Overview
Alder Creek Community Forest is located on the Proctor Memorial Forest, a 78 acre mixed coniferous/hardwood forest of approximately 1000′ elevation located in southwest Oregon.
In 2019, ACCF adopted a forest stewardship plan to guide management, consistent with its PMF conservation easement held by the Southern Oregon Land Conservancy. A number of ongoing opportunities and challenged are mentioned in the plan, including:
- Management for healthy forest and watershed function
- Maintenance of healthy forest cover to sequester carbon
- Preservation of the property’s scenic and natural values through conservation and active forest management
- Protection of forest biodiversity and promotion of late seral forest structure development
- Maintenance of trail systems to facilitate community education and dialog about forest and watershed management
- Reduction of fire risk through vegetation management as needed
Yet the threat of wildfire and tree mortality in the 2020s have led to more recent management priorities, as you can read below.
CSP Project
We launched a four-year project from 2021–24 prioritizing PMF stand improvement and fire risk (fuels) reduction, with support from the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and its Conservation Stewardship Program.
The project focused on two tracts as noted in the below map: a drier (SE aspect), 4.5 acre mixed hardwood/coniferous tract to the northeast of the site, and a wetter (NW aspect), 3.8 acre largely coniferous tract to the southwest of the site. The map also shows the primary management zones of the PMF site.
As of 2024, all management activities are now complete, including fuels reduction followed by biochar processing of downed woody debris.
Salvage Harvest
A recent salvage harvest of dead and dying Douglas-fir trees in summer 2023 will be more fully documented here in time, including followup remediation efforts. Douglas-fir mortality is a major challenge across forests of the region, in what has been described as a “decline spiral” (Bennett, Shaw, and Lowrey 2023). How we address this challenge on PMF may thus offer educational insights to other forests of the region.
Example areas affected by PMF salvage harvest, June-July 2023, indicating need for erosion control and revegetation.