Glossary of Terms

Adaptive Management: 

Adaptive management is a process of gathering and using scientific information to evaluate and improve forest management decisions and practices

on the ground.

All-Lands Active Conservation Management (a Forest Bridges term): 

Active forest management approaches for the dry, moist and transitional forests of the O&C Lands of western Oregon that integrate western science-based ecological forestry/silviculture-based methods and Indigenous Knowledge and Practices for managing forests and ecosystems. Current fixed location reserves are replaced with an all-lands approach that applies metered, monitored harvest strategies and beneficial fire (i.e., prescribed fire and cultural burning) to achieve

specified habitat diversity goals, including legacy and structurally complex old growth habitats.

Basal Area: 

Basal area is the cross-sectional area of trees at breast height (4.5 ft above ground). It is a common way to describe stand density of forests, usually expressed per

acre.

Beneficial Fire: 

Beneficial fire is a term used to collectively refer to prescribed fire, cultural burning, and fire managed for resource benefit.

Collaborative:

Our Board is a collaborative of activists who were traditionally adversaries in the Western Oregon forestry controversies. Our goal is to collect a large network of Friends with a similarly wide range of outlooks who support our principles and our approach, and to develop broadly supported policy on how O&C Lands should be managed in Western Oregon.

The name “Forest Bridges” and our logo are intended to symbolize this coming together to bring to life a shared vision of long-term forest habitat health, for the benefit of all.

Co-Management:

Co-Management describes arrangements to manage natural resources with shared authority and responsibility. While treaty rights, legislation and other

legal mechanisms have fostered such arrangements, co-management is more generally the result of extensive deliberation and negotiation to jointly make decisions and solve problems. (Eisenberg, et al. 2024)

Co-Stewardship:

Co-Stewardship in the US, refers to a broad range of working relationships between the federal government and Indigenous Peoples exercising the delegated authority of federally recognized Tribes. Co-stewardship can include co-management, collaborative and cooperative management, and Tribally led stewardship, and can be implemented through cooperative agreements, memoranda of understanding, self-governance agreements, and other mechanisms. (Eisenberg, et al. 2024)

Cultural Burning:

“Cultural burning refers to the Indigenous practice of “the intentional lighting of smaller, controlled fires to provide a desired cultural service, such as promoting the health of vegetation and animals that provide food, clothing, ceremonial items and more” (Roos 2020). According to Frank Kanawha Lake, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, and a wildland firefighter of Karuk descent, “[Cultural burning] links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine. When you prescribe it, you’re getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture” (Roos 2020).

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-shape-our-land.htm

Dry, Moist and Transitional forests:

Dry Forests: Dry forests are generally found in Southwestern Oregon, with the exception of the far southwestern corner. In a dry forest, the forest floor tends to dry out completely in the summer, and frequent fires, every 5-15 years were a natural occurrence in precolonial times. These low-intensity ground fires reduce the presence of dry fuels. Without programs like this for fuel reduction, these fuels increase and create the heat that promotes fires that burn hot enough to destroy whole forests, including green live trees and forest soils.

Moist Forests: Moist forests are found more in Northwest Oregon (except in the far northwest corner) and along the Oregon Coast Range. In moist forests, the precipitation is higher, understory vegetation is denser, the forest floor is heavily shaded and remains moist or wet in typical summer conditions. Fires in these forests only happen under extremely dry conditions (every 100-300 years) and are much less frequent but more extreme, due to higher fuel loads. Moist forests require metered variable retention harvests to set the forest up for an array of habitat types aligned with the precolonial condition, as well as certain fuel mitigation.

Transitional Forests: 

These forests are intermediate in geographic location, moisture, directions of slope facing (aspect) and other factors between the dry and moist forests. They have a broad range of habitat types in close proximity. They behave like dry forests in severe fire conditions and many areas need thinning and fuel reduction treatments to mimic a less frequent lower severity fire pattern than moist forests, measured in decades rather than years. Stands facing north or east are more likely appropriate for moist forest treatment, while those facing west and south usually require a dry forest treatment approach, based on site specific characteristics, including moisture, lighting patterns, etc. These transitional areas will require special management planning, determined by professional agency personnel who evaluate each site, to mimic historical habitat patterns in the absence of fire.  

