at 

the large scale. At this small scale, one can argue that 

the range of variability that we’re dealing with is great. 

This is some work from Tom Spies and Mike Wimberly in Corvallis where they are looking at a certain 

perspective. Imagine being suspended above a stand 

for 500 years or 3000 years in this case, and what you 

would see is everything from no old growth trees to 

100 percent old growth. So at small scales there’s a 

really large level of variation going on here. 

Now if you take that up to the landscape scale, 

you end up having quite a different perspective on the 

world, because you know all parts of the landscape 

aren’t going to be experiencing the same successional 

trajectories as the others. Again, there’s going to be 

quite a bit of variation. You have these patches and if 

I could have set the movie up you’d have seen how the 

patches moved around this landscape over time. The 

idea is that as you move up in scale, you adjust your 

expectations in terms of what you would expect to see. 

So if you are looking at the large scale, you wouldn’t 

expect that landscape would be all old growth at some 

point in time, or no old growth. 

In the Oregon Coast Range, Spies and Wimberly 

estimated that the amount of old-growth ranged from 

30–60 percent of that landscape. So the range of variation, the amount of variation you saw, is dependent on 

the scale at which you looked at. If you think about 

where we are in terms of how we’ve approached the 

problem of scale from an aquatic perspective, we’ve 

been very comfortable at a relatively small scale. We 

talked about the reach and maybe we started to talk 

about watersheds. And we focus on the responses of 

individual organisms and then maybe the population. 

And yet we haven’t recognized what that means-there 

seems to have been, again, the assumption that when 

we talk about streams and the variation, we assume 

that there is some idealized set of conditions out there 

that exist. This is illustrated in the concept of ‘Properly 

Functioning Condition’, and the Rosgen classification. This is the way we’ve tended to view streams at 

relatively small scale. 

One of the things that happens when we start to 

deal with ESA issues is that we’ve been forced to start 

thinking bigger. We’re talking about these major evolutionary groups, the ESUs and so on. We’ve started 

thinking at a much larger spatial scale. And yet what 

I would argue we’ve done is we’ve brought that small 

scale thinking up into that large scale – we haven’t 

adjusted for the difference in scale. 

Gordon H. Reeves, US Forest Service, PNW Research Station

In light of current scientific understanding, what is the 

degree of both confidence and uncertainty for each of these 

working hypotheses and assumptions?

Considerations of Spatial and Temporal Scales 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

I would argue that this is how we view the 

landscape: we view the landscape as expecting some 

idealized set of conditions all of the time, everywhere. 

People say ‘no, no, we don’t do that’; I would say, ‘OK, 

what’s the way we talk about salmon?’ ‘In the good 

old days, there were so many salmon you could have 

walked across creeks on their backs. Everybody talks 

about a creek that would have had salmon everywhere. 

Think about what happened-we’ve come up with a set 

of stream metrics: three pieces of wood, four pools, 

and so on and so forth. And, we do a stream survey, 

and we come back and say that a particular stream or 

stream reach is not in good shape because it doesn’t 

have this set of conditions in it. I would say either 

consciously or unconsciously we have this expectation 

that everything should be in some idealized set of 

conditions everywhere at some point in time.

I think this has led to what I call the illusion of 

failure, because we have an unrealistic set of expectations because we haven’t recognized the fact that each 

level of organization has its own set of expectations in 

terms of variation. You can’t take what we know at the 

small scale and apply those assumptions to the large 

scale. It doesn’t work that way.

Now our terrestrial counterparts have been very 

good at this, but I would say that we’ve really missed 

the boat here, particularly if we are moving into 

considering aquatic ecosystems as dynamic Again, 

I’ll come back to this point, one of the main reasons I 

think this happens is the concept of “time” is missing 

here. Of all the paradigms that we have relative to 

stream systems, none include time. Again, Rosgen is 

absent time. We go out there and find a C channel, and 

you look in Rosgen, in a C1 channel you should have 

this sinuosity you should have this X and you should 

have this Y. If you don’t have it you assume it’s not 

healthy, or we have to do something about it. The River 

Continuum even with all good points (as much as I 

love Ken) does not consider time. It doesn’t talk about 

variation and I think these types of things have led us 

to erroneously make some assumption about what we 

expect at different spatial scales. 

Now I want to talk about levels of organization. 

Let’s start at the small scale at the range of an individual. We say we want to have healthy streams and 

I would say ‘healthy streams mean we’ve got to have 

some idealized set of conditions’, well let’s think about 

a healthy individual which is a parallel idea. A healthy 

individual gets sick periodically. It doesn’t have ideal 

temperature and so on and so forth. But we know that 

you can be healthy, but you may not be healthy all the 

time. You’re going to go through periods of feeling 

well and not well, but you can recover. So that’s the 

idea here – we need to be thinking what is the range 

of conditions that the streams are going to experience 

at these small scales and can they begin to recover. If 

we go out and look at it-one of the interesting things 

is we go out to streams and we can see the history of 

variation. This is an example from Eastern Oregon. 

You looked in the banks and you see the history of 

fire, with charcoal and the coarse gravels and so on 

and so forth. We know that this particular stream has 

experienced a range of conditions but it went to a set of 

conditions. There is an example from Coastal Oregon 

which is analogous with some of the things that Bob 

was talking about. I’m going to tell you right up front, 

this is a leap of faith, the idea here is to show the range 

of conditions. Lee and I spent the best part of three to 

four years looking for places where we could go out 

and find streams that were at different points in time 

from disturbance. We found three streams that illustrate that point. These were all within a stone’s throw 

of each other. If you were on the ridge between these 

streams, you could look down into each one of these. 

Here’s one in the Oregon Coast we guessed is about 80 

or so years out from a major disturbance event. Look 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

at this channel, completely inundated with sedimenttwo-four meters of sediment. Very little wood showing 

in this system. Water is subsurface during the summerif I was looking for a ‘reference condition’ I’m not sure 

that this would be what we would point to. The boulders are buried. There are a few coho in this system 

and that is it. Literally, right next door is this system 

that looked like it burned roughly 140–160 years 

ago...those were interesting numbers that George was 

coming up with here. This, I would say, is the most 

productive stream that we saw in terms of diversity 

of fishes: it had cutthroat, coho and steelhead in it. 

There is a fair amount of wood in it and it had a range 

of substrates in it. Much of the wood was the legacy, 

disturbed from this big fire that happened. Often 

times those things are buried in here and they become 

excavated. Interestingly, if you compare this stream to 

the properly function condition numbers, it didn’t even 

come close-it was way off. But I would put this up 

against any “good” stream in terms of its production. 

Finally, we went over to old growth systems, a system 

that hadn’t had a major fire or disturbance for probably 

250-300 years. There were tremendous amounts of 

wood in it and some boulders, but not much else. So if 

you ask: what is the reference condition for streams in 

the Oregon Coast Range, take your pick. I would argue 

that at the small scale, there is no reference conditionthere are different conditions. 

Think about it: this is analogous to a person who 

experiences a range of conditions always thinking that 

a healthy one has the potential to recover. We need to 

be thinking differently when we establish these things 

and what we expect. This goes into what we expect 

buffers to do – there are major implications here. 

We move up to the watershed scale – again, we 

tend to drag along these small scale expectations and 

we assume that because we know something at the 

small scale, we can apply it to the next level of organization. We know if we have a group of people- that 

group can be healthy but everybody in the group does 

not need to be healthy at the same time. In some idealized set of conditions, what we would expect is that the 

group as a whole is healthy but any individual could 

experience an unhealthy condition. You see some 

frequency distribution going on there.

When we get to the large scale, I would contend 

that what we’ve done is assumed an idealized set of 

conditions here that applies at the small scale and then 

apply it even at the large scale., What we would expect 

in a healthy population, again, is not every individual 

is going to be healthy, but the population as a whole 

can be healthy, even though each individual is not.

One of the things we need to keep in mind as we 

move across these levels of organization and we articulate what we expect-you can’t start at the bottom and 

automatically drag those set of assumptions and expectations up as you move. In fact, I would argue that the 

landscape that we’re looking at and trying to manage 

is similar to patches of upland conditions we saw with 

our terrestrial counterparts-a landscape that was much 

more heterogeneous than we expect, historically for 

fish. We’ve done back-of-the-envelope calculation as 

part of the CLAMS project where we used what we 

assumed were the best set of conditions at 140 year old 

type of forest as the best indicator-we estimated what 

fraction of the Oregon Coast Range area probably had 

productive fish habitat at any point in time. By our 

best calculations it was probably somewhere between 

30–60 percent of that landscape at any point in time 

historically – what we would consider to be ‘in good 

condition’. It wasn’t 100 percent and so people say ‘we 

never expect 100 percent’ and I say ‘nonsense’-we are 

trying to make everything good, at least that seems 

to be a goal of many of our policies. We can’t accept 

the fact that during some time periods or at any given 
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point in time, some fraction of our landscape is not 

going to be productive for fish. That’s a hard thing for 

policy makers to accept, it’s a hard thing for the public 

to accept in many cases. 

One of the things we need to be thinking about, 

particularly as we move into this new deliberation 

about policy, is how we express our expectation. The 

first thing we have to do is start talking about distributions of conditions and how we expect those distributions to change over time. We are not shooting for 

something to be ideal at some point in time when we 

would declare victory. In other words, there is going 

to be a range of conditions out there on the landscape. 

The key will be, as the ones that are currently in good 

condition transition to poor, are there ones that are in 

poor condition that can transition to good? We need to 

be rethinking about how we apply these concepts and 

policies.

What are some of the barriers here? I think in the 

aquatic community of scientists and probably in the 

general public as they might consider aquatic issues, 

there is a general lack of recognition of the organization of hierarchy. We don’t understand that as you 

move through these different levels of organization 

that each has its own set of rules and expectations. 

That has never been fully articulated. 

Many of our paradigms have this static perspective 

to it and that really shapes our perceptions and expectations. Then we look at current policies and laws: 

the Clean Water Act-it was a laudable goal to say we 

want everything fishable and swimmable, but I would 

venture to guess if the EPA was around 400 years ago, 

some tribes would be getting 303D listings.

Cumulative effects; one of the problems is that we 

think at these small scales. Under the guise of quote 

‘protecting things’, we think we know how far we 

can go, just to the edge, and that if we just back off 

everything will be OK. Again, that’s this whole idea 

of trying to maintain everything in good condition. 

We’ve got some real issues there.

It’s easy to say why we have problems in a large 

scale system, but then we come to apply solutions to 

mixed ownership patterns. That’s going to be something we’ll have to wrestle with and ask ourselves how 

we begin to deal with that.

A quick summary-what I’ve done is assume that 

ecosystems are complex and dynamic in space and 

time and I think the timeframe is something we really 

need to start to consider. When we start talking about 

what we mean, there is very little consideration of 

time and how things change through time. It’s a very 

natural thing for terrestrial people to think about, but 

it’s not intuitive right now for the aquatic side. Each 

level of organization has its own set of rules and we 

need to recognize that. We need to start to describe 

and identify the range of variation for each level of 

organization. It’s interesting how you toss around these 

terms – historic range of variation – natural range of 

variation – and assume we can talk about it like it just 

means one thing. One of the reasons I think we have 

problems, is because everybody has their own way of 

looking at those things. We very seldom consciously 

articulate what we mean. It’s really imperative upon 

people when we start tossing around these terms; that 

we talk about specific levels of organization and how 

historic range of variation applies to it. 

It’s going to be real crucial for us to talk about 

how we establish these desired results for each level of 

organization. I would say for higher levels we’d start 

talking about distributions. What are the distributions 

of conditions we want to see out there? What level is 

really what we are shooting for? I’d argue right now 

that one of the problems we have is there is an expectation that when we recover fish everything is going to 

be good-we are going to make every watershed have 

three pieces of wood and four boulders and whatever 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

else it has. That never happens-it never happened historically, and we’re never going to make it happen now. 

I call that the illusion of failure. The goalpost is so far 

out there that we feel like we’re never making progress 

towards it. If the goal post was at 30 or 60 percent, if 

we start making some small gains, we look like we’re 

moving. If it’s 100 percent-we feel like we’re spinning 

our wheels and not making it anywhere. 

I think it’s really going to be incumbent upon 

us—the science community and for policy maker—to 

recognize that what we need to be thinking about is 

establishing realistic goals and expectation for each 

level of organization so we can start making progress. 

Otherwise, I think what’s going to happen is that we 

will feel like we’re failing, society will feel like we’re 

failing and at some point people will start giving up.

Questions and Answers

Q: Going back to the slide where you show what 

percentage of the watershed that is productive

A: This is just to illustrate the point; it doesn’t have the 

exact 30 to 60 percent. 

Q: Typically we’d expect to find a mixture like that?

A: Right.

Q: I wonder what it was like before the decades to a 

century of ‘bad logging’ / bad forestry. It seems like 

a lot more of these were in poor condition and some 

of them have been healed and some are still in the 

process. That is one of the things that bothers me-the 

elephant in the room- that legacy of bad forestry. 

There were some bad choices made for quite a number 

of years/decades. That stuff will heal over time, maybe 

not like it was before, but heal to a reasonable condition perhaps. But where are we in that process? 

A: I’m going to guess we’re not as low as 30 percent, 

but I bet you we are a lot closer to 30 percent than we 

are to 100 percent.

Q: Was this just to show an example, or did you actually do some calculations?

A: What we did, we took this, and said ‘this seemed 

to be the time frame in which to work’. We assumed 

that watersheds are predominately in 120–160 year 

old vegetation pattern; based on what we learned in 

the CLAM effort. We projected historical conditions. 

We took snapshots of this through time and took a 

long term average. We ran these models; these are 

more stochastic than deterministic so you get some 

range. We were looking at the percent of healthy 

conditions as we defined them on the landscape. If you 

run this long enough and believe the output it would 

say: 95 percent of the time those conditions would be 

somewhere between 30–60 percent of the landscape. 

We assume fire and a legacy from fire was present. 

We took that number, and as part of the Technical 

Recovery Team for the Oregon coast Coho, we wanted 

to estimate historical numbers for the whole coast. 

Before this, we had historical numbers for given river 

systems, because they were using cannery records for 

each river system. We made some assumptions using 

intrinsic potential and projected historic numbers on 

the Oregon Coast range for coho. We assumed that 60 

percent of the landscape at any point in time produced 

Coho, not the whole. There were at 95 to 96 percent 

correlations between the numbers that were projected 

by the cannery records and what we got. So we felt 

pretty good about the numbers but it really suggested 

maybe we were on to something in terms of how we 

were thinking.

Q: When you look at the wind driven environment on 

the west side of the Peninsula-various factors come 

in to play-you start to see that a rotation age is about 

110–120 years. I’m with you on the idea of using this 

as a way of setting expectations for what would be 

occurring over the landscape. I could see same strategies set up to deal with this. How would you take that 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

information, take this dynamic, and develop strategies 

for managing your landbase: either to manage your 

risk or take advantage of it for habitat?

A: One of the major things we have to do here is to 

shift our expectations for quote ‘buffers’. If you are 

moving toward a dynamic perspective like this, the 

buffers are not there to protect existing conditions. 

The buffers are there to protect an important ecological process which is that when these big events come 

through and things fall apart, you have the building 

blocks to re-establish the desired conditions. The 140 

years does not represent what you want to keep. It’s not 

important what’s there now. It was what was left over 

from that previous disturbance event and the legacy of 

those 140 year old stands and how much time it took 

for that system to work with it. It could have started 

at 80 years, it could have started at 70 years, there is 

probably some window in there-but the idea is that 

you’ve got those pieces in place, so that when those 

big disturbance events happen, the potential to recover 

is there. Going back to this slide: a healthy person 

may not have ideal conditions all the time, but he has 

the potential to recover. When we get hit by these big 

disturbance events (they set the stage for long term 

influences) do we have the legacy that’s left over from 

that event and sufficient time to allow the expression 

of those conditions? We identify where you are most 

likely to see those influences and then we see that the 

staggered versus fragmented type of setting is really 

worth a re-visit. Under the dynamic perspective, we 

may be better off focusing activities in some place, 

then leave that system alone for awhile, expect that 

it’s going to get hit by a big event and that it has the 

potential to recover.

Q: Gordon Grant did a paper on that a few years back 

in the Water Resource Journal. He looked over several 

centuries of that staggered disturbance. It was very 

interesting. 

A: Right. Gordon Grant did an analysis of looking at 

peak flows in those settings and found that you got the 

same peak flow at the bottom of those four watersheds 

if you did the staggered or the fragmented type of setting. Ecologically there may be different options then 

distributing the impact across the landscape as we’ve 

been doing. 

Q: What do you do with that information? If that’s 

driven by a stochastic fire model, if your model is 

sensitive to topography (which it can be based on 

empirical data) and you run those models, you wind up 

with different probability distributions of forest age as 

a function of topographic position. So if you are interested in the headwaters, in Southwest Washington, the 

predictions say, for example, that for 25–30 percent of 

the headwater streams the vegetation age class is less 

than 60 years old. And as you go down into the larger 

valley floors, big and wide , then it becomes 5 percent 

because fires don’t like to come into those wet areas 

according to the empirical vegetation data that went 

into the models. If you were trying to target a natural 

disturbance pattern, you would have a mix of forest 

age classes and you could pattern your management 

after that. 

A: Some of this stuff sounds pretty academic. We’ve 

actually backed away from the Probability Distribution approach. Because it seems like it’s a hard thing 

to get across and to manage for in some regards., We 

are working on a paper (Gordie, Ken and myself and a 

couple of other people) and we are realizing that these 

things that Gordie is talking about have real world 

implications for TMDL, properly functioning conditions and any kind of single value central tendency targets in streams-sediment, temperature, turbidity-these 

are all standard across many federal and state agencies. 

They are all problematic because none of them respond 

to this problem. And if they did and they ran these 

models, you would find out that this notion of TMDLs 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

and calculating the average for a 40 year period of 

sediment and then projecting that forward for the next 

40 years and you try to regulate the load from various 

land uses—this is completely indefensible. And the 

same thing with properly functioning conditions. And 

so it has real world impacts-what was not discussed 

in this group is the whole environmental regulatory 

framework built around this; that is a house of cards. 

We are talking about making interesting changes 

on the riparian prescriptions-at the same time if that 

were to move forward-the house of cards (regulatory 

framework) would have to come down. And when it 

does, it’s going to be a totally different paradigm on 

how you evaluate environmental conditions and it may 

be highly quantitative because some of us say, that’s 

a very complicated model and it depends on how you 

tweak the dial, which is very true. So you might go 

into a more qualitative understanding of landscapes 

and back off from the hard core analytical approach. 

That is just the reality of it, even though it might be 

unsatisfying for people who are highly quantitative 

and want a single number. 

Q: How then do we deal with TMDLs and PFC? 

A: TMDLs are a single number, as are PFCs. In the 

paper we document many cases where that is so. What 

happens is that agencies come to the roadblock and 

they realize the insanity of it all, that they can’t do it 

(the TMDL is 100 tons and here’s the waste allocation 

load-it’s 30 tons). We all know it’s a house of cards. 

Someone might say, “Kate, write up a narrative and fix 

some roads” That’s not good enough; it allows disinformation to permeate the public, the environmental 

community and everybody else. It is not good enough 

to say, “do this at this accuracy level, or I’ll hit you in 

the head with this hammer”. The house of cards has to 

come down, and it will come down to where Kate said; 

back to a qualitative BMP with some analysis.

Q: Thinking about the condition of the watershed as 

a distribution: can you get there with existing models 

(actually get at what those distributions should be) or is 

it too complex to try to go there yet?

