Soil Disturbance Recovery after Timber Harvests - Malheur
type: Dataset
description: Soil productivity is essential to the sustained production of ecosystem goods and services and monitoring the impacts of land management is critical for ensuring the continuation of productive forests. The National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA) mandates monitoring soil property changes following management practices at all national forests, so they “will not produce substantial and permanent impairment of the land”. The Forest Soil Disturbance Monitoring Protocol (FSDMP) was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) to ensure a standard method for collecting pre- and post-harvest soil monitoring data. Data collected following the FSDMP provide temporal and spatial insights into soil recovery rates and alteration of soil processes or hydrologic function following disturbance. The objective of this study was to 1) identify site factors and operational harvest impacts that alter dynamic soil properties, and 2) outline best management practices that account for these site and operational factors. Prior harvested stands on the Malheur National Forest in northeastern Oregon, USA were identified to reflect a range of soil types, climatic conditions, past timber harvest mechanisms and seasonal timing, as well as topographic position (slope, aspect). Fifty-one stands were selected within a project area approximately 31,000 hectares and monitored retrospectively to evaluate soil disturbance and site characteristics that influence soil recovery from timber harvests completed within the past 5, 10, 20, or 40 years ago. We found that clay and silt content, spring moisture deficit, fall mean maximum temperature as well as interactions between clay x silt content, depth to restrictive layer x coarse fragment content, and silt x depth to restrictive layer had the most influence on soil disturbance. Important management considerations are (1) harvest operations that occurred during winter months resulted in less soil disturbance, (2) greater clay c…
issued: 2019-10-30T20:43:29+00:00
modified: 2020-02-06T18:09:57+00:00
spatial: Location
contact point: Organization
  fn: lesl4170_ui_uidaho
keyword: AmeriGEO
keyword: AmeriGEOSS
keyword: CKAN
keyword: GEO
keyword: GEOSS
keyword: National
keyword: North America
keyword: United States
keyword: malheur-national-forest
keyword: soil-disturbance
keyword: soil-land-resources
keyword: soil-recovery
keyword: soil-science
keyword: soils-monitoring
keyword: university-of-idaho
theme: {geospatial}

ArcGIS Hub Dataset
type: Distribution
format: HTML
issued: 2020-11-30T02:55:56.696277
modified: 2025-09-24T08:42:15.065385
access URL: https://geocatalog-uidaho.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/060b6436bdb44a1183946c7da9c0b0fc
media type: text/html

Esri Rest API
type: Distribution
format: Esri REST
issued: 2020-11-30T02:55:56.696287
modified: 2025-09-24T08:42:15.066701
access URL: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/060b6436bdb44a1183946c7da9c0b0fc
media type: application/json

US Migrating
type: Agent