Early seral forests and Pre-forests:

Early Seral are the earliest stage forests after a burn or variable retention harvest that contain conifers and other tree seedlings from a combination of natural and planted trees (see paragraph below). Pre-forests are defined here as early seral forests that are generally devoid of conifer or other tree seedlings, often the result of stand replacement fires or areas that did not have trees in recent or past history. Early seral habitats are unique and necessary habitats in all forest types across the O&C Lands, and require regular renewal, as closing canopies of trees suppress the early seral vegetation.

Swanson et al. (2011) describe naturally regenerating early seral and pre-forest communities that are unique in being co-dominated by a wide range of plant forms including broadleaf shrubs and vines, hardwood and coniferous trees, herbs and grasses, and are accompanied by the living and dead woody legacies of the pre-disturbance stand. Source: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=63d3f22c4c0095a440ae194786e65ed135cafb92 

Pre-forest conditions arise from stand replacement fire effects of 90+ percent mortality – absent reforestation – where the forest is devoid of tree species regenerating from seed sources or replanting.

Ecocultural restoration:

Ecocultural restoration is the process of restoring climate- and wildfire-adapted ecosystem structure, composition, and processes, and the Indigenous cultural practices that helped shape them over deep time. Braiding together WS with IK restores the practice of place-based stewardship and reconnecting people to place. IK will need to be applied in a way that recognizes current distorted, novel conditions created by a century of western management, fire suppression, and cessation of management. . (Eisenberg, et al. 2024)

Ecological Forestry & Ecological Silviculture:

Ecological Forestry and Ecological Silviculture (ES) Methods:

Forest Bridges bases much of its Active Conservation Management proposals for the dry, moist and transitional O&C Lands on ecological forestry tenets and ecological silviculture methods. Ecological Forestry applies an understanding of the structure, function, and dynamics of natural forest ecosystems to achieve integrated environmental, economic, and social outcomes (Spies 2009); (Franklin 2018); (Palik, D’Amato Anthony W and Johnson 2021). Ecological silviculture as an approach manages forests, including trees, associated organisms, and ecological functions, based on emulation of natural models of development. (Palik, D’Amato Anthony W and Johnson 2021); (Palik & D’Amato / Wheeler 2024).

Ecological silviculture:

 Values the full array of structures, functions, and species found in a healthy forest ecosystem.

 ES builds from an understanding of the impact of natural disturbances and forest development to arrive at silvicultural systems that generate and maintain structural complexity and heterogeneity in ecosystem attributes.

 To achieve those outcomes, ES recommends regeneration harvests (and/or variable density thinning depending upon forest type and site criteria and management objectives) patterned after the prevailing natural disturbance regime for an ecosystem, including their scale, severity, and frequency.

 ES also emphasizes the importance of native species and accounting for the legacies from disturbances, namely surviving trees, and coarse woody material (e.g., snags and downed wood) -- placing equal emphasis on what is left behind relative to what is removed at each silvicultural intervention.

While economic objectives are still a priority with ecological silviculture, those associated with ecosystem diversity and resilience are given high priority in the design and implementation of ecological silvicultural systems. (Palik, D’Amato Anthony W and Johnson 2021)

Ecological restoration:

Ecological restoration is the process of “assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed” (Gann et al. 2019). It involves uniting scientific inquiry with on-the-ground practice while understanding that landscapes are dynamic and ever-changing. The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) has developed nine attributes that are helpful for guiding restoration objectives (SER 2004):

1. Plant assemblages should resemble historical reference conditions.
2. Species should be mostly or all native within a reasonable period of historical time.
3. A restored ecosystem should include all main functional groups of plants. 
4. It should be able to reproduce new cohorts. 
5. It should be on a historically appropriate trajectory of growth and change. 
6. It should be integrated into a larger functioning landscape matrix. 
7. It should be secured from “threats” originating from off site. 
8. It should be resilient (e.g., able to return to a pre-disturbance state). 
9. It should be self-sustaining within normal ranges of fluctuation. 