A: We are at the stage where we can make some stab 

at where they were historically, but the question is ‘can 

we get back to those’ and I think we are not going to 

go back to historic conditions.

Q: The question is not ‘can you get back to those’; the 

world changes, climate is changing, but can you get a 

realistic picture of what those distributions will be? Do 

you think we are anywhere near the capacity to begin 

to do that (with physical models)?

A: I think we can make a first approximation. The key 

is to understand how you transition from one state to 

the other; what does it take for that to happen. And 

then trying to say, under the current management 

disturbance regime (which is timber harvest) is there 

the potential for those systems to evolve through time. 

That becomes the question I ask about these things.

Even if it’s not highly accurate, it’s still better than 

if that map was painted all dark green, or if all the 

streams in it were painted yellow.

Q: Looking at the 30–60 percent, have you guys ever 

gone back and looked realistically, given land use and 

ownership...we’ve got areas that are never going to 

recover. You’ve got a whole percentage of watersheds 

probably off the board to start with. If you look 

realistically at the ability to get back to a percentage of 

good watersheds, where does the onus lie for recovering those watershed conditions? Have we had realistic 

opportunities?

A: CLAMS was shut down because an agency didn’t 

like the results and so we literally have been shut 

off and have not been able to do that, but given the 

CLAMS projections and some other things, we could 

easily do that and that is an important next step.
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Q: Are you saying that the goal of riparian management and buffers (rather than mitigating short term 

negative effects) should be setting up a system so that 

over the long term, when extreme events occur, you 

can realize the positive effects of them?

A: Yes, that’s a very good way of putting it.

Q: I would like to rise to the defense of the river 

continuum concept. I think it’s an important perspective that we haven’t heard yet today. People forget 

that even though the architects of the river continuum 

concept would agree that disturbance ecology had 

not been fully developed as a science at that time, the 

fundamental idea that aquatic communities are (at least 

in part) structured on the transport of materials from 

upstream to downstream is valid. That’s still a core 

concept that’s important. We forget, quite often, that 

the transport of materials downstream has a profound 

effect on the estuary, the beaches and the ocean. We 

haven’t, for a decade, asked ourselves the question: 

‘how are our land management activities affecting 

the fundamental ecology of our estuaries, beaches 

and oceans?’ You go back to a piece that Jim did that 

I think was a real contribution-that points out how 

important large wood is to the ocean.

A: I think the continuum is great-Ken and I have had 

these discussions. The problem is the way it’s been 

applied isn’t quite the way it was intended. I’m not 

trying to negate it here.

Q: That whole perspective (the continuum) has fallen 

off the radar.

A: I appreciate that; you are absolutely right. If you 

look at the landslide delivery issue, there’s a point in 

Knowles Creek, even if you had a landslide it was 

going to come down and most likely it was going to be 

transported downstream to the ocean-we called it the 

Jim Donation Zone. When big wood came in, that was 

the wood that was going to get to the beaches.

Q: Passing by the continuum, would you call that 

resilience? Would you subscribe to that term?

A: That would be my vision of aquatic resilience. 

Q: I think what was said earlier is that your view is 

fundamentally not a Clean Water Act concept. That’s 

the issue. Kate’s point about who gets to be the light 

green is important because the Clean Water Act concept is based on justice fundamentally, that’s good for 

everybody because it controls risk for everybody. And 

that’s the paradigm that you’re talking about changing. 

A: It was interesting what people said about maybe 

learning something from the terrestrial folks. That’s 

really the key and it’s sort of scary to think that maybe 

the ESA is a more acceptable legal policy paradigm 

than the Clean Water Act, but it takes away that safe 

bargain that the linear protection has provided for the 

last 30–40 years. To me that’s what we’ll talk about 

more tomorrow.

Q: A few weeks back, I looked at a paper from 2004 

that Ray Hilbom and his colleagues put together with 

the Bristol Bay salmon fishery and, not being a fishery 

biologist, the main message that I think he’s getting 

across is: we have this landscape that changes on its 

own, we are not managing it at all, but nevertheless at 

any given time you have a life history strategy, a run of 

fish that can go in and capitalize on those conditions. 

And, again, not knowing what other fishery biologists 

thought about that concept in general, what do we do 

when we get down to an area like Oregon where we 

know we’ve lost these lineages in the past? You’ve got 

this mosaic of conditions that are occurring, but we 

know in the background that we’ve extinctions of life 

history strategies that might be capitalizing on some 

of those changes. Could that be one of the reasons 

we’re making modifications and we are not seeing any 

change in the salmon populations-that there is nothing 

we are going to do at this point, because the fish do not 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

exist anymore to capitalize on what we are doing as far 

as management to improve their population?

A: What he is referring to in Ray Hillborn’s paper 

which talked about biocomplexity. Looking at Bristol 

Bay, there are four or five sub basins in which he found 

that sockeye populations waxed and waned. The total 

numbers remained fairly stable, but if you look at any 

one part of the landscape, it bounced around quite a 

bit and there were different life histories associated 

with different parts of the system. My feeling is that 

if we give these guys (salmon) half a chance-they’re 

going to be back. They are incredibly resilient fish. 

Look at their genetics-they’ve got an extra set of genes, 

they’re triploids for a reason. That allows for incredible adaptability. I remember at Knowles creek, as an 

example, they cut the fishery off one year back in the 

80s. It turned out that, instead of a spawning window 

two weeks wide, we had fish coming back literally for 

three to four months. It changed the whole pattern of 

smolt output and everything else. I think if we set up a 

broader range of conditions on the landscape for these 

fish to exploit and use, my guess (and it is a guess) is 

that we would see a response quite quickly in terms of 

the life history variation coming back into these systems. Have we really looked at that? We haven’t really 

looked at life history variation in terms of how management affects it. We are still hung up on numbers: 

we want more smolts and we want more adults. One of 

the measures we should be looking at is more diversity 

in terms of life history and going out and looking at 

that in the landscape. I think it’s an important part of it 

but it hasn’t really entered in to the picture very well.

Q: Several times today, you’ve used the concept 

of these ecologically functional units. If you were 

presenting information, this is a terrestrial thing, life 

history literature, and you weren’t talking about the 

currency that works off of selection that’s causing 

adaptation and the way that’s working together, the 

papers just wouldn’t be getting published. I have a hard 

time seeing how people can be using-an agency can 

be working off- ecological units of that level without 

looking at life history variations as one of their metrics. It just seems fundamentally inconsistent to me.

A: You aren’t going to get an argument from me. One 

other point, if you look at the Technical Recovery 

Team report for the Oregon Coast, we identified 

source-sink populations. If you look at this, basically 

there are watersheds that always were the sources and 

others that were the sinks. Again, taking this approach 

of protecting and preserving everything everywhere, 

some places just never had the potential to be major 

fish producers and others did yet we haven’t gotten 

strategic in how we look at the landscape. We’re just 

marching forward, one size fits all at the riparian zone, 

one size fits all at the watershed, and one size fits all 

at the landscape. We are missing some real important 

variability that’s costing us both socially and economically and it is probably costing us ecologically. 

Q: I’d like to point out that we have looked at the Life 

History Variation as a very strong component that’s 

associated with topographic relief, with elevation, 

with stream size, with temperature-with all kinds of 

things. We’ve lost the capacity to produce some life 

history and to represent some life history because it’s 

urbanized (a point Bob made earlier). If we designate 

some places to be light green continually, we are going 

to lose life history diversity. So we do know quite a 

bit about variability, if you’re going to talk about the 

distribution of conditions, it’s not necessarily the whole 

place; you have to stratify that as well.

Q: These are great ideas and I like them a lot, but 

there is also the practicality of managing diverse 

ownerships, state systems, federal systems-so what I 

come away with so far is how to practically put this in 

practice because there is a lot of practicality especially 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

at the state level or local level and also within individual companies and that sort of thing. As a manager, 

shouldn’t I have the allowance to let the disturbance 

happen as it may—and everyone will forgive me when 

it happens? How else can we do it?

A: I am asking at what cost are we doing it now? We 

keep doing this and, think of it, every five years we 

come back and say ‘we need more’, we need a bigger 

buffer, look at the history of it. We started off with 

something less. Than we keep coming back to how big 

do we need to make the buffers...how many time can 

we come back to the well?

Q: That’s what I’m saying-it’s that or every time it fails 

– allow us to fail?

A: I agree-I’m pointing out at some time we call ‘Nonsense’ and say it’s time to call timeout, really go back 

to fundamentals and ask why are we in this predicament. I contend it’s not because of buffers – if we make 

the buffers 50 feet bigger, are we going to get out of it? 

I say no, we aren’t going to get out of it. We have to go 

back and go through a fundamental questioning of our 

core assumptions that we’ve made about these systems 

and how they operate. Is that the right paradigm we 

want to be entering into this-what do we need to do? 

To save time we say, ‘we know something now that we 

didn’t know 50 years ago-everybody cannot produce 

fish. Some people can and some people can’t. Now can 

we design policies that remedy that situation? Those 

are not science policies-those, to me, are social /political decisions. And then how do we get creative to do 

it: do we provide tax incentives, we’ve been looking 

(in Coastal Oregon) at high quality fish habitat and are 

asked to forego some x volume of timber. Why don’t 

we turn to the federal government whose doing thinning up there, and have it compensate the landowner 

with the volume of wood from the federal land? You 

can keep going back in 5 or 10 years and someone will 

be asking for another 100 feet of buffer; I’m just saying 

look at the history, what have we gained? We haven’t, 

and why haven’t we? Maybe we are looking at the 

problem in the wrong way. 

Q: The strongest implications to me, at this point, that 

I feel you could act on, is your end game goals and 

expectations. But it’s still difficult to know how to 

manage diverse ownerships and regulatory responsibilities against that mosaic.

A: I totally agree, but that’s the challenge. We have to 

surface that question and ask that question otherwise it 

gets buried and we march along not achieving success.

Q: I think we are making a mistake in thinking that 

we have to answer these questions in the near term. 

I hope my great grandchildren are here in the Pacific 

Northwest arguing about what the buffers should be, 

because that’ll mean we are still growing trees and 

we’ve still got salmon. We need to have some more 

policy flexibility so different owners can try some 

essentially, different working hypothesis on how to 

manage these riparian buffers and these landscape, 

so 20 years from now we can look back and say 

Weyerhaeuser did this and Port Blakely did this, DNR 

did this and Forest Service did this in these areas and 

here are the operational problems and here’s what the 

results have turned out to be. I think we need to look at 

a longer term in terms of figuring this out.

A: (Response from audience member) I think there is a 

sense of urgency because there are salmon populations 

that have a decade or two left and we have solutions 

that are going to take several decades. It would be 

lovely if we could figure out where those situations are 

so we could do something about it. We still think we 

are smart enough to fix things and not make it worse. 

But we do have a sense of urgency in that a lot of these 

populations are declining.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Introductory Comments

This morning we are going to have a panel of representatives of management and policy makers. We are 

going to be asking them how changing the underlying 

assumptions or working hypothesis have implications 

for management strategies and policy goals. 

After that we are going to open the discussion for a 

second session for all participants-not just the speakers. We want input from all of you on this; that’s going 

to be the discussion: What Are Critical Assumptions in 

Terms of Both Scientific Uncertainty and Management 

and Policy Implications. On that topic, we want to get 

down to specifics. 

I want to summarize what we covered yesterday. 

What I am going to try and do is simplify what I heard 

yesterday-please correct me if I haven’t done justice to 

what you said. 

Brian started out by telling us that policymakers 

draw the lines that give managers the guidelines in 

terms of meeting society’s goals and expectations. It 

is scientists’ roles to tell them what the consequences 

are of drawing the lines, that is, among the alternatives 

what are the various consequences particularly in the 

environment and the case we are talking about here.

Gordie and George told us somewhat about the 

history of the development of riparian management. 

We looked at policies and the strategies; at least from 

what I was hearing, they both more or less agreed on 

some of the basic assumptions: the basic science that 

underlay those policies and management of actually 

all three: federal, state and private lands. To simplify 

what the assumptions were: basically that we need to 

maintain key watershed functions; that mature forests 

provide a model of what desirable riparian conditions 

are; and that we can approximate those mature forests 

conditions with buffers or riparian management zones, 

but that these need to vary by site class, by stream size 

and by stream type. There are differences and nuances 

in the actual application of these three different kinds 

of land ownership classes within this state and that 

most of those are primarily reflecting of the political 

and practical realities of managing on those three different types of land. They both recognize that dynamic 

or disturbance, whichever term you want to use, is 

an important factor in riparian areas. There is also an 

assumption that dynamic processes are vital in riparian 

areas.

In the afternoon we talked about what is the degree 

of confidence in those basic underlying assumptions. 

We talked about the physical processes-we starting 

right off by pointing out that FEMAT was based 

largely on averages (the FEMAT curves) but that we 

now have the capability of being more specific-we can 

‘modify the FEMAT curves for different points in the 

landscape’. And if we are going to be more flexible in 

terms of managing, being able to modify the curves 

for different parts of the landscape is an important 

capability, because the details of those curves become 

more important the closer you manage to the edge of 

the stream. If we are going to have flexibility we need 

to understand what some of those details are. Lee also 

pointed out, but didn’t go into great depth, the fact that 

we now have the capability of simulating some of the 

extreme events, the disturbances that George was talking about. That is what the dynamic map he showed up 

there indicated. 

Bob Bilby talked about riparian processes; a lot 

of those have to do with the biological part of the 

system. He said we know quite a bit about several of 

the key riparian processes and talked about wood, 

Douglas F. Ryan, US Forest Service PNW Research Station

Recap of Day One and Overview 

and Desired Outcomes for Day Two
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

temperature, shade and other things. But, he said, there 

are some others we don’t know so much about and he 

brought up the examples of wind and fine leaf litter. 

He also agreed with Lee that the average FEMAT 

curves don’t fit all sites; there actually are variations 

in them as you move around in the landscape. Bob 

also asked the ‘so what question’: So what if we are 

managing forests, if there are other changes in the 

landscape that are having much bigger effects on fish? 

He brought up the example of conversions to more 

intense type of land use in the most productive portion 

of the watershed; forest into either urban areas or types 

of agriculture areas and pointed out that they have 

much bigger consequences for the fish. From that, he 

suggested maybe we need to consider those kinds of 

land use changes; obviously they wouldn’t only have 

to do with forest practices. They’d have to be in other 

land use arenas. Another obvious part is those kind 

of things don’t really apply directly on federal or state 

lands: we are primarily talking about private land 

(although certainly what happens in adjoining private 

land does affect what occurs in riparian conditions on 

both federal and state lands).

A.J. Kroll told us about riparian habitats and 

populations, primarily talking about wildlife. He said 

that one of the big assumptions in FEMAT which 

was setting up riparian areas to protect fish was the 

assumption that buffers also protect a whole suite of 

wildlife species that are either dependent or associated 

with riparian areas. He said the story is still out on 

that-there have only been a few species and a couple 

of gilds, things like amphibians and birds, where it’s 

been tested and then in only relatively few places. In 

general, that particular assumption has not been very 

thoroughly tested. There could be reasons why we 

may want to test it; for example, if some of those other 

species were to become listed as threatened or endangered. 

Gordon H. Reeves talked about the consideration 

of time and space. There’s kind of a two sided story 

here: he agreed with the other speakers that the basic 

assumptions have largely been supported by the 

science in the last fifteen years but that some parts 

of them have been significantly clarified over time. 

One of them is that it is probably mature forests that 

provide the most productive fish habitat as opposed 

to old growth. Another is that average conditions are 

not necessarily adequate to describe what’s going on 

at a lot of places in the landscape. He further went on 

to say that applying average conditions everywhere 

actually could limit the potential to restore fish 

habitat. He said that this is the result of an unspoken 

assumption which is that we can apply the results from 

small scale studies and management efforts, to all the 

watersheds and across large scales. The problem with 

that assumption is that it ignores the important role 

that time plays in the process of producing productive 

fish habitat. When you look around the landscape, 

you find the most productive fish habitat is often the 

product of extreme events that occurred sometime in 

the past-things like floods or fires or wind disturbance 

or landslides. By setting static goals (that is average 

conditions everywhere) current management and 

policy may be mitigating for short term negative 

effects but it is not setting up riparian systems that can 

capture the positive effects of those extreme events. 

It is not producing the resilient ecosystems that we’re 

seeking. Trying to capture the benefit from those kinds 

of events, would require different kinds of management goals. Gordie suggested things like looking at the 

distribution of riparian conditions across the landscape 

as a potential way of capturing that goal. It would also 

require flexibility in applying rules to managing riparian areas; probably some changes in the policy guidelines as well. Another thing Gordie pointed out was 

what Lee had brought up-we have tools for looking at, 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

simulating, what the effects of these kinds of extreme 

events can have on the large scale (at the landscape 

level) so that there is the potential for generating 

hypotheses about how the landscape actually behaves 

in response to these kinds of extreme events. To me, 

those seem to be some of the new working hypotheses 

that were suggested yesterday. What I’d like the next 

panel to talk about is: in thinking about those working 

hypothesis, are there specific policies or management 

guidelines that may have to be re-thought. We really 

want to get into what are the specifics. How do those 

actually make us re-think what some specific policies 

are?

For the second discussion: Are there implications, 

in turn, for science? Are there areas where we need to 

clarify more what those underlying assumptions are so 

that we can apply them to either new policies or new 

management practices?
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Panel Discussion 

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying 

assumptions or working hypotheses, would this revision 

have important consequences for management 

strategies or policy goals?
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Introductory Comments to Panel 

Discussion

We have five folks to talk to you on the receptivity of 

the management and policy environment to the scientific ideas, especially new scientific ideas. Each panel 

member will speak for 10–15 minutes, then I suggest we spend time allowing the panelists to ask one 

another questions and then we’ll close with audience 

questions. Bear in mind, we have the last two hours of 

the symposium strictly for your own discussion. 

I want to return back to the idea: the name of this 

conference is Riparian Adaptive Management. I want 

to talk a little bit about adaptive management and say 

what it is. Adaptive Management is a management 

approach to uncertainty. There are other approaches. 

For example, another approach to uncertainty that we 

hear a lot about is the Precautionary Principle. It’s a 

much more conservative approach to uncertainty than 

Adaptive Management is. Adaptive Management says 

let’s go ahead and do stuff and learn about it as we go 

in a very deliberate way and build that learning into 

the decision making. The Precautionary Principle says 

that although the legal system is based on the idea of 

innocent until proven guilty, maybe that’s not necessarily the best way to run our science based decision 

making. If you think about guilt as the presence of a 

cause/effect relationship that’s important to a decision, 

the Precautionary Principle says maybe if the crime 

is serious enough and the alleged offender might go 

on repeating and the punishment is just, we might 

flirt with the idea of guilty even if not proven guilty. 

You have probably thought about the Precautionary 

Principle, and have ideas about it; I know I have. There 

are other approaches to uncertainty. ‘Let’s go out and 

do what we decide to do and do some perfunctory 

monitoring if we can afford it and depending on who 

retires maybe we’ll learn something or maybe we 

won’t, but we won’t worry too much about it’ that’s one 

approach to uncertainty. A very structured approach 

to risk assessment is another approach to uncertainty. 

You know this. Adaptive management is just one 

approach to uncertainty and it’s based on the idea that 

we can employ science to reach relevant conclusions; 

A.J. posed a question ‘Can we ask relevant questions?’. 

That’s one of the key points of Adaptive Management. 

