Fremont-Winema National Forests

2005
Northwest Forest Plan
Klamath Province
Implementation Monitoring

This year two projects on the Fremont-Winema National Forests were selected for review in the Klamath Province. This page provides links to information about the projects as well as responses to the required questionaires. The review team included the following participants:

• Lynn Jungwirth, The Watershed Center, Hayfork, representing the Klamath Provincial Advisory Committee
• Kent Russell, Klamath District Ranger
• Jack Sheehan, Ecosystem Management Staff Officer, Fremont-Winema National Forests
• Gregg Riegel, Area Ecologist, Forest Service
• Joe Wagner, Fire Ecologist, BLM
• Dan Shoun, Fuels Specialist, Fremont-Winema National Forests
• Joy Augustine, Fuels Specialist, Klamath Ranger District
• Jerry Haugen, Environmental Coordinator, Fremont-Winema National Forests

The sections, below, tagged with "PDF" are provided in Portable Document Format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader software. You may download Acrobat Reader, free of charge, from Adobe at: http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/readstep.html. Sections tagged with "DOC" were prepared in Microsoft Word 2000 and should be compatible with that word processor. Sections tagged "RTF" are in Rich Text Format and should be compatible with most word processors.

• Overview Map {JPEG 30K] [PDF - 212K]

Fourmile 1 Prescribed Fire

This project is an underburn located north of Highway 140 (west of Klamath Falls) between the Fourmile Quarry and Seldom Creek. It contains about 200 acres. The project decision was signed on September 16, 1996 and the work was accomplished in the spring of 1997. The photo to the left depicts the typical appearance of the area now, nearly nine years after the treatment.

The riparian area associated with Seldom Creak was buffered and not treated with this project. Fuels were not removed from this area and have continued to accumulate. The photo to the right shows what the riparian area looks like today. The group discussed the potential for untreated riparian areas to function as fuses leading wild fire up drainages. This behavior was seen on the Toolbox Fire on the Silver Lake Ranger District.

In the photo to the left, below, the review team discusses the Forrmile 1 project at a landing near the east end of the project.

This project is in the Fourmile Watershed (1801020303). For watershed information, see the Watershed Questions [DOC - 188] [RTF - 315K] [PDF - 222K].

• Field Review: Monitoring Questions
• September 16, 1996: Decision Memo [DOC - 172K] [RTF - 172K] [PDF - 26K]

Along the Westside Road

The review team traveled the Westside Road to get from the Fourmile Project to the Annie Creek Project. Along the way, the group made a couple of stops to discuss more recent fuel treatments. The photo to the left shows a location on the Westside Road near Rocky Point. The area has recently been thinned and handpiled. Since the area is the backyard for Rocky Point residents, most of the material is not being made available for firewood and will ultimately be burned in place. Care is taken to minimize smoke impacts upon the community. In addition, Forest Service representatives keep the residents advised of burn plans and activities. In some cases, individuals leave the area during burning for health reasons. Some of the material removed in this treatments was left for public firewood use, farther away from the residences. This kind of treatment would have potential for biomass use since the piles are on easily acccessible, level ground.

In the photo to the right, Gregg Riegel, Area Ecologist for the Forest Service, discusses an ongoing analysis of fuel loadings and treatment priorities on Forest Service lands west of the Westside Road. Retention of Late Successional Reserve functionality and protection of riparian resources are key concerns in this area. The analysis team is working toward identifying treatments and treatment locations that would best address these concerns within available budgets.

Annie 2 Prescribed Fire

This project is an underburn located west of Highway 62 which is west of Annie Creek. It contains about 50 acres. The majority of the stand is large diameter ponderosa pine, with bitterbrush the primary understory. The area is managed for scenic foreground qualities. The purpose of the project was to enhance those qualities by leaving small openings with natural-appearing edges and trees with distinctive bark and tree form characteristics. In addition, where snags are lacking, underburning was seen as an opportunity to create more. The photo shows one of the openings with a dense patch of vegetation in the background. It is believed that the patch was not treated to protect cultural resources located there. Part of the intent was to kill small fir trees in the understory. The photo shows how that understory was developing.

A portion of Annie 2 is included in the current Southgate-Scoria Natural Fuel Reduction Project. The forground in the picture above is primarily bitterbrush that has recently been mowed as a part of the new project. The photo to the right is a closeup of a bitterbrush plant that has been broken apart by mowing. Note that at the time of this review this plant, and most of the others, were starting to green up.

This project is in the Wood River Watershed (1801020301). For watershed information, see the Responses to the Watershed Questions.

• Field Review - Monitoring Questions
• August 31, 1994: Decision Notice [DOC - 616K] [RTF - 3,293K] [PDF - 27K]
• Environmental Analysis [DOC - 1,579K] [RTF - 17,175K]

USDA Forest Service - Fremont-Winema NF's
Last Modified: Wednesday, 25 May 2005 at 14:14:29 EDT