Fire exclusion and canopy closure:

Dry mixed-conifer forests in southwestern Oregon have been altered by 200 years of colonial settlement and fire suppression that have resulted in ahistorical stand densification, including of shade-tolerant species like white fir and grand fir (Sensenig et al. 2013). Outcomes are at least three-fold (Franklin & Johnson 2012): 

1. Many fewer old, fire-resistant trees are on the landscape. 
2. Drought conditions are exacerbated with too many trees per acre competing for water.
3. Forests are now highly susceptible to stand-replacing wildfire and insect epidemics due to elevated fuel levels. 

Fire Resilience:

The measure of a forest’s ability to regenerate and adapt after a fire passes through. 

Fire Resistance:

The ability of a forest to withstand a fire entering and survive. A fire-resistant forest has characteristics that make crown fires unlikely and allow the forest to survive surface fire without significant tree mortality in the main canopy. 

Historical:

Forest Bridges uses the term “historical” to describe forest types, patterns, densities, and disturbance regimes throughout our work. This usually refers to landscape patterns that existed before European colonization (in the 18th century) and widespread fire suppression (in the early 20th century). 

Indigenous Knowledge (IK):

Indigenous knowledge is a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs developed by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples through interaction and experience with the environment. It is applied to phenomena across biological, physical, social, cultural, and spiritual systems.12 Indigenous Knowledge can be developed over millennia, continues to develop, and includes understanding based on evidence acquired through direct contact with the environment and long-term experiences, as well as extensive observations, lessons, and skills passed from generation to generation.

Large legacy trees:

Old-growth trees are the “structural backbone” of forest ecosystems and should be prioritized for protection and restoration wherever they occur–especially in dry forests (Hagmann et al. 2013). This generally applies to trees older than 150 years, but removal of large trees may be considered in the rare circumstances that ecological goals may be better accomplished. For example, large grand firs may be harvested because they could pose a fire risk to adjacent, favored species like ponderosa pine and oak (in addition to being overrepresented in most dry forest stands because of fire suppression). Similarly, overstocked even-aged stands with continuous and large live crowns may need to be thinned to prevent drought stress, fire risk, and bark beetle infestations (North et al. 2009). In this way, thinning decisions are made according to broad, landscape-scale resilience and ecological function rather than imposed by strict diameter limits. 

Multiaged management:

Multiaged management is the maintenance of forest stands in two or more different age classes as an alternative to even-aged silviculture. It represents an effort to emulate more accurately the complexity and heterogeneity found in unmanaged stands while also providing timber products and sustaining thriving wildlife habitats. Multiaged stands also may be an adaptive management strategy for a changing climate and disturbance regimes because resilience is conferred through more complex forest systems. 

O&C Act of 1937: 

This is a Federal Law, also described in the Frequently Asked Questions. The full title of the Act is, “The revested Oregon and California Railroad and reconveyed Coos bay Wagon Road grant lands situated in the State of Oregon.”

O&C lands (small “l”): 

This term refers to the Oregon and California Railroad lands. The O&C lands include about 2.6 million acres. These lands are located across the 18 Western Oregon counties. Originally, these lands were deeded as private lands to railroad companies in 1866 to encourage the development of a rail line across Oregon and to encourage settlement. Portions of land were sold to settlers to raise money, the railroads were built, but eventually, the lands were revested to the Federal Government by Congress with the intent to privatize. Under the O&C Act of 1937, the BLM was tasked with managing the lands under what were considered progressive, conservation-oriented, and sustained yield timber harvest practices, with a portion of revenues going to the 18 counties of Western Oregon as O&C County Receipts. 

O&C Lands (With a capital “L”): 

This term, as used by Forest Bridges, refers to approximately 3 million acres of federally managed lands that comprise: the Oregon and California Railroad (O&C) lands, managed by both the BLM and US Forest service, as well as Public Domain and Coos Bay Wagon Road lands managed by the BLM. The O&C lands managed by the US Forest Service are referred to as “controverted lands,” and are governed by somewhat different overlays of regulations. The Public Domain lands are guided by a different funding formula than the O&C Act lands.