Good science alone may not be sufficient for Adaptive 

Management-the results have to be fairly conclusive 

with regard to critical management question. That’s not 

a foregone conclusion. Then we have to have decision 

making institutions that are listening and are willing 

to change the decision based on conclusive science. 

The literature on Adaptive Management says that it 

is talked about a lot, but it’s hardly ever done-at least 

in any kind of complete or large scale way. I think 

about that a lot-some of you have been at this your 

whole careers and I heard an evolution of management 

response to science over the last 35 years that sounded 

fairly adaptive over that kind of professional career 

time scale, but nevertheless, the literature suggests 

that it doesn’t really happen. It doesn’t really happen 

because of failure in one or the other or both of those 

key features: either we can’t do science that is conclusive in any kind of time scale or spatial scale that’s 

relevant to decision makers, or the decision makers 

really don’t care-it doesn’t matter what science tells 

them. Scientists usually have a pretty jaundiced view 

of why that’s the case. My view of why that is the 

case is that there is an awful lot of sunk investment 

into big management and policy decisions. There is a 

lot of investment-sunk cost. Most senior bureaucrats 

and elected decision makers that I know are not really 

in the business of being associated with failures. 

Craig Partridge, Washington State Department of Natural Resources

Introductory Comments to Panel Discussion
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

They don’t really value even fascinating, instructive 

failure, the same way science institutions might value 

it. Also, usually a lot of money has been invested in 

policy decisions. There is kind of an ingrained lack 

of receptivity; that’s more the default setting-a lack of 

receptivity to science that may offer really interesting 

new ideas about decisions around which a lot of sweat 

and tears and letter writing and voting went into.

I think if you turn back to science, you’ll see there 

are some of the same constraints on science seeking to 

reach policy relevant conclusive decisions. What kind 

of science are we talking about? These are the questions I’ll be posing to the panelists as well. I heard a lot 

about longitudinal large scale studies yesterday, and 

careers and budgets in the science realm sometimes 

mitigate against those kinds of studies. 

These are the questions for the first half of the 

morning: What does it take to have a scientifically 

conclusive study? What can our on-the-ground science 

institutions like the Olympic Experimental State Forest 

or the Forest Service Adaptive Management Areas 

or CEMR; what can they do to help? Are adaptive 

institutions really open to change based on science? 

You probably have opinions as to whether they are or 

they aren’t. I’m going to ask us all to think about—if 

they aren’t—is there anything we can do to open them 

up to be more adaptive? If they are, if that career scale 

adaptation I might have heard a thread of yesterday 

is actually occurring, what did it take to make them 

adaptive? What makes a conclusive study; what makes 

an adaptive decision making organization – against a 

setting in which neither of those things happen very 

often and we don’t really have adaptive management 

going on very often—adapt? 

The speakers are going to take a first run from 

their perspective and then we’ll open it up and have 

more discussion.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

Policy is formed through a process that includes science, social behaviors and values, religion and morals, 

education and acceptance of new ideas and technologies, resources and economic conditions, costs and 

benefits, health and safety, environmental effects, and 

the efforts of leaders to bring about changes in policy 

and implementation. In Washington State riparian 

management policies are formed in the context of the 

Forest and Fish Agreement which is science-based but 

also includes numerous public policy goals. Policymakers and scientists need to start by asking the right 

questions if science is to appropriately inform policy. 

Science must examine both the direct relationships and 

the larger scale system-wide relationships in watersheds. The political realities facing private forest landowners include both the need to maintain our social 

license and to operate within the legal framework of 

the Forest Practices Act, HCP, and Clean Water Act. 

Revisions to management policies and goals have to be 

made within those contexts.

Presentation

Science informs policy, but does not dictate policy. I 

know that may sound sacrilegious to some of you, and 

please understand that I deeply respect the scientific 

process, discipline, and benefits that science continually brings to society. But policy is formed through 

a process that includes science, social behaviors and 

values, religion and morals, education and acceptance 

of new ideas and technologies, resources and economic 

conditions, costs and benefits, health and safety, environmental effects, and the efforts of leaders to bring 

about changes in policy and implementation. 

So, in answer to the question at hand, “If there 

is scientific consensus to revise underlying assumptions or working hypotheses, would this revision have 

important consequences for management strategies or 

policy goals?” The answer is yes, but only as part of a 

complex policy-making and adopting process.

Now let me focus in on riparian management 

policies resulting from a new scientific consensus, 

particularly from the perspective of a private industrial forest land owner. In Washington State riparian 

management policies are formed, regulated and 

implemented through the Forest Practices Act. I’m sure 

you are all aware of the Forest and Fish Agreement, 

Habitat Conservation Plan, adaptive management 

process, Cooperative Monitoring, Evaluation and 

Research (CMER) that are components of the forest 

practices policy and regulatory system. Treaty rights 

are also significant policy drivers. I don’t intend to give 

you a description of that system or discuss the pros and 

cons. But, the realities of state law mean that forest 

policy, and particularly riparian management policy 

formation, regulation and implementation happen 

within that context. The Forest and Fish Agreement is 

science-based; at least 30 percent is based on biological 

and physical science, with the remainder being political science. The federal Endangered Species Act and 

Clean Water Act are dominant aspects of these policies 

and rules.

Norm Schaaf, Merrill & Ring Company

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying assumptions 

or working hypotheses, would this revision have important 

consequences for management strategies or policy goals?

Private Lands Perspective
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Policy-makers and scientists need to start by 

asking the right questions if science is to appropriately 

inform policy. Natural systems are complex over time 

and space and do not easily conform to strict scientific 

rigor at the large scales in which these systems exist. 

We tend to think in terms that are absolute, black or 

white, and expect instant gratification from our decisions and actions. Our inability or perhaps just a lack 

of patience to examine natural systems at the necessary large scales and time horizons focuses research 

efforts on distinct individual parameters. This focus 

is not wrong in and of itself, but if we only focus on 

the short range we risk missing the big picture that is 

inherent in natural systems.

The short range focus has limited necessary monitoring of the effectiveness and validation of many of 

the assumptions we have made about riparian systems. 

Let’s look at some of those assumptions and the associated regulations in the forest practices rules:

• Fish need cool water, so the rules require 

shade over streams.

• Streams need large wood for complexity, so we 

provide buffers intended to grow into a desired 

future condition.

• Sediment is bad for fish, so unstable slopes 

require special protection.

Now if we step back and examine those assumptions and the rules that are in place to achieve those 

goals, we can find potential conflicts in systems, not to 

mention larger societal issues. What are some of these 

conflicts?

• Many of the insects that fish eat are more 

abundant in streams that have more light and 

algae growth.

• Large streams (in my experience wider than 

about 20’) seldom have large woody debris 

forming pools, because the stream energy 

flushes the wood to the sides or downstream.

• Fish spawn in gravel, which in many streams 

has been flushed downstream, and landslides 

are a significant, if not dominant source of 

gravel and wood.

For science to appropriately inform riparian 

management policy it must examine both the direct 

relationships and the larger scale system-wide relationships in watersheds. The short range focus leads to 

conflicting conclusions and recommendations that 

arise from dueling scientists. It is like the story of 

the blind men describing an elephant: they were all 

accurate in their descriptions, but at the same time all 

wrong because each only told part of the story. Peer 

reviews of scientific research may help to ensure that 

scientific findings are viewed within the larger context.

Policy changes in our democratic society and 

government are generally slow and incremental as 

opposed to significant paradigm shifts. The rate of 

change may be even slower in forest and riparian 

management policies because of the inherently slow 

changes in these natural systems. Science can more 

effectively inform and influence policy in an adaptive 

management context. This is not to say that research 

should not challenge old beliefs and hypotheses. In 

fact, in our prescriptive and highly regulated management environment adaptive management research may 

be the only acceptable and allowable venue for challenging assumptions and taking risks. Researchers can 

benefit from the experience and anecdotal information 

of field foresters, biologists and hydrologists. As a 

group we have a long history and experience base, 

have tried lots of different ideas, some of which have 

failed and some of which have succeeded, and have 

observed the forests and streams we work in change 

over time and through various practices.

Assuming, then, that there is scientific consensus 

to revise underlying assumptions or working hypotheses, how would these revisions influence management 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

strategies or policy goals? Here we move from the 

relatively clean and sterile science environment to 

the sausage factory floor of policy development and 

implementation. Speaking still from the private forest 

landowner perspective we start by asking several questions. First, do we believe, trust and accept the science? 

We’re of course more likely to believe and accept if the 

science supports our way of doing business. But even 

where that is not the case if the science has met the 

conditions that I have just discussed, that is asking the 

appropriate questions, examining the larger context as 

well as the more distinct, direct relationships, looking 

at incremental adaptive changes but also willingly 

taking some risks, management strategies and policies 

can be influenced by science. Policy makers need both 

information and the educated opinions of scientists, but 

it is also important to understand which is which. 

The second question we ask, assuming we accept 

the science, is “how would revisions to policy and 

practices affect our business?” Will the changes reduce 

or add to costs? Will the changes make more or less 

timber available for harvest? How will changes affect 

our competitiveness in a local, regional and global 

marketplace? The most recent policy and regulatory 

changes contained within the Forest and Fish Agreement have been very costly in terms of both lost timber 

resource and operating costs. In western Washington 

the average industrial forest landowner sacrificed 

10–15 percent of its potentially available timber to 

comply with riparian and slope protection rules. Road 

maintenance activities required by the Road Maintenance and Abandonment Plans are costing around 

$100 per acre across all lands. Many other operating 

costs have increased because of the complexity of the 

regulatory system and on-site implementation requirements. Any proposed revisions to policies or practices 

that increase complexity and cost or further reduce the 

availability of timber will receive strong resistance. 

On the other side of that coin, proposed revisions 

that reduce costs or add to timber availability will be 

widely supported by landowners. Proposed policy and 

rule revisions must consider regional competitiveness. 

Riparian management strategies can’t succeed unless 

the entire riparian environment and fisheries management are included. Changes should reflect equity 

with other land uses and industries that affect riparian conditions and fisheries. As a society we should 

conduct cost/benefit analyses of proposed activities to 

make sure we are appropriately and effectively utilizing scarce resources.

The political realities facing private forest landowners include both the need to maintain our social 

license and to operate within the legal framework of 

the Forest Practices Act, HCP, and Clean Water Act. 

Revisions to management policies and goals have 

to be made within those contexts. The obligations 

and expectations for private land are not the same as 

for public lands, particularly within the Endangered 

Species Act. We have a legal requirement to avoid 

“take”, but primary responsibility for recovery of 

species belongs within federal land management and 

permitting processes. Private lands are very diverse 

in ownership structure and goals, size of tracts, and 

don’t easily conform to broad landscape or watershed 

level management strategies. This doesn’t mean we 

shouldn’t seek to implement new science, but will 

have to determine how implementation can occur 

within the diversity of owners. The adaptive management framework of the Forest and Fish Agreement 

provides for rule changes to be made based on new 

peer-reviewed science. This is not limited to CMER, 

but can come from any source. But again, science 

alone is insufficient to require rule changes. The 

agreement and the Forest Practices Act also state that 

policy and rule changes must consider the impact of 

those changes on the forest products industry, so there 
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is a sort of balance that occurs. The balance point may 

shift depending on the political leanings of Olympia 

and Washington, D.C., regional and national economic 

conditions, public opinion and probably on the strength 

and conviction of the science that is informing policy 

makers. This social license ultimately determines how 

new science will be implemented on private lands.
95

Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) 

produces income for a number of state trust beneficiaries (mostly the public schools and universities, 

and Westside counties). They are represented by the 

Board of Natural Resources, which establishes policy 

to guide the activities of the department regarding land 

management. 

Two major policy documents define the department’s management objectives: the 2006 Policy for 

Sustainable Forests and the 1997 Habitat Conservation 

Plan. The board’s guidance and direction attempts to 

find a balance between competing interests: habitat 

conservation, public access, and income-generation for 

the trust beneficiaries. Tradeoff analysis is a critical 

step in finding this balance, and must be explicit to 

ensure that costs and benefits are understood. There is 

an ‘opportunity cost’ for each new initiative selected, 

as it may consume the resources needed for another, 

possibly more beneficial strategy. Criteria must be 

developed to establish priorities for research, adaptive management and conservation initiatives. Those 

criteria include the potential magnitude of the benefits, 

public acceptability, and organizational capacity.

Several speakers have noted that ‘one size fits all’ 

stream buffer targets may not be the best approach to 

stream protection. Fixed standards that incorporate, 

for example, a single target such as age, trees per 

acre, or a standard buffer width may result in suboptimization of resource allocation. Furthermore, 

standards designed to be applied at the reach scale may 

not fully consider processes and responses that occur 

at the watershed scale. An example of a more flexible 

approach in another arena is the Old Growth habitat 

index, which incorporates a weighted index to identify 

old growth stand conditions at multiple scales (Van 

Pelt, R. 2007). In addressing the concerns posed by our 

speakers, much of our discussion has focused on more 

comprehensive, landscape approaches. Symposium 

scientists have noted that increased modeling capacity and more robust resource information than was 

available in past decades do allow a more sophisticated 

approach to developing more flexible strategies. These 

tools can help us evaluate tradeoffs among strategies. 

These modeling tools can also be an important tool for 

communication with the public. To implement new, 

more flexible strategies the symposium speakers recognized the critical need for a landscape perspective, 

understanding of natural range of variation and robust 

adaptive management and monitoring. This will take 

many years, communication with stakeholders and a 

strong scientific partnership.

Presentation

I’m going to talk a little bit about the Department of 

Natural Resources so you understand the context we 

are working from; I’m going to talk a little bit about 

money, because of course money comes into what we 

choose to do and not do; and I’m going to connect that 

to the underlying assumptions that I believe DNR is 

very interested in which we’ve heard from the scientists about and attractive thoughts we heard yesterday. 

Gretchen Nicholas, Washington State Department of Natural Resources

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying assumptions 

or working hypotheses, would this revision have important 

consequences for management strategies or policy goals?

Public Lands Perspective
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

The DNR policy is guided by the Board of Natural 

Resources and it consists of representatives of the 

beneficiaries of the income we generate from our 

land, so income production is important in the DNR. 

We also have habitat related goals, most of those our 

carried out through our habitat conservation plan. Our 

riparian strategy on the majority of Department of 

Natural Resources lands does not duplicate FEMAT, 

but is structured to have many of the concepts that are 

in FEMAT. Our HCP was put together in 1996, shortly 

after FEMAT. And those FEMAT-like strategies are 

applied across most of the DNR lands that are covered 

by the Habitat Conservation Plan with the exception of 

the Olympic Experimental State Forest, which allows 

more flexible landscape strategies that we have been 

talking about, which is a really exciting opportunity. 

It also carries with it responsibilities for research and 

validation effectiveness monitoring; should we reach 

our goal, we’ll be able to make real the promise of 

adaptive management, because that is what it’s all 

about.

In talking about money, I’m going to belabor the 

obvious. The Board of Natural Resources expects us 

to produce an income; they also have validated our 

environmental goals but they’ve made it clear they 

expect us to get the biggest bang for our ecological 

buck. They want us to spend their money wisely. I’m 

going to talk a little bit about opportunity costs. 

I have a diagram here: DNR has a certain amount 

of land and human capital and capital that it can put 

into producing environmental benefits. Let’s pretend 

it’s $100.00. Let’s pretend there is Strategy A = 3 

E’s, B= 2 E’s, and C= 4 E’s each of which costs $50. 

The DNR can spend $100. Now, these E’s represent 

units of environmental output. Obviously, if you were 

going entirely by the science and you had the ability 

to calculate environmental units of output, what you 

would choose is Strategies A and C. The reasons I 

choose the things I’m going to talk about with regard 

to assumptions is that often, through social, regulatory 

or other constraints (most often through the use of 

averages which Lee talked about extensively) we find 

ourselves spending our money on A and B because B 

is required for some reason-we’ve used an average to 

establish a target. For example, we find we can’t get 

rid of that last ten feet of buffer on a certain stream 

and place it on another place that we think is more 

important because we’ve used these averages. We 

use the concepts of Opportunity Cost a lot, without 

necessarily being explicit about it. We also use those 

ideas when we’re thinking about incremental gain 

from any strategy. Again, someone might argue that 

the item with five E’s after it produces so much-why 

not add $60.00 so it will produce even more. We know 

it doesn’t always work that way. In fact George Ice 

mentioned the important contributions scientists made 

in the early days of predicting downed wood contribution by building the FEMAT curves (of course it didn’t 

include the contribution by landslide), but still it is an 

example of scientists providing information that can be 

used in making those tradeoffs. We need improvement 

in being more explicit in using those concepts. 

In our Marbled Murrelet conservation strategies 

we’ve built the Species Habitat Model and when we 

tradeoff between strategies we will look at the number 

of Marbled Murrelet units we produce as a result of 

different strategies. You’re familiar with Sustainable 

Harvests Calculations that produce an amount of 

money that will be produce from a given strategy as 

well as the amount of habitat; you can make those 

tradeoffs, and indeed that is how we did the sustainable harvest calculation. I have to say that Lee Benda’s 

model showed a lot of promise for doing that type of 

thing for riparian systems. DNR has used the concept 

of expert knowledge driven models to give quantitative results. We know they are not answer machines, 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

but they do help us make more explicit the trade-offs 

we are making. We have experience with that type of 

model. We’ve recently implemented something called 

The Environmental Management System for doing 

our trade-offs with regard to Northern Spotted Owl 

habitat. 

Opportunity Cost comes up when we consider 

research project selection. It is going to happen out 

here at OESF; there are a million things we’d like to 

do. Jim Hotvedt and Mark Teply‘s job is to narrow it 

down to the things that are going to give us the biggest 

bang for the buck. 

There is an organizational capacity issue to be 

considered when you are implementing any new 

policy. Brian Boyle hit the nail on the head when 

he said ‘policy is driven by myth’. When we are 

going to implement a new policy, especially one that 

goes against the social myth, we have a price to pay 

organizationally in training and in working with the 

public to get that to be accepted and to happen. We 

have the saying around work: ‘you pay now or pay 

later’; you cannot go barreling in to a new strategy 

that your stakeholders don’t accept or your staff don’t 

understand. So the rate at which we go is somewhat 

determined by our organizational capacity and what 

we can tackle socially.

Given that, I’m going to try and categorize the 

underlying assumptions that were tackled yesterday. 

George Ice outlined some of the major ones; George 

and Gordon H. Reeves hit the three big ones. The first 

one is the concept of one-size-fits-all, which was especially applied to buffer strategies. The second assumption is the idea of standardized targets. The third idea 

is the landscape versus stream reach approach. Those 

three items all have an impact, because they all do not 

recognize natural variation-by recognizing natural 

variation, we can target our protection to where we get 

the biggest bang for the buck. 

With regard to one-size-fits-all buffers- we have 

made some baby steps in the direction of buffer variability. Again, we at DNR don’t rush from one side of 

the ship to another. The steps are not landscape scale 

yet, but Richard Bigley who is in our audience, has 

been working on a headwater strategy for DNR. Part 

of those concepts under consideration are to use existing protections on streams that we are already committed to and move either those stream protections or the 

leave tree protection to the critical area on headwaters. 

So instead of adding new protections we are shifting 

existing protections using foresters’ judgment about 

prioritization about the most important places to put 

that buffer investment. I think that is a very good step 

in the right direction for us. 

With regard to standard targets, I think George 

Ice brought this up first, when he talked about basal 

area targets. I have to say that we have been bedeviled 

by standardized targets such as basal area targets or 

criteria based on age for old growth or trees per acre. 

