Lick Creek Demonstration-Research Forest: Data and photo archive of 25-year fire and cutting effects on vegetation and fuels

This data publication contains vegetation, fuels, and repeat photopoint data for the Lick Creek Demonstration-Research Forest Commercial Thinning + prescribed fire and Retention Shelterwood + prescribed fire study areas in western Montana. Pretreatment data were collected in 1991. The Commercial Thinning and Retention Shelterwood project areas are each stand-alone studies located in different areas and data should not be combined. Both studies included three treatments (three units per treatment) and three control units for a total of 12 units per project. Silvicultural treatments were implemented in 1992, followed by prescribed burning in 1993 and 1994, under a fully replicated experimental design involving randomization of treated units and a permanent, systematic plot sampling network. The primary posttreatment data sampling occurred postharvest/preburn, one year postburn, and again in 2005 and 2015, but some additional sampling occurred in other years. In 2016 the Commercial Thinning study received a re-entry harvest and approximately 50% of the basal area was harvested in each treated unit; the control units were not treated. Photopoints were revisited at various times to show treatment effects and vegetation change. In the treated units in the Commercial Thinning project there were 10 to 12 repeat photographs taken at each photopoint with a maximum lapse of 10 years between photographs. Control units were photographed in 2015 and 2016. In the treated units in the Retention Shelterwood project there were seven to 11 photographs taken at each photopoint with a maximum lapse of 11 years between photographs. Control units were photographed in 2016.
In 1991, a cooperative venture among the Bitterroot National Forest, University of Montana, and Forest Service Intermountain Research Station (now Rocky Mountain Research Station) initiated a new research experiment with seven prescribed burning and cutting treatment variants to test restoration alternatives in restoring the site’s ponderosa pine vegetation community and reduce fuel loads down to historically-appropriate levels. Silvicultural treatments were implemented in 1992, followed by prescribed burning in 1993 and 1994, under a fully replicated experimental design involving randomization of treated units and a permanent, systematic plot sampling network. In a formal recognition of its long-term research value, the site was officially designated as a Demonstration-Research Forest by the Bitterroot National Forest to encourage its integrity as a long-term research site.
This data publication was originally published on 02/04/2020. On 03/20/2020 minor updates were made to the metadata, and the following updates to the data package: several species symbols were updated in the Retention Shelterwood (SW) dataset to include a missing, fifth letter in the symbol code (after comparing to the original data sheets) that was accidentally removed during data conversion, the certainty variable was removed from the species list because it wasn’t needed after the species symbol corrections were made, user variable (UV) fields were added to LC_SW_Quadrats_Combined.csv, and LC_SW_Cover_Quadrats_SampleEvents.csv which include a code for post-burn mineral soil exposure and 5000 observations were removed from the SW dataset because data from the 1993 ReMeasure2 sample visit had been imported into the database twice (1993 ReMeasure1 and Remeasure2) during data conversion. We also renamed the files originally "LC_##_Cover_Frequency_*.csv" to "LC_##_Cover_Quadrats_*.csv" because frequency data were not collected.