Place-based Reciprocal Stewardship:

An ethical value that grounds planning and management practice and applies that value to place-based stewardship of nature, the economy, health, cultural resources, property, and information. Indigenous Peoples and their cultural practices exemplify place-based reciprocal stewardship. Their approach emphasizes

learning by doing and local connection of people to the places that sustain them and are sustained by them. Practices include intentional burning, forest thinning,

other fuel reduction treatments, pest and postfire management, and seed collecting of native species to assist forest community regeneration. (Eisenberg, et

al. 2024)

Principles of Agreement (PoAs):

The PoA are a compilation of collaboratively supported concepts intended to comprehensively highlight and address a full suite of major issues faced by the managing agencies of the O&C Lands. With comprehensive resolution, issues solved in one respect will be less likely to re-emerge in another.

Reciprocity:

Taking from the land with the moral responsibility of giving back in equal measure. RECIPROCITY is both fundamental awareness and action in response to

awareness that humans and ecosystems have shared needs. It involves attention to mutually beneficial relationships between stewards and the land, plants, and animals they live among and rely on. In reciprocal culture, people have strong connection to a place and a moral responsibility to care for that place and its

living beings. (Eisenberg, et al. 2024)

Relative density:

Relative density indicates how fully the trees occupy a site. It is a measure of the number and average size of trees growing in a stand compared to the maximum possible that the site could support (a biological limitation).

Rethinking Protection (a Forest Bridges term):

Instead of simply drawing lines on a map to create various reserves of unmanaged or minimally managed areas, we are using a whole-land-base, long-range, active

conservation approach based on scientific evidence, professional agency experience, Indigenous wisdom and historic practices and forest policy tailored

to 21st century issues, resulting in improved forest health and species habitats. Harvests will not be based on diameter limits and age limits but instead seek similar result in a historical mix of stand diversity, always retaining a legacy of unmanaged and minimally managed areas on O&C lands.

Sustainability Funds:

(See Frequently asked Question, “Where will funds needed to support Forest Bridges’ new management programs come from?”)

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK):

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is the on-going accumulation of knowledge, practice and belief about relationships between living beings in a specific ecosystem that is acquired by indigenous people over hundreds or thousands of years through direct contact with the environment, handed down through generations, and used for life-sustaining ways. This knowledge includes the relationships between people, plants, animals, natural phenomena, landscapes, and timing of events for activities such as hunting, fishing, trapping, agriculture, and forestry. It encompasses the world view of a people, which includes ecology, spirituality, human and animal relationships, and more. TEK is also called other names, such as Indigenous Knowledge, Native Science.

Indigenous peoples as well as non-Indigenous peoples who are long-term (hundreds of years) local residents, e.g., Appalachian communities, Spanish land grant communities, can also provide TEK.

TEK is different from user knowledge and local knowledge. User knowledge is one person's experience over a lifetime or less. Local knowledge is more than one

person's experience aggregated, showing a trajectory, but not yet time tested. Individual users sharing knowledge with other local users and elders, and then

time-testing this new knowledge is part of the evaluation and validation process for TEK. (Charles 2020)

Western Science (WS):

Western science is objective and quantitative as opposed to traditional knowledge, which is mainly subjective and qualitative. Western science is based on an academic and literate transmission, while traditional knowledge is often passed on orally from one generation to the next by the elders. Western science isolates its objects of study from their vital context by putting them in simplified and controllable experimental environments—which also means that scientists separate themselves from nature, the object of their studies;-by contrast, traditional knowledge always depends on its context and particular local conditions (Nakashima DJ 2002).