It’s one of the reasons we’ve been bedeviled with old 

growth issues. We all know that trees reach an old 

growth forest structure at different ages; similarly 

habitat targets for owls, which often focus on things 

like trees per acres, number of snags per acre, number 

of downed logs per acre-you know that snags are 

pretty rare to your inventory, it’s going to have a huge 

confidence interval around snags. You can end up with 

something designated for habitat, that when you go 

out and look at it, you know it’s not habitat and you 

know it should be managed in some way to make it 

habitat. Or conversely, something looks like habitat or 

functions well as habitat but it doesn’t hit the habitat 

target because it doesn’t have the snags. One way 

we’ve addressed that problem when trying to define 

old growth, is we’ve developed an index. We have 

a book out on it; we took the four biggest predictive 

elements in older forests that predict whether or not the 
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

stand could possibly achieved old growth structure and 

we give it a weighted scoring system. By the weighted 

scoring system, if it’s over 60 it’s most likely (not necessarily, but most likely) old growth. If it’s between 50 

and 60 in the scoring system it could be (old growth) 

and we go out and look at it. That gets to the whole 

concept of narrative, because we do have to verify on 

the ground that even our scoring system works. We 

find it’s a lot more accurate and I’d like to see us apply 

those concepts elsewhere.

That gets me to the discussion that Lee Benda 

had on Central Tendency Targets. I’d argue that the 

probability distributions that you talked about that 

you don’t think we’d like is actually attractive. I think 

that there is a lot of potential for that; I think that we 

could use that concept within DNR. Whether you use 

it to communicate with the public or not is a different 

subject. We do use narrative, at times, so perhaps it 

would be narrative that we use to communicate with 

the public. 

On to the landscape versus reach approach; 

Gordon Reeves talked about a tendency to translate a 

stand to landscape scale—he is very right. It’s going 

to be a big leap for us to move on to a truly landscape 

level of planning.

In my ‘bright and shiny idea section’ I’ll talk about 

some of the things you all talked about yesterday that I 

think will help us. 

Under the stand-scale approach one of the things I 

question: is it an underlying assumption (only brought 

up by George Ice), the idea of the utility of stream 

typing? I don’t know the answer to this yet, but when 

I was out with Richard and some other folks the other 

day, looking at the new headwater strategy, I wondered 

about the amount of time we spent determining the 

break between the Type 4 and 5 stream (1996 Forest 

Practices Rules). The amount of time the forester had 

spent on that and utility of that, versus training the 

forester about what would be the biological hotspots 

and important things along that stream reach to protect 

and have him or her spend his/her time on that instead.

I do think the concept of a “natural disturbance 

regime”, that both Reeves and Bilby talked about, and 

the range of watershed conditions are very important 

and critical and also have the big possibility of getting 

us a lot of bang for the buck. I think natural disturbance regimes are going to be a hard sell to the public. 

I don’t see us just barreling into that particular area. I 

do think it’s important.

I think on even a higher policy level that both 

Reeves and Bilby talked about the larger landscape 

context; about finding the areas that have the greatest 

potential for fish production. I think on an agency level 

that’s something we should be pursuing in the social 

context, that is, the issue of conversion of forest land to 

other uses.

For my last five minutes, I’m going to do my bright 

and shiny ideas that I picked out of yesterday’s talk.

Lee Benda talked about adjusting the FEMAT 

curves: I like that as it plays into my thoughts about 

opportunity costs and tradeoffs. I was a little torn 

between that idea and the idea of using more sophisticated models. 

A.J. Kroll said ‘this is the golden age of quantitative methods’: I couldn’t agree more. I think that 

we have way more sophisticated models and a more 

sophisticated approach that takes us past where we 

were in the 1990s. It just so happens that in the 80’s 

and early 90’s there wasn’t that much organizational 

sophistication nor was there the type of data there is 

now. We have a full complement of very sophisticated 

people at our agency. We have experience with models, we have the computer capacity and we have the 

databases. Not only the digital elevation models but 

LIDAR and very thorough inventories are available. I 

think that is going to help us a lot. I believe the open 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

source data and planning software that Lee was talking 

about is an idea whose time has come. Certainly, open 

source software is important-the US Forest Service has 

done that with FDS and that’s the model we use. DNR 

is currently working with the Nature Conservancy to 

build a cross landscape database. Those are baby steps 

in that direction, but I think they are ideas whose time 

has come. I think that some of that information and 

ability is what allows us to move forward with Adaptive Management. I am optimistic. 

Some last comments: the OESF, how are we going 

to select strategies? That’s simple-Mark Teply is going 

to do it! We will most likely select those strategies 

where the DNR has something unique to contribute. 

All of us scientists in this room need to contribute 

to the direction we go because there are not enough 

resources to spread over every single subject we are 

interested in. We are going to have to cooperate and 

find a single focus. These things will take years and 

years to implement.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Presentation

I’m going to talk about how changing scientific 

assumptions can affect policy and management. I’ll 

also talk a little bit about some of the experiences we 

had organizationally in adopting an aquatic conservation strategy that Gordie talked about. I’ll talk specifically about how it has manifested itself in management 

within riparian reserves. I’ll finish by addressing areas 

that I see as needs or opportunities for the future.

I’ve been around long enough, that I actually got 

to work in the good old days. That was a time when 

each forest was governed by a forest plan and, almost 

without exception, each forest had a different set of 

scientific information that they drew upon. Consequentially, none of the riparian directions on forests were 

similar. You could go from the Willamette to the Mt. 

Hood and it was a significantly different approach to 

how to manage.

Along came 1994, a change of management was 

driven by political issues that slowed everything to a 

halt: PacFish, NFish and the Northwest Plan. What that 

resulted in, was a generally similar aquatic conservation strategy management direction for all of the forests in Oregon and Washington. At that point in time, 

this was unheard of. As I mentioned, we were going 

from little fiefdoms which each defined management to 

a regionally consistent approach that incorporated the 

best science. That happened quickly, and frankly a lot 

of people were left with their heads spinning trying to 

figure out how to implement it.

It introduced some major changes. It is interesting 

today how we’ve forgotten how big a paradigm shift 

occurred when we adopted that conservation strategy. 

Some big things that changed: 

• The way we looked at and thought about scale; we 

went from a site specific, stream reach base way 

of looking at the world, to a watershed landscape 

scale approach. We were required to do watershed 

analysis to set the context for any project level 

management decisions.

• We went from thinking about specific onsite 

conditions to being forced to considering processes 

and trends.

• Disturbance-in general we previously ignored 

disturbance in designing projects. We were moved 

to a point of having to anticipate disturbance and 

think about how it influence processes and trends. 

• In terms of management, we had been very happy 

independently managing national forest system 

land, and were suddenly told to collaborate-to 

work with our neighbors and other federal agencies 

and give up some of that independence to come 

up with a more collaborative approach to management. As you might expect that set a bunch of 

things in motion.

• One of the big ones Gordie touched on in the 

Aquatic Conservation Strategy. It is the identification of what was called Riparian Reserves. This 

is a transition zone from upland to aquatic; it 

includes more than just the riparian ecosystem. 

Two things were critical about that. One is that 

Dave Heller, USDA Forest Service, Region 6

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying assumptions 

or working hypotheses, would this revision have important 

consequences for management strategies or policy goals?

Public Lands Perspective
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it was an actual land allocation that had some 

specific goals to emphasize the protection and 

management of riparian dependent resources. It 

was an acknowledgement that managing these 

riparian areas included not just streams but also 

lakes, reservoirs, seeps and springs and wetlands. 

Those were all included in the riparian reserve. We 

were expected to manage those in a special way 

to emphasize production of riparian dependent 

resources and ecosystem services. 

• The other thing we talked about yesterday was that 

suddenly, with that land allocation, the burden of 

proof for activities shifted. The question became: 

was an activity going to serve to maintain or 

enhance riparian dependent resources rather than 

having to prove damage to determine whether or 

not a management activity would move forward. 

There are a lot of people looking at the document 

provided by the planners, trying to figure out how 

to implement it. I would say that on a good forest, it 

took maybe five years to swallow, process, and put 

it into motion. And frankly, that is remarkably fast 

from what I expected to see. By and large, people 

took it on and learned how to implement it. I think it 

demonstrated some things. Science assessment and 

synthesis can have a profound change on management 

and policy. There weren’t a lot of people advocating 

for change, but we got it and had to live with it. It did 

make a tremendous difference in how we thought and 

how we managed. It really demonstrated that it takes 

time; in the case of our region, I would say we are still 

learning how to fully implement that strategy. I think 

it shows that timing is critical-the social and political 

situation made it ripe for significant change in how we 

thought and how we managed. I think, also, it showed 

that often times the biggest barriers aren’t science. The 

situation was ripe for us to get some new information; 

some of the biggest barriers were the organizational 

and capacity issues on how to begin to institute brand 

new processes-a whole new way of trying to manage 

the landscape. 

Looking at riparian reserves; it’s a little different 

on National Forest System land. They are not buffers. 

They are a land allocation for riparian resource management. Early on, the idea was that there would be a 

default width and we would go out and through watershed analysis adjust it to the conditions on the ground. 

One of the problems we ran into (much like your talk 

about the lack of scientific consensus with stakeholders 

and other regulatory agencies) was trying to shift those 

boundaries; it gained its own momentum. What ended 

up happening is that people decided to quit haggling 

about the width of the riparian reserve and talk about 

what the appropriate management within it should be. 

That is really what has gone on. Anymore, there is 

very little effort to adjust the width of the boundary 

and the effort goes into what is appropriate management activity within it. 

Gordie talked about the terminology of Riparian 

Reserve – it took five years for everyone to swallow 

this whole thing. And then we began to see a hands off 

approach – we didn’t do any cutting in there, we did 

very little. Five years out-we began to see people say 

‘we probably ought to do something with the vegetation’. You began to see some initial efforts at thinning 

in the riparian reserve. I would say that today (I’ve 

done some checking) every one of our forests does 

some level of pre-commercial thinning. Many of them 

are doing commercial thinning. It’s not a lot of the 

acreage, but everybody is doing it. The trend is up. It’s 

being done to accelerate the production of large wood, 

to reduce fire risks on the East Side and in some of our 

Southern Oregon forests, and (a little bit) to look for 

riparian stand structure to benefit riparian dependent 

wildlife species. 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

In most areas we are going with a no-touch area 

between the stream or the lake or the wetland and 

where the activities are occurring. Typically the 

regulatory agencies are asking for a much wider area 

than our people on the ground would like to do and 

think is appropriate. One of the biggest things we’ve 

found as we’ve moved forward, particularly in vegetation management and the riparian reserves, is that a 

big obstacle isn’t getting or incorporating new scienceit is an issue of personal values oftentimes occurring 

with individuals within the regulatory agencies. Many 

times the arguments that we have are not based on 

science; they may be selective use of science. It winds 

up loggerheads between individuals. From my point of 

view, often times, it is how well people get along that 

results in what happens. At this point, it is not heavily 

dependent on new science. 

Asking the question: Can changing scientific 

assumptions affect management? I think our adoption of the aquatic conservation strategies is pretty 

ample proof that it can have profound effect. The last 

fifteen years have introduced some interesting areas 

of need; some of those were talked about yesterday. 

In my mind, some of the needs are not more research; 

but how to take finding from research and get it in the 

hands of people in a form that they can use. Gordie 

talked about synthesis and scientific assessment, 

integrating it into management. I would have to say, 

that is probably the biggest area of need that we have. 

The statement that ‘science is ahead of policy’ is true; 

there is no question about that. The days are past when 

our biologists were able to sit back and read research 

reports and figure out how to integrate them into 

management; if they do that, it is on the weekend at 

home. It is very tough for our folks to stay current with 

science, let alone how to put it into a form they can 

use. 

Also, I think the world has gotten so busy that 

having a strategic and systematic approach to identifying needs and developing operational approaches with 

our science arm of the Forest Service has become very 

uneven. It’s difficult to get that time and sit down to 

figure out where we are going together-and then figuring out how to come up with the resources to make 

that happen. It is becoming harder and harder.

Yesterday, when folks were talking, I picked up 

some specific bright things that Gretchen was talking 

about – here are four or five areas where we could 

likely use additional information and techniques for 

dealing with today’s challenges: 

• The first one is a better understanding of landscape 

patterns and the relative role of riparian areasnot just streams, but lakes, wetlands, seeps and 

springs-in landscapes. What role do the functions 

and resources we find in riparian areas play within 

the larger landscapes? The landscape scale is bigger than a watershed.

• Improved understanding of desired and target 

conditions at various scales and over various time 

frames is a huge issue. We know there is disturbance, we know there is variability; but how to 

deal with that at different scales and timeframes is 

no simple task. It is a real challenge.

• Improved understanding and analytical tools that 

help us look at watershed health or resiliency over 

time is something we could use. We are getting 

better at it, but it takes a fare amount of time and 

money-both of which we have less and less of.

• A big area for needed improved is our understanding and integration of riparian dependent wildlife 

and other organisms into our management of 

riparian areas. I talked about the fact that riparian 

reserves are an area to manage riparian dependent 

resources; unfortunately, in many cases fish and 
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water tend to be the primary drivers of management decisions in those areas. This is not to say 

that the other resource advocates don’t participate. 

That is an area in which we have a lot of room to 

grow and become more proficient at in terms of 

how to integrate the other element into our management. 

• Another one is tracking systems to monitor the 

response of our management to disturbance. We’ve 

tried to anticipate disturbance – in Washington 

we’ve had some major flood events and windstorms. How to track change over a large scale is 

something we could use help with. We are doing 

it, but it is not a consistent protocol and there may 

be ways of looking at that and being able to see 

what has been the response to 15 years of management when we get these disturbance events. We 

had ideas about what things would look like after 

major disturbance-but going out and looking at 

those over a large areas is something that would be 

helpful.

• One final area: that would be climate change. 

We are in the midst of an actual revision of our 

aquatic conservation strategy. It’s required by law, 

but I call it adaptive management. We are doing 

a minimal job of trying to incorporate climate 

change into our aquatic conservation strategies 

and knowing how it should best effect our future 

management. 

Brian said an improvement in science, policy, communication and understanding is going to be critical. 

It is tough to communicate, to share information. This 

symposium has been a great chance to do that. Within 

the Forest Service we need to learn how to do a better 

job of that. It’s going to take extra effort and commitment to make it happen because people’s time is 

becoming scarce.

Kathy O’Halloran: I want to make one point that 

Dave and I talked about earlier; there have been so 

many great ideas and concepts discussed here, particularly the discussion about what is really going to 

make a difference. Bob Bilby did a great job in his talk 

about ‘So What’-regarding salmon, we are spending 

a lot of time looking at forestry, but if the real issue is 

land conversion how do we get that addressed? With 

the Puget Sound Partnership the action agenda is about 

to come out. I encourage you to watch the web for this 

because that is where a lot of these concepts and ideas 

can create that interface with science and policy. This 

is an area where a lot of the decision makers will be 

looking; what makes a difference and where should the 

investment be made.
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Abstract

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying 

assumptions or working hypotheses, would this revision have important consequences for management 

strategies or policy goals?

Scientific consensus is elusive if not impossible in 

the debate around scientific proposals in the natural 

resource community. It has been the Foundation’s 

experience working through the last decade on the 

development of the Family Forest Habitat Conservation 

Plan that consensus has been unattainable even with 

the use of a collaborative, transparent and structured 

independent scientific review process.

One of the biggest roadblocks is the philosophical 

opposition to active forest management embodied by 

many in the conservation/environmental community.

True adaptive management processes are difficult 

to employ in political arenas where there is tremendous 

political capital invested in the status quo.

Given these challenges, a process where the 

preponderance of scientific evidence can be employed 

to inform policy decisions is needed. With out such a 

process, policy makers and researchers are left with a 

“dueling scientist” scenario which does little to further 

scientific knowledge or policy processes.

Presentation

My task is to address the question: If there is scientific 

consensus to revise underlying assumptions or working hypotheses, would this revision have important 

consequences for management strategies or policy 

goals?

I intend to walk the fine line between policy and 

science, particularly as it relates to a habitat conservation plan that has been in development by the Family 

Forest landowners in Lewis County. 

I’m going to assume that most of you know what a 

Habitat Conservation Plan is. I first heard about habitat 

conservation plans in a class taught by Nalini Nadkarni at the Evergreen State College and from Jerry 

Gorsline, who was a field representative for the Washington Environmental Council. I worked on an HCP 

for my family’s forest for about five years; there was 

another landowner in the county working on the same 

thing. The federal services approached us, suggesting 

it would never work on a one-at-a-time basis due to 

lack of small landowner resources and agency capacity 

and proposed working together on a programmatic 

approach to habitat conservation planning.

We tried hard to work together in a collaborative 

process with multiple stakeholders; affected tribes; 

state agencies; and county governments, and we 

thought the independent scientific review process 

would be a useful tool for us. We found out early on 

the approach that we were taking was controversial 

amongst the resource protection agency stakeholders 

and looked at the independent scientific review process 

as a way to provide assurances. I’m going to try to 

cover twelve years worth of process and experience in 

fifteen minutes.

We finally submitted an HCP and an administrative draft environmental impact statement to the 

federal services on September 4, 2007. The documents 

Steve Stinson, Family Forest Foundation

If there is scientific consensus to revise underlying assumptions 

or working hypotheses, would this revision have important 

consequences for management strategies or policy goals?

Family Tree Farm Perspective
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

are over 1000 pages-that’s good that we covered a lot 

of bases, it’s bad in the fact that people rarely read it. 

We put close to $4,000,000 of federal, state, private 

and county funds into this project. We really wanted to 

follow the rules of science, use best available science, 

put together the “A team” to put together this Habitat 

Conservation Plan. Marty Vaughn, of Biota Pacific, is 

the lead habitat conservation plan writer on this HCP. 

We have an excellent document which we’d like to get 

across the finish line. 

I think that science is ahead of policy and that we 

have a lot of work to do in our policy arena to take 

advantage of the tools including the internet open 

source software concept mentioned by Lee yesterday. 

I’m going to make the argument that policy is not yet 

ready for that level of information. My point is that in 

Washington we often wind up on the ground in front of 

a few large trees arguing about their specific effect on 

riparian function. That’s way down in the weeds. 

We must attempt to think in a broader perspective. 

We’ve got the Pacific Ocean and salmon – the fish 

come in the Columbia River system and travel back to 

the ocean. We have Washington, Oregon, and Idaho 

that we deal with here with different riparian regulations. In this particular case, we are dealing with a 

perennial, fish bearing stream buffer zone, bank-full 

width of nine feet, and a site index of II. In Washington State, we have a 50 foot no cut zone and a 100 

foot managed zone on each side of the stream. (Those 

of you familiar with Forestry and Fish know it’s a lot 

more complicated than that, but that’s the basics.) In 

Oregon, that same stream—same fish—has a 50 foot 

managed zone; 40 square feet of basal area must be 

retained. In Idaho, we have a 30 foot riparian zone at 

slope distance where you have to retain 140 trees per 

acre in the three to eight inch diameter class. In Washington State we also have the alternate plan system;, 

we’ve seen ‘no cut prescriptions from ten to fifty feet 

in that planning system that have been approved under 

Forest and Fish. 

I’m going to show you what the Family Forest 

Foundation HCP would propose for this stream, but 

before I do that, I’ve learned I should provide a little 

geographical context of where this plan would apply. 

It would apply to Lewis County forestlands that are 

owned by Family Forest landowners who are defined 

by this state as people who harvest less than two 

million board feet of timber on an annual basis. Lands 

in this category are usually low elevation, dry Douglas fir forests, with low gradient stream systems; 85 

percent of the streams are less than 10 feet in bank-full 

width with gradients less than 4 percent. It is not an 

area where landslides are a significant factor in the 

LWD recruitment process. Historically we have stand 

replacing fires, with a fire return interval somewhere 

between 50 and 100 years. 

The Family Forest HCP would put a 40 foot ‘no 

cut’ and a 40 foot managed zone for a combined 80 

feet on that fish bearing stream. 

We were having trouble getting our science 

assessment to be accepted by the federal regulatory 

agencies, so we used the independent scientific review 

process. We entered into that on a collaborative basis; 

NOAA Fisheries, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and 

Family Forest Foundation. We adopted a consensus 

process and jointly picked a pool of reviewers, jointly 

developed a set of questions. We attempted to make the 

process transparent; we used Sustainable Ecosystems 

Institute, Dr’s Steven Courtney and Deborah Brosnan; 

they have the federal contract for peer review for the 

US Fish and Wildlife Service. We got a very positive 

review or our proposed conservation strategies. Dr. 

Courtney actually said the review was the closest 

to achieving consensus among forest scientists he 

has seen in his history of running scientific review 

processes. The federal services didn’t care: NOAA 
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fisheries staff independently contacted the reviewers, 

outside of the transparent process. Those same staff 

provided anecdotal reports to the stakeholders saying: 

‘when we told them what you were really going to do 

with the data set, they changed their minds’. I cannot 

get any of this in writing. 

There are two aquatic biologists at NOAA fisheries 

science center who disagreed with the forestry questions that were addressed in the independent scientific 

review process. After another year of back and forth, 

there are six PhD Forest Ecologists that agree with the 

referents condition methodology, and two NOAA PhD 

Aquatic Riparian Scientists that disagree. There is no 

format within which to resolve that disagreement. 

As you might imagine, there are politics behind 

this debate. Political pressure was brought to bear. I’ve 

been accused of being politically adept at manipulating 

the political system-we have a great story and I like 

to tell it. There is another group that is very adept at 

political pressure in this state: the Washington Forest 

Law Center. I try to bring the Family Forest Habitat 

Conservation Plan to the attention of the public and 

the media. Reporters who follow up with a call to the 

Washington Forest Law Center are given headlines 

like this: ‘just trying to exercise their God-given right 

to log down to the edge of the stream’, or ‘science isn’t 

good enough for salmon’. 

I have a letter of support for the Habitat Conservation Plan signed by Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, 

Congressman Dicks, Congressman Baird – no small 

feat. Washington Forest Law Center gets that letter; 

they fly to Washington DC and verbally abuse staffers, accuse them of trying to influence the scientific 

process. They filed public disclosure requests with all 

three state agencies regarding the Habitat Conservation 

Plan. They did not file the Freedom of Information Act 

requests with the federal agencies. 

The latest action is a series of letters to NOAA 

Fisheries that claim that the CMER Desired Future 

Condition validation study (about 115 plots of very fine 

work) is the only set of data that can be used to define 

a reference condition in Washington State. 

Given the technical concerns, the Federal Regulatory Services refused to move the HCP review process 

forward to public comment under NEPA, which is our 

current ask. 

The logic that I hear is that we have technical 

issues. This is a quote from the federal service:

“A+B+C+D=E. We don’t like E, so we went back 

to find out what is wrong with A,B,C and D”. It’s a 

process from which you cannot get escape or resolve.

What are we going to do? I feel strongly about 

the scientific approach; I feel like we’ve addressed the 

scientific issues the best that they can be addressed. 

We still have no refereed format in which to resolve 

the scientific issues. It’s clear that people are uncomfortable with the risk; I think there are things in our 

implementation agreement that we can do to reduce the 

level of risk and we are going to continue to urge the 

Federal Services to move forward and put the document out for public comment.

What is scientific consensus? I am not sure that 

it exists; I’m not sure that it’s achievable. We ought 

to think about what that means. If we cannot achieve 

scientific consensus because of different value systems 

or different agency perspectives, what other processes 

might be available to find a way forward?

Will public comment under NEPA provide an 

opportunity to reach scientific consensus? I doubt it. 

What can we do to the independent scientific review 

process that would improve it in terms of reaching 

consensus? My experience with the independent 

scientific review process has not been very positive. 

We need to think hard about what that means and 

how that process can be improved. Can we even reach 
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scientific consensus in a political world? I don’t think 

so. Lacking consensus, what process is there that will 

allow us to move new scientific information forward? 

I think that’s the key. I’ll reiterate what I stated earlier: 

Science is way ahead of policy. If we are to benefit 

from science, we need to think hard about what kind 

of policy procedures and mechanisms can be adjusted, 

modified and put into place to allow the work that you 

(scientists) are doing to get it out into the real world 

where people can take benefit from it. 
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Craig Partridge: This question is for our panelists: 

What I learned from the discussions here so far is 

that despite what the literature says about adaptive 

management never happening, these guys all think it 

does. There is adaptive receptivity in the policy arena 

for new scientific assumptions except maybe in the 

case of the Family Forest HCP. Although policy change 

happens slow, except when it’s fast, and although there 

isn’t really any money for it, and although it really 

doesn’t matter if we just talk about the forest because 

the real impacts to fish habitat are going to happen 

elsewhere; with those caveats there is a dynamic receptivity in the policy arena to the needed changes that 

yesterday’s contributors told us about. My question 

to the panelists is to sort of turn Question number 3 

around and say: ‘if there is an opportunity for consequences in management and policy as a result of new 

scientific assumptions; what is the one quick thing that 

would be necessary from the science in your view? 

If you had to say what the one thing of consequence, 

what would that new science have to provide?’

Norm Schaaf: My first reaction would be for scientists 

to provide a range of alternatives on how new information could be incorporated into management. Not recommending policy, but offering up some approaches 

where the new information could be incorporated into 

ongoing programs. 

Steve Stinson: One of the useful things that would 

apply in this situation would be to have a common language. I think often when new science comes out; it’s 

not understandable by policy makers, stakeholders and 

the public in general. If I were to pick one consequential thing that would be different in how we presented 

science it would be to have some common language. 

Gretchen Nicholas: There is some foundation to the 

current science that we’ve already talked about; but 

there is the issue of the number of studies, replicates, 

repeatability...the foundation of good science. It is 

difficult for an organization to adopt new policy in the 

face of evolving scientific information [because you 

have to validate the assumptions behind that change]. 

As Lee Benda described, [you can help validate 

assumptions by] pulling together an expert system like 

the US Forest Service’s Environmental Management 

System or something similar that will use enough of 

the new research to back up assumptions and make 

them plainly understood in terms of developing new 

policy. [If scientists are] doing some of that footwork it 

really helps in making tradeoffs [and making assumptions clear in the policy development]. 

Dave Heller: I think the thing coming from science 

that could help us with the greatest consequence is an 

understanding of the dynamics of the situations we are 

dealing with. We look for a quick solution, an absolute 

answer, even though we deal in a system that we know 

is inherently dynamic. When it gets down to policy 

making and writing regulations and working within 

those, we want something that is absolute out there; 

safe. That’s a tough place for us to be. 

Craig Partridge: So that’s essentially what they 

(panelists) are asking from you (scientists) and now 

is the time to talk about what you (audience) have 

Which are the critical assumptions in terms of both scientific 

uncertainty and management/policy implication?

Question, Answer, Comment Session moderated by Craig Partridge, WA DNR
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concluded as a result of the discussion so far; what do 

you consider to be the critical scientific assumptions 

that ought to have the potential for changing management and policy. How those might best be translated or 

structured into further research programs that would 

influence policy and what you think the key aspect of 

policy leverage that have struck you from the discussions of yesterday and today. You can start by asking 

questions of the panelists, but we are going to quickly 

open it up for people to comment and question one 

another.

Pete Bisson: Let me give a short preamble: Ten years 

ago I attended a fisheries conference on Science/

Policy Interface. Angus Duncan was a speaker at 

the conference; he was the initial chairman of the 

Northwest Power Planning council. At that time it 

was the nation’s most expensive ecological restoration 

program. My question to him was: has science sold 

you down the river? Of course this was an audience of 

scientists so Angus’s initial response was ‘no’. But then 

he said: ‘There’s something that really bothers me; 

there are scientists on one side of the table with excellent scientific credentials, and they are arguing with 

one point of view. And on the other side of the table 

are scientists with equally impressive credentials who 

are arguing for the opposite point of view. And I don’t 

know who to believe’. So my question for the panel 

is: Based on your experience, or for that matter, what 

you’ve heard over the last day, where do you think 

are some of the key pinch points now, where there is 

not scientific consensus particularly as it relates to the 

issue of riparian management?

Steve Stinson: I think it’s pretty clear that we have a 

division in camps; active management versus passive 

restoration perspectives; the precautionary principle 

versus folks that would like to dive in to replicating or 

imitating, to the extent possible, natural historic disturbance regimes. Until we can make a common sense 

case for conservative active management approaches, 

we are going to have a difficult time overcoming that 

‘foresters are bad-keep them the hell out of the riparian 

zones’ perspective that is embodied by folks that want 

a larger no-cut buffer. That to me is one of the real 

obvious ones that we’ve got to overcome right away 

if we are going to make any progress on the kinds of 

things that were discussed in this room today or yesterday, which were quite exciting from my perspective. 

Gretchen Nicholas: I agree that the whole issue 

of uncertainty with regard to thinning and riparian 

buffers is important. We have people who want a lot 

of certainty of outcomes if we are going to propose 

changes. People are concerned that the uplands silviculture that we know about can’t be translated to the 

riparian areas. They are worried about blow down; 

about how much opening up the stand will impact 

shade. It’s problematic for us; I guess the best thing 

to happen in the scientific community is to take those 

small steps forward with the experimental sites and 

all of us together getting people out to those sites to 

see them. I find that you can publish all the papers in 

the world, but taking people out to those experimental 

sites can get the idea across in a very short amount of 

time.

Norm Schaaf: One of the things we could benefit from 

is better measures of the effectiveness of rules and rule 

implementation; are we achieving the desired results 

that we have set out to achieve? We set up science to 

support policy and then rule implementation, but we 

very seldom look back in the other direction to see 

if we have achieved the results we are looking for. 

If rules are effective in achieving some goal, is that 

goal then getting us to the larger strategies that we are 

hoping for? If we create shade and we create cooler 

water, will that bring back more fish? Is there a bigger 

part of the picture that we are not looking at? How do 
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we validate the conservation practices implemented 

through rules? 

Craig Partridge: To remind people: which are the 

pinch points, those assumptions that seem to drive 

people into their trenches, which we could use more 

clarity on?

Jim Peters: I think part of the difficulty is how stakeholders interpret different studies and what their risk 

level is. In some instances I have a lot of respect for 

this person over here and I have a lot of respect for this 

person over there, and who do I believe? When it gets 

filtered out it is like this: this person has interpreted 

data slightly differently and is willing to have a higher 

risk versus this person over here who doesn’t want any 

risk at all. I think in that type of scenario, being able 

to filter some of that stuff out and being able to really 

understand where they are coming from would help us 

make better judgments. It amazes me all the time; we 

think we have all the science and the literature to back 

it up. Then you’ll find somebody coming out with a 

total different perspective on that science because of a 

totally different risk assessment.

Gordon Reeves: In terms of having dueling scientists, 

we wind up looking at the track record that led up to 

the disagreement. A lot of times that has a lot to say 

about relevance and the stature of the comments that 

we get. I would agree, too, on the need for demonstrating effectiveness. I think tracking the results of 

applying science is particularly difficult. I mentioned 

earlier that we’ve really gone from talking site specific 

to watershed resiliency. We do have a monitoring 

system that is pretty good-but there are real questions 

on whether or not we can show results. 

Craig Partridge: You may have been asking for 

the substantive questions that drive people into their 

trenches, but what we’ve uniformly heard is that it’s 

not so much about the substantive questions; it’s about 

the risk tolerance of different scientists or scientific 

communities. It’s the difference in risk tolerance that 

drives people on any scientific question. Is that an 

acceptable answer, Pete, or do you want to pursue it 

more?

Pete Bisson: Actually, I thought Steve has come the 

closest with his answer on active versus passive management; that is a hot topic and one over which there 

is a lot of disagreement. But to the others, from your 

particular vantage point, if you have ideas or topics or 

issues that you feel are scientific hot buttons or there 

isn’t consensus on – we as scientists would like to 

know what those are.

Gretchen Nicholas: Given that we are getting ready 

to do validation monitoring, I’ve heard some pretty 

hot arguments over the validity of paired watershed 

studies. I’ve also heard some pretty hot arguments 

on how you do validation monitoring for salmon. Do 

you measure the smolts coming out of one small area? 

Gordon H. Reeves suggested there is some kind of an 

ear bone that you can use to study the whole life cycle 

of the salmon. How exactly do you approach that? If 

we are going to undertake an expensive program, we 

want to do one that works. 

Dave Heller: I’d toss out too, I think climate change 

is a huge one-at least on national forest system lands 

we’ve got a pretty robust strategy laid out and I think 

there are some significant questions. If we look ahead, 

some of the modeling I’ve seen, there are some real 

strategic implications that maybe we need to be considering and we are scrambling right now with how to 

incorporate them into our management. Gordie talked 

a lot about disturbance and scale. I think we are really 

struggling with how to mesh natural disturbance and 

man-caused disturbance at various scales; how do we 

incorporate that into our management. 

Kathy O’Halloran: One of the topics that we briefly 

touched on yesterday is alder and alder management. With the release of the information associated 
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with Puget Sound hypoxia and specifically the Hood 

Canal—I’m not sure which was number one and which 

was number two—but septic systems and alder were 

the two greatest source of nitrogen in Puget Sound.

Craig Partridge: So alder is not quite the hero we heard 

about yesterday then?

Kathy O’Halloran: No; it seems like it would be very 

nice to have some ecologists, foresters and ocean type 

people all come together and talk about alder. I feel 

like my head is spinning; depending on which group 

I’m with, alder is either wonderful or horrible. It would 

be very nice to have at least a thread of consistency.

Gretchen Nicholas: I want to comment on that alder 

study because that caught our attention. In the case of 

this alder study, certainly these are preliminary results, 

this is one study. We know that alder creates a flux of 

nitrogen. That is not surprising-it creates nitrogen in 

the streams. The amount of impact on the Puget Sound 

system is still in question. When I talked to the study 

author, he said he never meant it to be extrapolated as 

broadly as it was. That points to the problem we have 

with sensationalism of one study. It could end up being 

true, but the study’s author tells me that he would need 

more studies because he had to extrapolate data from 

some watersheds to other watersheds. The jury is still 

out on that-it’s an example of running with data that is 

not conclusive. 

Pete Heide: I think I’ve heard enough here today to 

say that we are ready to take a look at some sort of a 

landscape approach to how we put our riparian strategies together. Representing large private landowners, 

I’ll tell you that there are almost no large private 

landowners out there that are one bit interested in any 

kind of a rule change effort or major change in the 

way they are operating. We just learned how to operate with what we are doing now, but because we have 

this wonderful facility here and because we have this 

organization with the Dept. of Natural Resources in 

managing large blocks of land, and because they are 

interested in learning more about how they can manage those lands better, I think this is a terrific opportunity to begin testing some of the mechanics of how 

you would go about first developing the techniques for 

identifying what these landscapes looked like and the 

tools to manage them. 

You also have another wonderful organization 

at the University of Washington, called the Precision 

Forestry Cooperative. They are quite interested in 

applying the science that is coming along in the way 

of remote sensing. I think this is a great opportunity 

to begin testing, not only how do we identify what 

these areas look like, but the real opportunity, I think, 

and Doug convinced me of this, is to use these tools 

to revive what we were doing with watershed analysis 

in an economical way; I think it would be terrific. My 

suggestion is that we look at this as an opportunity to 

test some new tools and test some new processes to 

begin to figure out how we can economically implement this notion that the environment is variable and 

we ought to be considering it as variable when we 

apply our treatments.

Steve Stinson: I’d like to try to tie a few things 

together. I agree with much of what I’ve heard over 

the last two days. In thinking out of the box in a safe 

environment here; we’ve got climate change, we 

know that we’ve got forest conversion (my conversion 

numbers are about double of Dr. Bilby’s and I think 

you can justify both of them) and we’ve got a need 

for common language. And we were just asked about 

the key aspects of policy leverages. Is it possible to 

leverage the concern over climate change, which most 

everybody understands the direct linkage between it 

and forests, and a subset of that is our conversion issue, 

with some of the new tools and datasets that we have, 

to broaden the public’s perceptive on a couple of key 
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issues? One key issue would be the dynamic nature of 

the ecosystems that we are working with. I think that 

most of the general public views the forest as a static 

system-I think that’s a key place where these tools we 

have could inform the public. The second issue is using 

on-the-ground results that we can use to broaden the 

public’s perception of the dynamic nature of the forest 

and riparian systems. The third thing that could come 

out of this is this notion that the assumption is that the 

current regulatory system is a house of cards in the 

sense that the science is ahead of the regulations. 

Craig Partridge: My understanding of the public 

perception of change in forests, is that they do understand that forests change; they just think it is all human 

caused and a bad thing. Maybe to rephrase it: How can 

we help stakeholders and the general public understands that not all forest change is a bad change? That 

may be the bigger challenge.

Norm Schaaf: A comment to Pete’s suggestion-there 

is a real opportunity to set in place some landscape 

level studies. We have a very nice laboratory in the 

Olympic Experimental Forest. Perhaps we start at the 

headwaters on Forest Service and work down through 

State and private lands, capturing the opportunity 

to look at different management histories and goals. 

There are a range of prescriptions and management 

applications and techniques. Those all can meet this 

larger goal of fish production and healthier riparian 

habitats. 

Craig Partridge: Any other response to the idea of a 

large landscape scale experimental program?

Bruce Rieman: The idea has been around a long time, 

and there’s been a lot of discussion in the scientific 

community about the need for these big experiments. 

They are big spatially, but they are also long term and 

it’s going to cost a lot of money. Finding the collaborative means and will to do it through the time scales 

that are necessary would be a huge challenge. Is that 

something that is really feasible?

Craig Partridge: Sometimes that means spanning the 

scientists’ life time career.

Gordon Reeves: A follow up to what Bruce just said: 

one of the things we need to keep in mind is the real 

test of these shifts is going to be the next big natural 

event. We don’t know when that’s going to happen. If 

we are indeed trying to manage for dynamics, I think 

we need to understand that big event sets the stage for 

the long term productivity of the system. I think in 

designing these types of things we can’t present the 

idea that in five years we are going to have the answer. 

It may take five years, ten years for this big event to 

happen. It’s not something we can guarantee we’ll 

have an answer in five years. That’s really important in 

terms of setting up the expectations with policy makers and the public. This is not a nice tidy experiment 

that we are going to be able to tell you ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in 

two years.

Kate Sullivan: Large scale experiments also suffer 

from the problem that everyplace is unique; large scale 

studies are difficult to replicate. You have to have a 

lot of agreement on what you are learning while you 

are conducting it in one place, to extrapolate to other 

places. You have to avoid the problem of paired watersheds, now you have paired landscapes. Well, you have 

no pair. Really we need to have some good process 

understanding of how things are working while you 

are doing those studies to extrapolate well.

Craig Partridge: Can you give us examples of the 

characteristics of that kind of process?