Wildfires, Megafires and Gigafires:

Western Oregon forests are overloaded with fuels after more than 100 years of focus on putting fires out and Smokey Bear, who gained notoriety after being rescued from a 1944 wildfire. Wildfires can be small, or they can burn very hot and become very large and damaging, measured in tens of thousands of acres across BLM and private lands together where the typical ownership size in the O&C Lands checkerboard is 640 acres. “Megafires” is a new term applying to fires, or complexes of fires that converge, and the total exceeds 100,000 acres -- much more common today than historically. “Gigafires” is also a new term to describe wildfires that exceed 1 million acres. All of these fires NOT ONLY cause extreme economic damage, but soil is irreparably damaged, habitats are destroyed, excessive carbon is released into the atmosphere, and water quality, lives, and property are placed at risk.

Policy to put all fires out started around 1915 after the great burns of 1910 which burned 3 million acres and 87 lives were lost. Smokey Bear got his start in 1944 after a bear cub was rescued from a wildfire and nursed back to health, amid a lot of publicity.

References:

-Charles, Cheryl & Gregory A. Cajete. 2020. "Wisdom Traditions, Science and Care for the Earth: Pathways to Responsible Action." Ecopsychology 12.

- Eisenberg, Cristina, Susan Prichard, Michael Paul Nelson, and Paul Hessburg. 2024. Braiding Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science for Climate-Adapted Forests. An Ecocultural State of Science Report, Seattle: University of Washington.

-Franklin, J. F. 2012. "A Restoration Framework for Federal Forests in the Pacific Northwest." Journal of Forestry 429-439.

—. 2018. Ecological Forest Management. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

-Gann, G.D., McDonald, T., Walder, B., Aronson, J., Nelson, C.R., Jonson, J., Hallett, J.G., Eisenberg, C., Guariguata, M.R., Liu, J., Hua, F., Echeverría, C., Gonzales, E., Shaw, N., Decleer, K. and Dixon, K.W. 2019. "International principles and standards for the practice of ecological restoration. Second edition." Restoration Ecology S1-S46.

-Hagmann, R.K., Franklin, J.F., Johnson, K.N. 2013. "Historical structure and composition of ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests in south-central Oregon." Forest Ecology Management 492-504.

-Nakashima DJ, Roué M. 2002. "Indigenous knowledge, peoples and sustainable practice." In Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change. 5: Social and Economic Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, by P Timmerman, 314-324. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

-North, M.P., Stine, P., O’Hara, K.L., Zielinski, W.J., Stephens, S.L. 2009. An ecosystem management strategy for sierran mixed-conifer forests. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report, Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station.

-Palik & D’Amato / Wheeler, Abraham, Franklin, Jerry F., & Wessell, Stephanie J. 2024. "Chapter 1, The Context of Ecological Silviculture / Chapter 4, Ecological Silviculture in Douglas-fir—Western Hemlock Ecosystems." In Ecological Silvicultural Systems: Exemplary Models for Sustainable Forest Management, by B. & D’Amato Anthony Palik, pp. 1-10 / pp. 40-51. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

-Palik, B. D., Franklin, Jerry F. D’Amato Anthony W, and Norman K. Johnson. 2021. "Ecological Silviculture Foundations and Applications." 3-13; 21-35; 93-98; 124-127. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

-Restoration, Society for Ecological. 2024. SER Documents. January. Accessed May 28, 2024. https://www.ser.org/page/SERDocuments.

-Roos, Dave. 2020. Native Americans Used Fire to Protect and Cultivate Land. Accessed May 28, 2024. https://www.history.com/news/native-american-wildfires.

-Sensenig, T. B. 2013. "Stand development, fire and growth of old-growth and young forests in southwestern Oregon, USA." Forest Ecology and Management 96-109.

-Spies, T. 2009. "Conserving Old Growth in a New World." In Old Growth in a New World: A Pacific Northwest Icon Reexamined, by T. Spies, 313-326. Washington, DC: Island Press.

-Swanson, M.E., Franklin, J.F., Beschta, R.I., Crisafulli, C.M., DellaSala, D.A., Hutto, R.I., Lindenmayer, D.B., Swanson, F.J. 2011. "The forgotten stage of forest succession; early-successional ecosystems on forest sites." 117-125.