Kate Sullivan: I have a slightly different view of the 

same problem that Gordie and Lee are talking about. 

It’s all about how much sediment gets into rivers and 

how well it sticks and the mechanisms by which it is 

delivered. You can still study those things, and their 
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rates, in the context of this landscape. You can still 

understand fundamental processes and how stream 

temperature works within the context of this landscape. You can’t lose track of that-if you think that 

watershed paired studies have a problem; landscape 

scale is really going to have a problem. 

A.J. Kroll: One thing that concerns me when I hear 

these kinds of discussions between the science and 

policy folks is that a lot of the ideas that we consider as 

scientists might include strategies with large up-front 

commitment of resources that society at large is just 

not willing to consider. Gordie pointed out that he 

had an idea that instead of going into some of these 

watersheds on a periodic basis, you might go into a 

watershed and do extensive harvest in a short temporal 

window (if I was interpreting it correctly). I know we 

realize there is enormous operational efficiencies for 

large landowners doing that, but the suggestion that 

we might go into a watershed and take out five or six 

hundred acres at a time, even with proper buffers-it 

is just not going to happen. It’s not going to be considered in Washington in spite of some of the larger 

scale historic disturbances that might have occurred. 

Even if you could find some way to balance the harvest 

impacts that you know exist, we are just not going to 

start taking out watersheds any more.

Craig Partridge: Our watershed associated protection standards are uniform for a reason and they are 

uniform because people want uniformity as an equity 

guarantee. That underlies what you are saying.

A.J. Kroll: Yes, that’s right, you could put together a 

blue ribbon panel of scientists that reports that in the 

state of Washington the best strategy is to knock down 

700–800 acres at a time and only go into a watershed 

every 60 or 70 years and the public is not going to go 

for it. So why even study it? I think there is something 

very disingenuous about taking public money to study 

something that the public is never going to allow you 

to implement.

Pete Bisson: There is a group of very capable, core 

scientists here, who are looking way ahead. My suggestion is-we’ve got new tools, we do understand that 

the landscape is variable. We have good indications 

that we shouldn’t be doing the same thing everywherethat we should be customizing our treatments to the 

landscape features. I’m suggesting that we test those 

tools and begin to adapt to this way of doing business, 

this idea about being very specific about our prescriptions. That may tie into a longer term study about very 

large landscape comparison-but that is not what I was 

suggesting. 

Steve Stinson: Thanks for the clarification Pete; I 

thought that was what you said. It broadened into a 

landscape level experiment discussion, which reinforces the point that I was trying to make earlier-we’ve 

got great tools, but the science is ahead of the policy. 

Before you are ever going to be able to implement even 

Pete’s notion, we’ve got to get back to the basics of 

broadening the public’s perception on some key issues 

or we are never going to have the public support as 

A.J. so aptly noted. We are never going to be able to 

get the kind of funding that it takes to sustain that kind 

of research over time. 

Doug Martin: I thought we would discuss the incremental approach in a bit. Lee touched on it at the 

beginning of his talk-the four elements of riparian 

management: buffer width for fish barring waters; 

buffer length for fish barring waters (e.g., how long 

are the reaches you may be managing); headwater 

buffer length (e.g., what length of headwater buffer 

will mitigate influence on downstream fish habitat); 

and management BMPs for headwaters themselves. 

We actually have a lot of questions about what are 

the characteristics of those elements that would make 

the best sense to address given the spatial variability 
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across the landscape, potential productivity, intrinsic 

potential, etc. You could develop a suite of experiments 

and investigations simply dealing with those 4 elements and getting an understanding of the risks. Once 

we have an understanding of the risks you can translate 

that back to the public. Like Pete said-incrementally. 

Gordon Reeves: I think one thing to keep in mind is 

that we could use models to do a lot of this landscape 

stuff. One of the key things is to understand the 

assumptions that go into the models and then playing 

the ‘what/if’ game with the model to make predictions. 

If we are going to be looking at large scale and we 

want to talk about long time period, we can use modeling. A lot of the terrestrial stuff is based on that; we 

can again, draw the parallels there. We need to really 

be clear about where the weakest part of the model is, 

or where we went out on a limb to make an assumption 

and start to work to refute or to support these types 

of assumptions. We can start using these models and 

modeling efforts that provide policy makers some 

insight into what is going to potentially happen if you 

institute these big types of changes without waiting for 

100 years for the answer.

Craig Partridge: Do we need to do actual on-theground large scale studies?

Gordon Reeves: I think you can. You can make 

predictions but again, I think the models are going to 

give you some real insights into what you would expect 

out there and start to build the confidence with the 

public. I think we have to throw the idea out to start 

the discussions and one of the ways we can start to do 

that is through modeling; to instill some confidence 

with the public. 

Pete Bisson: Kate raised a very interesting point, 

which was the challenges that we face in trying to 

design or implement some large scale learning effort 

at the watershed scale or the landscape scale. I think 

there is another barrier, too, that we haven’t talked 

about much. It has to do with the institutional barriers 

to being able to put in place large scale learning opportunities on the land. Several of us here were involved 

in the initial TFW effort. Who wasn’t at that table; the 

feds. When I was involved with FEMAT and then the 

Interior Columbia Basin Analysis-who wasn’t at the 

table? State and private. There has been this traditional 

wall between the various land management organizations and being able to actually sit down and work out 

a way to test hypothesis on a broad scale because we 

operate under a different set of mandates, we operate 

under a different set of requirements, of laws. The 

problem is that we have a landscape scale problem. 

Until we start to break some of those walls down, 

we aren’t going to be able to implement the learning 

experiments that we need to do.

Craig Partridge: So someone in Boston has a right to 

care about an acre of National Forest land, but not the 

acre of state or private land next door to it in the same 

landscape. That’s the nature of the barrier we run up 

against. 

Doug Ryan: If we are going to get a chance to take 

advantage of where the science is leading us, one of the 

things we’ve got to face up to is that it is telling us that 

extreme events provide a lot of positive benefits – in 

fact, they provide the long term habitat that fish need 

to be sustainable. One of the tough things we are going 

to have to get over is the public perception of extreme 

events. If you look at the media and see the coverage 

we get if there is a flood or a wildfire, I’ll bet over 90 

percent of it is negative. It’s either the devastation or 

the cleanup of the devastation. We are finally getting 

a little good media on fires where you actually hear, 

occasionally, that there are positive benefits of fire. We 

hardly ever hear anything like that for aquatic systems. 

That may be critical, if we are ever going to get the 

public to accept the fact that we are actually managing 
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it to make extreme events a positive thing in terms of 

fish production and sustainability.

Craig Partridge: Can you think of any ways to make 

headway there? 

Doug Ryan: Yes-as scientists we can do studies of 

what those effects are for extreme events and how they 

play out over the long term for fish habitat. Another 

one is the communications efforts: when there are 

these big events, ensure that there is a message put 

out that over the long run our fish need these events. 

Yes, we have to deal with short term negative consequences, but we also need the long term positive 

consequences.

Craig Partridge: On fire, it’s been a painful process; 

in the forest health and fire policy arena we have to 

be very careful that we say ‘uncharacteristic fire’ or 

‘unnaturally large fire’-and people are still not necessarily hearing it. I think it’s really an excellent point 

—it’s a big request. 

Doug Ryan: This is really important in the policy 

arena because the public has to be prepared for these 

things.

George Ice: It seems as if we are always looking 

for the wooden stake to drive into the heart of the 

questions we are looking at-I think there are so many 

different approaches to these questions, whether it be 

modeling, whether it be paired watershed studies. As 

many of you know we are involved in a watershed 

research cooperative. The idea is to have replication; science is about testing hypothesis and having 

reproducible results-so that you have patterns that 

are not unique to one watershed, but are found in 

multiple watersheds. That’s really at the heart of the 

watershed research cooperative in Oregon – to test 

and replicate in the watersheds. Also to replicate in 

time; in the Alsea Watershed where we can look at past 

practices and look at current practices and look over 

a long period of time to see those responses. We had 

an experience where we had a tour by representatives 

of EPA to Hinkle Creek several months ago. They 

presented one of the challenges we have in developing 

these types of studies. When they looked at the study 

design they said: you are testing the Oregon Forest 

Practices Rules for headwater streams but how about 

testing some other approaches; leave certain buffer 

widths along some streams and don’t leave buffers on 

others? We thought about that, but that would have 

reduced our statistical power. It would reduce our ability to have replication, which would have made it more 

difficult to say something about the results. 

So we are faced with this problem of replication, 

and I think this may get back to some of our earlier 

discussions about burden of proof. How accurate do we 

need to be in key questions? Which ones do we need to 

be really focused and accurate about and which can we 

be plus or minus 100 percent in our response and still 

have a favorable result for habitat and water quality. 

Those are some of my ideas.

Craig Partridge: In my experience scientists who are 

in the business of generating truth—to them 95 percent 

confidence seems reasonable—would be aghast at the 

confidence level that’s acceptable to policy makers. For 

policy, the preponderance of the evidence works, rather 

than “beyond all reasonable doubt”. 

Lee Benda: I want to comment about the paired landscape studies, which I completely agree with Kate on. 

I also want to throw a pitch in for the idea that if you 

use these tools in a systematic way in one landscape 

like the Olympics and that you have similar tools and 

similar databases across the region you have the ability 

to go into the Coast Range of Oregon or Look Out 

Creek or the Wenatchee where all these studies have 

been done and it’s called “Comparative Analysis” of 

a style that no one has been able to do before because 

there has been no uniform set of tools, parameters or 
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databases. You can look at the debris flow potential 

here in the Olympics and you can contrast it with the 

Oregon Coast Range, or the Fred Swanson’s Look Out 

Creek study. The ability to learn how these landscapes are different is critical. You can leverage Fred 

Swanson’s study of earth flows and Gordie’s study of 

debris flows and the study of huge sediment loads in 

the Redwoods. Through the Comparative Analysis 

approach, your ability to understand this landscape 

is going to skyrocket. And the principles you attain 

in one region can be extrapolated to other places. But 

unless you have the system in place that allows you to 

grab Redwood or grab Lookout or grab Knowles Creek 

and run a model here and look at model results for the 

Olympics, you are not going to make progress. It is an 

amazingly powerful situation to leverage knowledge 

that has been generated in the last 50 years.

Craig Partridge: Are you suggesting synthesis studies 

in ways that haven’t been done?

Lee Benda: Yes. The other thing with regard to public 

education; I completely agree with the comments. In 

these tools that we built, we actually have a movie 

generator because the tools are deterministic, they 

don’t do stochastics. However there are movies in there 

of fire, landslides, woody debris, sediment routing-you 

could take that and even go further in a way the public 

might get access to in order to get that educational 

message across. I think people are receptive because 

they see it every day on the Weather Channel. 

My last comment-I don’t know much about this 

experimental forest (Olympic Experimental State 

Forest) or this facility (Olympic Natural Resources 

Center), but this facility might have a large opportunity to become a learning center where you could 

bring people in, even from different landscapes and 

from different agencies operating with a similar set 

of tools and analysis basis. There is enough coverage 

now across the region where there is a large amount 

of people who would potentially show up to a learning 

situation. Also, they would contribute by leaving their 

own landscapes-the idea of comparative landscape 

analysis is totally new, only because there are no tools. 

Scientists sit on one landscape; they spend their career 

in one place, one region. If you drag them somewhere 

else, they are hard pressed to do something there 

because they see everything through a lens of 30 years 

of research in the Cascades of Oregon or Coast Range. 

I’m guilty myself. But you can break those barriers 

down. I think you can even drag in policy people. 

John Calhoun: ONRC as a learning center; it is part 

of our mission, but it really needs to be coupled with 

the Olympic Experimental State Forest to achieve 

maximum effectiveness. I think that’s what you meant: 

the Center and the Experimental Forest to function 

as a learning center. There is a tremendous opportunity here and a lot of the barriers that we’ve talked 

about—watershed scale ownership, regulatory constraints—that keep us from implementing some of the 

things we feel are desirable are already addressed with 

the DNR’s HCP situation on the OESF. Fifteen years 

ago, when Craig Partridge was working on the OESF 

plan and I was working on the DNR HCP, we collaborated and integrated into existing policy some key 

principles here. We explicitly recognized a dynamic 

natural system at work here in our conservation and 

research plan; we explicitly understood that it was 

disturbance recovery ecology that was the focus of our 

interest; we explicitly said we were going to manage 

on a landscape scale rather than a reach by reach scale; 

we explicitly said we were going to use active management to achieve conservation and restoration goals. 

And we achieved a regulatory flexibility in managing 

riparian areas apart from the normal set of regulations 

both on state and federal lands. It just seems to me that 

this is what encouraged us to bring you all together 

here, to help us take the next steps because DNR is at 
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that point where they are going to be making commitments to the approach to their research plan for riparian areas and the remainder of the forest as well. There 

is a tremendous opportunity here to do that and DNR 

is willing to do that; they cannot do it all at once-they 

have constraints of capacity and funding. But they 

don’t have to do it all at once; they can sketch out their 

intentions and vision and aspiration. That is what we 

are here to help them do.

Craig Partridge: So, not to the exclusion of crossboundary studies, or not to the exclusion of crossregion synthesis, but any thoughts in response to John 

about what we might be able to do on a large single 

ownership where we have fifteen years ago addressed 

some of those barriers. 

Steve Stinson: I think Gretchen and John have hit on 

some things, particularly when we get to this landscape approach. I think the missing component, and 

a difficult component to include, has been the Family 

Forest landowner component. On private lands here on 

Washington State, that is roughly half of the acreage. 

If you were going to overlay your biological hotspots, 

key Coho areas etc., I’m sure you would come up with 

some pretty interesting information. In this state we 

now have the capacity to do that; we have spatially 

explicit dataset of forestland ownership in this state, 

actually all ownerships in this state. I’m looking at this 

as a pretty unique opportunity from the Family Forest 

landowner perspective. 

Is there going to be an opportunity to follow 

up? Can we identify short-term analysis that can be 

implemented with these tools that have been identified, 

and the idea of meeting again to further the effort? I 

like the idea of having a clearing house of knowledge 

that’s relevant to policy and science. I think the first 

step in that is to develop the key questions that need 

to be addressed – we’ve done half of that within the 

capacity of this group over the past couple of days. I 

think that following up with this group of people or an 

expanded set including some policy makers would be 

an excellent idea. I’m willing to put whatever scarce 

resources Family Forest landowners have in support of 

that effort, John.

Mark Teply: I want to follow up on the comment 

about OESF as the area to do landscape investigations. I think there is value in looking at, not only the 

lands we manage, but also the lands that are managed 

over the entire Olympic Peninsula because from our 

perspective, the pattern of our ownership varies as you 

go north to south, east to west. How we may view a 

landscape strategy is going to change whether we are 

in the Dickey or in the Clearwater. That’s another pitch 

for looking at landscape level approach; that kind of 

collaboration needs to be looked at as well.

Rhett Jackson: Right after Forest and Fish came out, 

I heard Pete Heidi say at a conference that what we 

had essentially done was come up with one working 

hypothesis and then ran with it across the whole state. 

I think, to me, that has been a continuing frustration. 

At the time Forest and Fish came out, we really had not 

done a lot of studies on headwater streams themselves. 

We basically made some guesses about refugia, some 

guesses about temperature and then we just applied 

them. One thing I’m frustrated about is that I think we 

need to be going forward with several sets of working 

hypotheses on buffer and riparian management. For 

example, maybe we shouldn’t be putting linear buffers 

on non fish bearing streams that are likely to blow 

down. Maybe we should be creating some gaps on 

the smaller fish bearing streams to increase primary 

productivity locally. I like the experimental forest 

idea here, that you can do some of these things and 

try them out but I’m frustrated that the Forest Service 

isn’t doing this, that the DNR can’t do this elsewhere. 

I respect that the private landowners want to be left 

alone and have some regulatory certainty for awhile; 
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maybe we shouldn’t pick on them. But we need to be 

trying out some other things and see how they work.

Craig Partridge: I want to pose a similar question you 

might be thinking about: What is the baby you don’t 

want to throw out with the bathwater? What do we 

need to keep?

Gordon Reeves: In response to Rhett’s comment-one 

thing you may want to look at is Bernard Borman’s 

Five Rivers study where a whole host of treatments 

were tried. Unfortunately, none were riparian because 

we couldn’t get away from regulatory agencies to do 

anything different in riparian areas. There were more 

upslope treatments, but there’s a good model out there. 

I have to say a red flag went up in my mind with this 

meeting and it’s dealing with the science. I heard 

today, that if the science doesn’t agree with my viewpoint, I don’t have to accept it. What I want to know is, 

if we are going to conduct science and it’s not going to 

fit into somebody’s biases, is it going to be acceptable? 

Why would I want to be involved in it, invest time 

and energy, into designing an experiment, conducting 

the studies, putting the results out there only to have 

someone say ‘You know what-it doesn’t fit my bias so I 

don’t care.’ 

Craig Partridge: Well, and the “someone” might be 

the general public, as A.J. pointed out earlier.

Kathy O’Halloran: Talking about change, I think 

some of the things that have been talked about here 

today – we touched on the idea that there may be some 

fundamental need to go back and look at the Clean 

Water Act, and there may be a need to look at some of 

the premises of the Endangered Species Act-these are 

fundamental acts that are near and dear to probably 

everyone’s heart in this room and certainly to the public. When you are talking about making fundamental 

changes, you have to expect to have that idea treated 

roughly. I’m heartened that some of these things are 

being talked about. Frankly, there seems to be such a 

difference of thoughts floating around the room right 

now-Pete you talked about how after some of the 

meetings with the tribes and DNR, everybody had 

different perceptions-I bet you if everyone of us was 

out in the parking lot right now, we’d each have a different perception of what was said in here. The thing 

that I think is good is that there were some ideas that 

were brought forward and I think that this could be the 

beginning of some kind of changes. I don’t know what 

it’s going to mean, which way it’s going to go. But it is 

these kinds of discussions that have to occur in lots of 

different forums, before there is ever going to be any 

kind of change. The thing that keeps screaming out to 

me at this whole conference is cultural, there’s got to 

be some kind of cultural change within agencies and 

within the public. That only happens through multiple 

discussions and having the ideas chewed on for awhile.

Dave Heller: If you get a good science finding and it’s 

relevant and timely, it ends up getting into policy one 

way or the other. It may end up being a lawsuit for it to 

be incorporated, or somebody on a local level starting 

to apply it and we look at it and go, “wow”. There are 

a lot of good examples; I think back to large wood. 

That was not very convenient, certainly for the Forest 

Service. We got loggers out there with rakes sweeping 

up needles in a creek, and now we are talking about 

dumping trees back in. I think good science that’s 

relevant is going to happen. I think there are enough 

people that care about what is going on that it will find 

its way into policy. 

Craig Partridge: And as we said before, policy 

change is slow except when it’s fast.

Gretchen Nicholas: I don’t think we said we weren’t 

ready to implement scientific findings, but there are 

a couple of factors that need to be considered. One is 

cultural readiness, which A.J. brought up. The other 

is funding to implement any given thing; of course we 

are going to prioritize what we implement at any given 
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time. Finally, one data point probably isn’t adequate to 

make a change. We’ve talked about replicates and how 

much you can extrapolate the data to another place, 

whether or not it’s repeatable. In the case of the alder 

study I was talking about, that was one of my concerns 

because it was extrapolated pretty broadly. It was a 

very good study but it needed to be expanded.

Doug Ryan: I’m going to get back to the public 

perception question. We actually had a major shift in 

public perception occur in the last two years; primarily 

having to do with climate change. What happened? I 

can remember inviting George Woodwell to talk about 

it thirty years ago. All he had was one dataset, which 

was Co2 on Mauna Loa. No one is going to listen to 

that. It was like the one data point analogy. So what’s 

happened recently? Well, six years ago the IPCC rated 

their confidence in their global climate models at about 

70 percent. They came out with another report a year 

ago, five years later, saying they had over 90 percent 

confidence-that made a big difference to policy makers. That was the stamp of scientific credibility. The 

reason I bring this up is we are talking about large 

scale landscape experiments, which are going to be 

very difficult to either replicate or even validate in a 

lot of ways. We are going to be dependent on models. 

Not all that different from climate change work. We 

ought to be thinking about what it took to get the 

credibility in this last go-around that the IPCC did. A 

lot of it was, five years ago they said-‘Where are the 

big uncertainties in the modeling effort?’-And they 

put a huge amount of effort into running those things 

into the ground. And that is what got the scientific 

community to finally increase their level of confidence 

in it. I’d suggest that we need to consider that kind of 

approach as we go out into these bigger landscapes and 

bigger issue. Otherwise, we are going to get all the way 

back to that paired watershed debate.

Kate Sullivan: I’d like to follow up on that comment. 

We are going to get very excited about models; they 

are going to be very sexy looking; the computer tools 

are great. But we have, as a scientific profession, had 

to be very disciplined about working and testing those 

models. At the same time, we’ve had discussions today 

about how we don’t have money to spend looking 

at anything in the environment, but we are going to 

‘model it’...so, as a person who has been involved with 

modeling, you have to work it real hard so the public 

can gain some confidence in it. We are going to have 

to spend some money looking at the landscape for real.

Bruce Rieman: I want to follow up on two things. 

We had a discussion yesterday about the models and 

adding complexity and details to the models and 

there is clearly a point of diminishing returns; you are 

overwhelmed by complexity very quickly. How far 

you can go with that is a serious science question – 

something that needs to be explored. The other thing 

that Craig brought up about throwing out the baby with 

the bath water: these ideas have been around for quite 

awhile. Gordie’s paper was in ’95, the first stuff that 

was commonly out for discussion by people in the Forest Service was before that. There have been literally 

hundreds of papers that have responded to it, tried to 

take it apart, looked at it in different ways; it’s become 

a very influential idea. It’s very strong in the scientific 

community. 

The application of it still has a long way to go. It’s 

not just experiments, but thinking all of it through. 

I’m concerned a little bit that some of the appeal of 

watershed scale approaches comes across with this 

simplicity of, and the assumption that there are a few 

key places we can really limit where we apply protection and have a big impact on the system. The problem 

with that is biological systems are more complicated 

than that. It isn’t just biological hotspots; it isn’t just 

these critical ‘nick points’ or something like that-but 
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species like salmon use networks of habitats. You have 

to assemble those; there is a biological scale issue that 

has not been addressed very well yet. There are a lot of 

biological complexities here and some missing pieces 

that the biologists and the science still have to explore. 

I think the idea of that going hand in hand with management, rather than waiting another fifteen years to 

resolve all that – moving through it together – is a 

powerful idea that needs some further exploration. 

Ken Cummins: I’d like to quote one of Donald 

Rumsfeld mystery statements: ‘There are things we 

know and things we don’t know, things we know we 

don’t know, and there are things we don’t know we 

don’t know.’ As an example, a water quality issue: 

Nationally the EPA set up a special study because they 

were concerned about vulnerability of certain areas to 

environmental change. They felt it would be easy; they 

had a database that weights every county in the lower 

48 relative to compliance with the ’72 Clean Water 

Act. They also used the National Heritage Map of Biodiversity and the USFW Map of Endangered Species. 

They expected to look at the counties in compliance 

to see if it’s really working... there was no correlation whatsoever. Either we don’t have very good data 

on biodiversity or endangered species or the things 

that get you qualified for being in compliance with 

the Water Quality Act are not in any way related to 

biodiversity in Endangered Species. The other possibility that Lee brought up is that if the resolution scale is 

at the county level, it only takes one bad stream in the 

county to rate it as out of compliance for that county. 

Again, we are right on back to the scale issue. I think 

the things ‘we don’t know, we don’t know’ – that is 

where a lot of really good science happens. The polio 

vaccine can be traced directly to two guys working on 

viruses of tobacco plants. Who’s going to predict that? 

The last thing, the one thing that is discouraging 

is that if it’s really true that the public can’t be sold on 

the right idea with the appropriate delivery – if that is 

really the answer, it’s very discouraging. I believe thoroughly, that if you have a logical argument and present 

it correctly, that they’ll get it. The climate change thing 

is a really good example. I wouldn’t downplay at all 

Al Gore’s role in that because I think it is a major role 

with the public. 

The thing I think we should take away is that 

public health example that Gordie had; I can’t imagine 

a group anyplace that could not grasp that idea. You 

could have spots that don’t crash the whole system no 

matter what scale you are at. I think there’s hope out 

there – I’d like to be optimistic. I’m still trying to get 

over the alder problem. 

Pete Bisson: The example that Doug brought up about 

climate change and it’s acceptability to the public is 

an excellent example in this context. Gordie made the 

point that maybe one of the strongest tools we have 

to test some of the ideas that we are thinking about 

in terms of protecting aquatic resources and managing riparian zones is modeling. That’s true, and what 

Kate said is true also: we need to be very careful and 

judicious with our use and application of models. But if 

you don’t do monitoring to test those models then you 

get into public credibility difficulties, because it’s just a 

bunch of scientists playing games and there is no data 

to back it up. What’s missing from our current programs: monitoring. What’s the most expensive part of 

our programs: monitoring. My guess is that to get the 

kind of budget we need to do the kind of monitoring 

to answer the big picture questions that we are asking 

is going to take top-down pressure. It took the guy in 

the White House coming to Portland in ’93 to provoke 

the kind of effort it took to develop and implement 

the Northwest Forest Plan and the monitoring system 

that followed from that. I think it’s going to take the 

same kind of top down pressure; I don’t think you can 

get support for monitoring from the bottom up. We 
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can argue till the cow comes home that we need more 

monitoring, but until we sell that idea to the folks at 

the top, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Craig Partridge: There has been a big debate connecting the confidence level to the dollar. As long 

as the monitoring systems are set up to provide the 

95 percent confidence that is important for producing knowledge, it’s going to have hard times. But if 

you can accept a 75–80 percent confidence as good 

enough for a monitoring system, it costs a heck of a lot 

less and it’s a little bit more acceptable. 

Pete Bisson: We should also be thinking about what 

we monitor. Maybe the scientists haven’t done enough 

thinking about developing the kind of coarse scale 

metrics that are really useful at these larger scales.

Gordon Reeves: I think one of the problems we are 

talking about here is replication and the confidence 

we can put into the results. But that is not just a public 

issue; that is a scientific issue because we are dealing 

with a scientific paradigm based on controlled experiments and other stuff and we can do the replication. 

If you look in the literature you will find all kinds 

of struggles dealing with landscapes, dealing with 

watersheds; they conclude that you simply can’t do it. 

Trying to gain credibility for that type of effort is very 

difficult. I think it is just not a policy issue. For the 

policy makers to be asking how much confidence can 

you give me is problematic; we are never going to get 

there because we are dealing with questions that can’t 

be replicated. We’ve got a landscape we are not going 

to find anywhere else-I don’t care where we go --we 

aren’t going to find it.

Craig Partridge: Maybe we need new models of 

confidence building?

Gordon Reeves: Partly, again, it’s an education process. It’s conveying to policy makers and to the public 

that the issues we are dealing with don’t conform to a 

scientific method. I think it is really important that we 

bring these dilemmas to the surface not only for policy 

makers but in the scientific arena. One other thing I 

have to relay about trying to sell this whole idea: after 

the ’96 storm I was asked to testify before the Oregon 

Board of Forestry about landslides. But just before 

me was a lady who was testifying about watching her 

husband get washed out of his chair in his living room 

and going down the Umpqua River. So I get up there 

and they say ‘OK Dr. Reeves, what do you think about 

landslides?’ and this lady is sitting right behind me as I 

mumble ‘they’re OK’. It’s not a comfortable position to 

be in with the public perceptions the way they are.

Harry Bell: A while ago, John Calhoun asked what 

ONRC might do. What I’ve also heard from folks is 

this whole riparian strategy thing; one size fits all 

doesn’t make sense. One of the things I think John 

may be able to do is start to establish a track record 

of alternate plans that are done on the landscape so 

we can start to take advantage of what we very consciously built in both TFW and Forest and Fish, which 

was the element of alternate plan process on private 

lands, which we haven’t really taken advantage of. 

That might by an example of an operational thing we 

could do. 

I have another broader question that has to do with 

the role of scientists and policy people in characterizing risk, and also communicating that risk between 

them: What role should each of the two groups of 

people-scientists versus policy people-play in looking 

at, characterizing and assessing risk and dealing with 

it in policy form?

Craig Partridge: Who would like to respond to either 

of Harry’s comments, either the use of the alternate 

plans under the Washington State Forest Practices 

system, or this broader question about the roles of 

scientists and policy makers in communicating risk to 

the public?
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Steve Stinson: We actually have legislation passed in 

1999, House Bill 2091, that directs DNR to address 

the cumulative effects and monitor alternate plans at 

the watershed scale. If we have any collaborative clout 

amongst us, we might suggest that they do what the 

legislation told them to do. 

Gretchen Nicholas: Our scientists at DNR have 

come up with a very good method of characterizing 

risk when it comes to geological landforms and it is a 

pretty simple matrix. Basically, when they are assessing potentially unstable landforms, they have on one 

axis, the risk of failure (which is High, Medium, or 

Low) and on the other axis the risk to public resources. 

Of course, back to the person Gordie was talking about 

that got landslide damage to their house, if there is 

even a small risk of a landslide going through someone’s house obviously we are going to be way more 

cautious. That is a really good example of a scientist 

using a mechanism to guide and characterize how 

decisions are made internally.

Craig Partridge: That is a good example of classic 

risk assessment-a combination of probability and 

impact. 

Jim Peters: On the policy side, it is something similar. 

If I’m looking at a watershed that is in a depressed 

condition, I don’t want a whole lot of risk in that scenario. If it is in pretty good condition, then I’m more 

willing to have more risk. You just can’t do it across 

the board; you have to look at all the factors that are 

involved – what do the scientists say, what conditions 

are you trying to protect or rebuild.

Craig Partridge: Let me pose this more sharply-Harry’s question about what are the roles of scientists and 

policymakers, combined with that earlier realization 

that nothing gets them into their trenches faster than 

different viewpoints on risk. So if you are starting out 

with diverse viewpoints on the acceptability of different levels of risk-what’s the public going to do?

Unidentified Speaker: My comment is that science can 

articulate the nature of the risk, maybe the severity and 

duration. I think that at the policy level, you have to 

apply that risk to the management objectives that will 

be affected. They are not all equal. 

Craig Partridge: So not all slides are created equal 

– it depends on what they are sliding into-and where 

they are sliding. The vulnerability can be a human 

vulnerability; it can also be a particularly vulnerable 

watershed because a fish stock is depressed.

Pete Heide: A little story that has to do about risk, 

it has to do with water typing under the Forest and 

Fish Agreement. We had gotten an agreement to do a 

modeled approach to water typing so the state could 

create a map which would tell everybody where there 

fish waters were. Then everybody could conduct their 

forest practices accordingly. Scientists would study 

the map over time and maybe make some periodic 

changes. It’s a good idea, not done yet, but the policy 

folks said, ‘OK, we want this map to be correct 95 percent of the time. And we want the risk of error shared 

equally above and below, so that if there is an error 

above, it will be balanced by a similar error below 

someplace else. It sounded good in a policy discussion 

and everybody positively agreed with that. Scientists 

went out, spent somewhere in the area of $2,000,000 

with computers and modeling, brought the map out, 

and everybody uniformly hated it. The technical folks 

were not able to understand what ‘correct 95 percent of 

the time’ or ‘sharing the risk 5 percent over, 5 percent 

under’ really meant. I never understood why-but they 

kept telling me they couldn’t figure it out. The math 

was wrong in some places. Wherever it was wrong 

the people who owned the property or had an interest in the fish on the property were very vocal about 

explaining where it was wrong and why they hated it. 

We had, what I think, was some pretty doggone good 
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science that went out and validated the model—at least 

in a pilot validation test—which indicated the model 

was working fairly well. But since everybody hated 

it, nobody wanted to spend the money to do the full 

validation test. They wouldn’t accept the pilot, so they 

obviously wouldn’t accept the results that might come 

out of a full test. 

Craig Partridge: So there are two things I draw from 

this; one is to recognize that models are always wrong 

and what do you do about that. And the second thing 

is, what I raised yesterday, the science is telling us that 

nature is variable, but society doesn’t want variable. 

They want uniformity; they want predictability for 

whatever their interest is. The challenge here is how to 

convey the ‘learn to love it’ around large scale variable 

natural processes. 

John Calhoun: We came together to help DNR and 

others work on developing a research plan in support 

of adaptive management for riparian practices. I think 

we’ve provided a lot of information here. I want to suggest, from what we’ve learned, one path forward for 

DNR. I think one of the main things that came to my 

mind is that research and adaptive management is the 

classical way we have always dealt with uncertainty. 

We conduct research to try and develop better information for those areas we were uncertain about and then 

when we were satisfied with that, we incorporated the 

new information into our management practices. This 

is thinking from fifteen years ago. Now we understand 

we have the tools to do sophisticated modeling that in 

some ways can substitute for the basic research that 

we’ve been doing and really allow us to move forward 

in a more responsive way. One approach DNR could 

take to their riparian management practices is to set 

out to take a system scale approach based on the objective of achieving watershed resiliency for the life of the 

HCP. They would look at the whole watershed systems; 

resilience is the objective and the timeframe is 50 

to 80 years of the HCP. Identify the modeling tools 

and knowledge and techniques to develop alternative 

actions, approaches and treatments. Select one that we 

think meets our purposes, and then set out a long term 

monitoring program to try and validate the assumptions in the models. I think DNR could do that on the 

Olympic Experimental State Forest. Through time 

they would be making a great contribution to riparian 

resource management. That is the kind of framework 

I think will help DNR to go forward-it might not be 

exactly the way, but it is an example of a way to go 

forward. 

Kate Sullivan: Why not make a goal of productivity a well as resiliency? Aquatic productivity of your 

watershed and resilience is a quality that you would 

like to maintain in your watershed, as opposed to just 

resilience? The whole goal in most of our HCPs is to 

help fish and wildlife get better-so why not set goals 

like that, but understanding that resilience in system 

disturbance will happen, and resilience is part of what 

you are trying to manage for, not just make that the 

goal. It’s a fuzzy, esoteric goal.

Craig Partridge: So productivity that goes up and 

down over time?

Kate Sullivan: Yes, you may have it 100 years; you 

may not have a huge event to be resilient from. I bet 

you our definitions of what an event is will change over 

time also. 

Lee Benda: I want to comment to Pete Heidi’s description of the modeling problem, which I think is a 

good example. I could raise a lot of examples too; for 

example let’s predict sediment transport of wood down 

from a landslide and see how it affects fish habitat. It 

can’t be done. There are so many complexities that 

you can’t actually model it precisely. Similarly you 

can’t model disturbance precisely. So in the example 

that Pete is using, it’s very likely that people are using 

models for the wrong thing. You would never use 
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a model to precisely locate the end of fish bearing 

stream-that is fundamentally the wrong thing to do 

particularly at 10 meters and probably even at LIDAR 

scale. An analogy is: we run landslide and debris flow 

models, but you don’t then, take that result and say 

‘Here is what you have to do’ at that specific point. A 

geologist goes out and evaluates the site and 50 percent 

it might be right and 50 percent it might be wrong. 

There might be other factors; for example, a landslide 

could have occurred two years ago and there is no soil 

there anymore. Or there are big cracks in the ground 

that you can’t see with LIDAR. We use it to screen 

large landscape differences and maybe one critical 

site per mile squared and another basin has five. If you 

were going to sell forestland, and someone was going 

to buy it, that is really an important difference. But to 

go to one landslide site and expect it to be predicted-no 

one has ever been able to predict a landslide. There is 

all the information you don’t have: in the fish bearing 

stream case there is no information on a three meter 

high waterfall. In a landslide case, there’s no information on soil duff. And there will never be information 

on soil duff, even if you LIDAR the heck out of it. 

Residual tools and models really have to be conditioned by how you use them and the kind of information that you gain from them. If you start off with the 

wrong idea, right off the get-go, the whole thing is 

torpedoed. I would never do it that way and expect to 

find the end of fish or expect to find if this prediction 

says this is a landslide site and that is exactly what it 

is or it has a probability of .02 and that is reality; not 

at all. 

I’ll make one more comment on this fish business: 

if you have a modeling system in place, not just for 

research, but for application, you anticipate making 

corrections continuously. So you go to the end of 

fish bearing stream and you find out that you are 200 

meters off, you just go into the model and you change 

it. Or someone says ‘I have a better DEM or a better 

analysis of where that is’; you immediately unplug 

one module and you plug it back in. These things have 

to be able to grow and live over time. It’s not a fixed 

system.

Craig Partridge: I want to ask the panelists if any of 

them have questions of the audience.

Steve Wondzell: I’ve been sitting here for the better part of two days listening about lots of different 

viewpoints and opinions and things and when I sit 

and listen for a long time, little things get stuck in the 

back of my head and wake me up in the middle of the 

night and I lay there and think about them. And the 

one that I’ve been thinking a lot about is kind of a 

sense of patience that maybe we should bring to these 

questions. It strikes me that we’ve only embarked on 

the strategies we’re talking about over the last two 

days, in the last ten or maybe twenty years. We are 

talking about systems. I think George Ice threw out 

that the high point in the mature forest is 140 years; if 

we’ve got ten or twenty years of the current strategy 

under our belt, we are only 10 percent of the way of 

recovering to 140 years. I’ve heard the statement that 

the science is way ahead of the policy but I wonder: 

can science even tell us if the strategies implemented 

in the Northwest Forest Plan are going to be successful in meeting their objectives? Gordie just recently 

published a ten year look-back. We saw some changes, 

but are they going to get to the objectives that we are 

looking for? 

This whole meeting is about trying to rewrite the 

game plan, to say that we’ve learned stuff and can 

do things better; it’s true, we have learned stuff. And 

it’s true, science is out there and maybe it is ahead of 

policy. But it’s not necessary ahead of policy in knowing the answers. It’s just ahead of policy in knowing 

better questions. It seems we need to approach what 

we are talking about here with a lot of patience. I don’t 
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know exactly how you translate that into something 

practical-I think we all want to do a better job at the 

things we are already doing-as a scientist it is always 

fun to be out at the forefront with new ideas, but at 

some point you have to slow down and wait for the 

natural systems to catch up with us. 

George Ice: What I am trying to get at is this notion of 

this 140 year thing. I think we heard in spades yesterday the systems are dynamic; 140 years is just one 

point in time. For some reason there is a magic concept 

for some people that it is some optimal thing. I seriously question that it is not-there is no science to suggest that is optimal for anything other than some small 

association of organism or whatever. And there are a 

whole bunch of conditions that are more optimal that 

we know as scientists if you want to just manage for 

fish. I would challenge the notion; I actually challenge 

the relevance of the question of Desired Future Condition. There is a desired future condition concept: what 

does that imply? Does that imply that you know the 

desired condition, and yet at the same time, scientists 

know there is this huge variability in time and space 

and it’s constantly changing? So are we managing for 

some desired condition that is only going to be there 

for some short period of time? Are we going to push 

to that, when if fact, that doesn’t exist everywhere? I 

think I hear from Gordie that only 30–60 percent of 

the time (this is only a rough estimate) do you expect 

all of the watersheds in some large landscapes to be 

in that condition. Is there some assumption there that 

those are the ones supporting the fish, only that 30–60 

percent? I’m just throwing this out-what about the 

40–70 percent that is in the LDC-less desired condition. These concepts are rummaging around in my 

head. We have to be careful about those kinds of terminologies; they mean things to different people, yet 

here we are talking about all this variability over time. 

I don’t know that we are managing for a condition-I 

think we talked about managing for processes that we 

might consider favorable or desirable.

Craig Partridge: Which come from variable conditions?

George Ice: Yes

Gretchen Nicholas: Is there a way to do validation 

monitoring that is reasonably priced, gets decently 

quick results and is reasonably valid? I’m thinking of 

validation monitoring of salmonids in streams as a 

result of whatever strategies we select. 

Mark Teply: To put that question in context, in the 

DNR HCP, one of the obligations that we have is to 

do validation monitoring on salmonids and on spotted 

owls, both in the OESF-it is a very relevant question 

for us. 

Unidentified Speaker: I’m going to answer your question with a question back-my question to you is what is 

reasonable? What is considered reasonably valid from 

your standpoint?

Gretchen Nicholas: Reasonably valid is something 

that is determined by scientists. Gordie is telling me 

I really can’t expect to meet all the traditional criteria 

of validity, like repeatability and replication in experiments like these. I would have to rely on the scientific 

community to say a conclusion makes reasonable 

sense given what we know about salmon life dynamics. Quick results-I’m told twenty years for any kind of 

validation monitoring, so I believe that is probably true 

but something quicker than that would be nice. With 

regard to reasonably priced-something in the realm of 

$500,000 a year or less. 

Pete Bisson: I’ll go back to an old story. When I was 

28–29 years old, a graduate student at Oregon State, 

there was a meeting I attended where we were talking about long term monitoring. One of the attendees 

at that meeting was Ken Cummins. Ken had written 

a paper that we all loved to cite, because it was an 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

important theoretical paper that conceptualized what 

was going on at the time. The topic of discussion at 

this meeting at OSU was how long it would take to 

answer certain questions-we were kicking around the 

idea of twenty to thirty years or so. And Ken made 

a comment that if we’d started ten years ago, we’d 

be half to a third of the way there already. And yet 

nobody wants to get on the train and start. Somebody 

has to start, it’s kind of scary, but somebody has to 

start answering the questions. It’s going to slop over to 

the next scientific generation-but you still have to get 

on the train. 

Gretchen Nicholas: That is what we did with the 

Stand Management Cooperative. So I’ll take twenty 

years-but who is bidding $500,000 or less? 

Lee Benda: Maybe fish is the ultimate thing you 

would monitor and I can’t speak to that but from a 

physical point of view, if you had forest that were cut 

and the logs had been yanked out of the stream and 

you write on the back of the envelope a simple, little 

wood input budget related to tree growth-you shouldn’t 

have any response in that stream, with pool development for maybe 100 years. So when you say twenty 

years-that’s problematic. 

The other thing is, regarding the value of a model, 

some have constructed stochastic models. There are 

no fish, but there is sediment being thrown down-it’s 

a very messy signal downstream, even though it is 

certainly just a simplification of nature. But you have 

a stochastic fire storm sequence based on the empirical record, you’ve got thousands of landslide sites and 

debris flows in this kind of country, they are triggering 

off at various rates then they sit there for fifty years 

before they move again. They’re behind a log jam. Of 

course you are sitting at the bottom of the watershed 

monitoring someone making a clear cut up there or 

over here, and if you were to put this in a state-ofthe-art stochastic model, you’d find out quickly that it 

would be virtually impossible to sort out these issues 

of what was causing what, unless maybe you clear cut 

the entire thing like they did in Alsea and then they 

burned it. That was a small watershed and they stood 

at the bottom and measured outputs. This problem was 

recently laid out by Lee Macdonald and Drew Coe 

in a paper in 2007 and Lee Macdonald is one of the 

czars of cumulative effects. He’s spent his entire career 

thinking about his problem-he’s recently come out and 

said you can’t do the problem. You can’t walk to the 

bottom of the stream and start measuring stuff because 

there are thousands of these lag times and sites for 

erosion (he’s talking more erosion in this case). 

Monitoring is going to deal with physical geomorphic 

properties. 

I actually think that the idea of monitoring is a 

paradigm linked to a non-dynamic system, particularly 

when it involves stream systems. I’m not speaking 

biologically because I don’t know anything about that, 

but monitoring is a paradigm. It has become a paradigm unto itself even though it is completely in avoidance of the whole dynamical nature of the system. A 

gross example: without understanding the landscape, 

people will put a monitoring site in actually the wrong 

location. They’ll stick it right by a tributary junction. 

At tributary junctions, even in natural system (I’m not 

even talking about debris flows now), all kinds of stuff 

happens there. So they put it in and want to measure 

stability of the gravel bed. In fact, they picked a point 

in the network that is the most unstable point. What 

you are going to see are the most fluctuations, even 

naturally, right there. I would say we are ill equipped, 

even to engage monitoring, particularly at this holistic 

watershed scale; you should go right to the point. 

Kate’s previous years identified this – you go to the 

point. Lee Macdonald said this in the 2007 paper. If 

you are worried about roads or particular clear cuts, 

you go there. You then try to measure something there 
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which you have a reasonable shot at, and then maybe 

extrapolate across the network. 

I do think monitoring in many ways is a child of 

this non-dynamic watershed approach. If you had a 

dynamic watershed approach with simulations and 

movies running, I think you’d design it quite differently. 

Craig Partridge: Is this modeling versus monitoring?

Lee Benda: Modeling is a crude instrument-I totally 

admit that-you would probably design expectations and 

monitoring approaches quite differently now. Maybe 

some of the people in this room certainly get that. But 

there is a huge army of technicians out there monitoring and it is a complete waste of time and money.

Rhett Jackson: Lee is one of the most brilliant people 

I know; I’ve learned more from him than just about 

any of my colleagues, but I completely disagree with 

him on this. I think he is right in terms of sediment, 

that the time scale is wrong for the monitoring. But 

I think he’s wrong in terms of extrapolating that to 

fish. I’ll give you a simple example: Svante Arrhenius 

predicted climate change by simple model in 1896, but 

no one paid any attention till the monitoring of CO2

on Mauna Loa. I think you can actually learn a lot 

by monitoring smolts. I’m going to leave it to the fish 

biologists, but I think there are really good cases for 

monitoring that don’t imply stationary. So extrapolating the problems of monitoring sediment dynamics to 

monitoring fish is erroneous.

Gordon Reeves: First of all, Lee doesn’t know 

one end of a fish from the other and I can testify to 

that. But just an observation for monitoring; I think 

one of the things, again, is we are going to have to 

think outside the box. We’ve been involved with two 

long term monitoring efforts. We monitored smolt 

production from the Clackamas River-Fish Creek in 

particular-where a major restoration occurred, for 

over twenty years in order to say what happened with 

the restoration effort. Two things happened: with 

Steelhead we couldn’t show numbers changed, but the 

size of the fish increased. But that didn’t count. What 

was counted was the number of fish that went up. The 

other thing is the patterns involved here. In Elk River 

for example, you can see different life history patterns 

from the smolt records. We were asking about life 

history diversity-other ways of measuring impacts or 

successes of activities other than the numbers game. 

One of the things to keep in mind is we can look for 

other ways of doing monitoring to get beyond some 

of the problems that we’ve faced here. But again, we 

have to articulate those expectations up front, not after 

the fact. Oftentimes I think with these monitoring 

programs we start with no idea of what we are going 

to do. We get results and puzzle over how to explain 

them. There are some ways we can look into this that 

would get beyond some of the traditional things. I 

think there are some real valuable things about the fish 

that come back, the adults. Those are the ones we want 

to look at. We count the carcasses, but there is a record 

there that is invaluable that we have ignored for years 

and that’s called the otolith-a daily record of what 

that fish did. If we can start to look at the life history 

patterns of the fish that were successful we could gain 

some valuable insights. That is all going back into the 

system and starting all over again. That small little 

bone could be really invaluable.

Kate Sullivan: Like Rhett, I like what Lee is working 

on, but I disagree with his comments here. I am in the 

position where I have an HCP which requires me to 

do watershed scale monitoring and we are doing it in 

earnest. I have about a 16,000 acre watershed and I 

have ten different water quality sites. We monitor the 

streams. This is about a $100,000 to $150,000 investment to start and it costs around $150,000 per year. 

But the most important thing we’ve invested in, that I 

say people really avoid doing, is we have constructed 
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very detailed sediment budgets. We’ve inventoried all 

of our roads. We have a whole road inventory that is 

about 50 pages long on every site that’s out there. We 

track their status as to what their current construction 

standard is as we upgrade our roads. We inventoried 

all of our landslides; we’ve walked our creeks. I’ve 

counted every piece of wood in the streams. I figure 

that is the best way to monitor. I send the staff up the 

stream for two miles and they count everything. We 

take photo points; we do lots of stuff. We’ve invested 

not just in the back end but in the front end. And we 

use that information in our daily management plans 

also as we go through sediment restoration, so we 

have a pretty tight loop. But I would say, in building 

that sediment budget, even though I fully understand 

what Lee is talking about in terms of the complexity 

of sediment, it’s remarkable how the sediment going 

out of the watershed matches what we estimate is 

going in. I’m surprised how close it is at times, and I 

don’t think some of the particular streams I’m talking 

about are that much different than some of the ones 

I’ve measured here in Washington. I think it can be 

done. It is taking time. One of the biggest challenges 

is sorting out, in time, the natural variability in the 

climate and that has a lot to do with how much sediment goes by a watershed every day. Temperature is 

much nicer to monitor-you can put that story together 

pretty quick and with some well set hypotheses you 

can nail that down pretty quickly I think. Sediment is 

a trickier problem, but it can be done. We are six to ten 

years into that but just looking at the annual variability 

is the more frustrating part and trying to sort out a 

signal within a lot of natural variability’s is the biggest 

problem. 

George Ice: To support the power of real measurements – this is a story about California’s Mattole 

Watershed where there were accusations that accelerated harvesting of forests in the upper basin was 

causing an increase in nitrate concentration resulting 

in eutrophication of the reservoir. A very rapid synoptic survey of measurements throughout the basin was 

able to reveal that 90 percent of the nitrate was coming from a region below the timber harvest area – a 

geologic source. And so just going out and collecting 

some real data provided illumination to a problem and 

answered a real question.

Craig Partridge: Are there any other questions of the 

room from the panel?

Steve Stinson: Going back to the question: If scientific 

consensus is necessary-how do we achieve it? If it 

can’t be achieved, can you describe an alternative 

process that can move science forward in the presence 

of public opinion? 

Gordon Reeves: Kelly Burnett in Oregon just went 

through a process-like a preponderance of evidence 

review. They were looking at the effect of wood 

placement in streams and the effect on fish. They went 

through and said-here are the ideas, here’s what we 

are using as criteria to evaluate the argument and they 

laid them out very clearly and then they looked at the 

papers and the assumptions behind the various papers. 

They did this incredible arrangement to come to a conclusion, but it was all laid out-the ground rules for what 

was included, for how the assumptions were made-to 

me that gets away from perceived biases. Oregon Dept. 

of Forestry funded this effort and in fact I sent it down 

to the folks in California after our meeting last weekin order to avoid some of the problems raised at the 

Sacramento meeting. That is a model you might want 

to look at. I would encourage you to look at that as an 

example – they had both the pros and the cons. The 

criteria were laid out up front so you understood how 

the process works.

Steve Stinson: I’m interpreting that as scientific 

consensus is not necessary and that there is an alternative process?
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Gordon Reeves: Yes, we might agree on very general 

issues. But when the rubber hits the road and you get 

down to the ground, that’s when your consensus is 

going to break apart. That type of process helps people 

know the plus and minus, the bumps and the warts of 

all the stuff we’ve done and not done.

Rhett Jackson (addressing Steve): You are dealing 

with federal regulators right? They’re not really scientists, they are science users. Think about a FEMAT 

curve-what you are really talking about is applying 

some values to figure out what’s a marginal benefit 

of pushing the buffer a little bit farther versus the 

marginal cost of pushing the buffer a little bit farther. 

You, the landowner, are bearing the cost of pushing it 

farther-the federal government regulator doesn’t bear 

any cost, nor do they personally take any risk because 

they are so far removed from the political process. 

Whereas if you are dealing with a county level 

employee-the political feedback through the county 

commission back to that person is much tighter. The 

problem is that if you are dealing with NOAA-they 

don’t give a darn. There is no time cost, no risk cost, 

they’ll wait you out for fifty years.

A.J. Kroll: I want to make a pitch; it was interesting 

you brought up this MacDonald and Coe paper. I cited 

it a couple of months ago in a rebuttal manuscript I’m 

writing with some colleagues from Fish and Wildlife 

in Washington (the Washington Department of Fish 

and Wildlife) against this idea of how you can do 

monitoring and use correlative evidence to say we 

are going to manage physical features of the habitat 

and get a population response. I read that paper and 

thought, this isn’t looking good if you believe in 

Macdonald and Coe if you feel there is data supporting their argument-or again the preponderance 

of the evidence suggests that what these two people 

are arguing in this paper is true. One thing that can 

happen, is people should regularly support scientists 

getting together and interacting in a critical fashion. 

Unfortunately, even in the time of my career (less than 

a decade) there has been a reduction in the amount of 

critical review that appears in the literature-scientists 

have gotten very lax in the criticism of others. I 

don’t know what causes that. There was a time in the 

70’s—when you look back to the debate that the top 

ecologists had at that time—and the way they tore into 

each other in the best journals and they did it in a data 

driven process. You’ll be very hard pressed to find a 

corollary now. It’s either not permitted by reviewers 

and editors or there’s just a gentleman/gentlewoman 

agreement not to do that. Unfortunately, that stalls 

scientific progress. That is what science should be 

about-a rigorous selection of the best ideas supported 

by the best evidence. This better evidence will inform 

your management programs. 

Gordon Reeves: We need to keep in mind, that once 

a fish has gone on the Endangered Species list, it has 

never come off. It only comes off when it goes extinct. 

We are fighting an uphill battle here if you are looking at the preponderance of evidence to show that we 

can do these things. I totally agree that there is some 

unreasonableness there, but if you step back and look 

at the record, it’s not a good one in terms of recovery. 

So if you are looking at the big picture, the evidence 

isn’t there to show that we can back away from scientific certainty.

Doug Ryan: I wanted to make a comment on the California review-it has a synthesis as well as a response to 

numerous questions. It was a good first step, unfortunately it was not completed in the context that it should 

have been—revised in light of the critical review. But 

there was a consensus that we were going in the right 

direction in terms of looking at spatially variable riparian management and using different ways of analyzing 

these spatially variable watershed landscape scale 

processes. That is all in there and I invite you to look 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

at that. But think cautiously, especially, I know my 

fellow scientists have no problem with tearing things 

apart or seeing the problems, but mainly the policy and 

management people will read this in that context. Read 

the introduction actually, because it gives the context 

of why it was created.

John Calhoun: What the planning team is going to 

do now is produce a report, we may do some sort of 

synthesis on this. If any of you have any lingering 

thoughts or statements that you want to make sure are 

included in this process just provide them to someone 

on the planning team. 

Thank you all very much. 
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Conference Attendees

Harry Bell

Green Crow Management Services

harry@greencrow.com

Lee Benda

Earth Systems Institute

leebenda@aol.com

Richard Bigley

Silviculturist

Washington State Department of Natural Resources

richard.bigley@dnr.wa.gov

Bob Bilby

Weyerhaeuser Company

bob.bilby@weyerhaeuser.com

Pete Bisson

Research Fisheries Biologist, Team Leader

US Forest Service

PNW Research Station

Olympia Forestry Sciences Laboratory

pbisson@fs.fed.us

Brian Boyle

Forum Leader 

Northwest Environmental Forum

University of Washington 

bboyle@u.washington.edu

John Calhoun

Director

University of Washington University of Washington

Olympic Natural Resources Center

jcalhoun@u.washington.edu

Darin Cramer

Adaptive Management Program Administrator, Forest 

Practices Division

Washington State Department of Natural Resources

darin.cramer@dnr.wa.gov

Ken Cummins

Humboldt State University

kwc7002@humboldt.edu

Pete Heide

Director of Forest Management

Washington Forest Protection Association

pheide@wfpa.org

Dave Heller

Regional Fisheries Program Leader

USDA Forest Service, Region 6

dheller@fs.fed.us

George Ice

Principal Scientist

National Council for Air and Stream Improvement 

(NCASI)

GIce@wcrc-ncasi.org

Rhett Jackson

Professor of Hydrology, Warnell School of Forestry 

and Natural Resources

University of Georgia

rjackson@smokey.forestry.uga.edu

A.J. Kroll

Weyerhaeuser Company

aj.kroll@weyerhaeuser.com
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

Doug Martin

Martin Environmental

doug@martinenv.com

Ellen Matheny

Director, Education and Outreach

University of Washington University of Washington

Olympic Natural Resources Center

ematheny@u.washington.edu

Gretchen Nicholas

Land Management Division Manager

Washington State Department of Natural Resources

gretchen.nicholas@wadnr.gov

Kathy O’Halloran

Natural Resources Staff Officer

Olympic National Forest

kohalloran@fs.fed.us

Craig Partridge

Policy Director

Washington State Department of Natural Resources

craig.partridge@wadnr.gov

Jim Peters

Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

jpeters@nwifc.org 

Gordon H. Reeves

Team Leader, Aquatic and Land Interaction Program

US Forest Service

PNW Research Station

Corvalis Forestry Sciences Laboratory

greeves@fs.fed.us

Bruce Rieman

Research Scientist (Emeritus)

USDA Forest Service

Rocky Mountain Research Station

brieman@fs.fed.us

Douglas F. Ryan

Program Manager/Line Officer

USDA Forest Service

PNW Research Station

Olympia Forestry Sciences Laboratory

dryan01@fs.fed.us

Steve Stinson

Executive Director

Family Forest Foundation

stevestinson@familyforestfoundation.org

Nancy Sturhan

Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

nsturhan@nwifc.org

Kate Sullivan

Pacific Lumber Company

ksullivan@scopac.com

Mark Teply

OESF HCP Research Manager

Land Management Division

Washington State Department of Natural Resources

Mark.Teply@dnr.wa.gov

Steven Wondzell

Research Riparian Ecologist

USDA Forest Service

PNW Research Station

Olympia Forestry Sciences Laboratory

swondzell@fs.fed.us
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Riparian Adaptive Mangement Symposium: A Conversation between Scientists and Managers

Kevin Zobrist

Forest Stewardship Educator

Washington State University

Snohomish and Skagit County Extension

kzobrist@wsu.edu
Pacific Northwest Research Station

Web site http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw

Telephone (503) 808-2592

Publication requests (503) 808-2138

FAX (503) 808-2130

E-mail pnw_pnwpubs@fs.fed.us

Mailing address Publications Distribution

Pacific Northwest Research Station

P.O. Box 3890

Portland, OR 97208-3890
138

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-830

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Pacific Northwest Research 

Station

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P.O. Box 3890

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