Pre-treatment cruise of the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area Study, Siskiyou County, California from 1995-1996

This data publication contains observations representing the initial conditions (prior to experimental treatment application) for trees in the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area study in northeastern California. The intent was to quickly obtain basal area per acre and trees per acre metrics for twenty 100-acre treatment units in 1995 and 1996. This interdisciplinary long-term study is now essentially complete as the entire area burned over in the Antelope Fire in August of 2021. The original intent of the study was to investigate responses to an array of treatments conceived to accelerate late-seral characteristics in a 70-year-old cut-over area of the Klamath National Forest. Variable-radius (20 BAF) plots were all spatially referenced using an established array of grid points indexed to the UTM. These monumented grid locations were on a 100-meter square spacing. For this cruise we increased the sample size by placing some plots half-way between grid monuments. While the monuments represent a known location to approximately 6-inch precision, the "in-between" plots were paced in using a hand compass so they have a much lower (unknown) precision. For the purposes of this effort, it was decided that we did not need precise tree-per-acre density so we estimated tree diameters to a 4-inch diameter class, rather than the more customary measurement of tree diameter to the nearest 0.1-inch. Data include basal area for each of five species (ponderosa pine, true fir, sugar pine, incense-cedar and other conifers), by 4-inch diameter classes for all grid points and "in-between" plots for each of the twenty 100-acre treatment units. Trees per acre for each of the species and diameter classes are also provided. Additionally, scans of the original field sheets are also included. Treatments applied after this data collection effort by random selection were: control (no subsequent treatments), bigtree (largest trees retained regardless of species or other factors), pineonly (larger trees retained favoring retention of pine), and pinewfire (pineonly treatment followed by application of prescribed fire).
The data were used to (A) locate dense pockets of fir in the 10 plots randomly selected to have a group selection component to the treatments, and (B) document the pre-treatment stand conditions. In establishing group selection areas within the treatment units, we wanted to target aggregations of fir for group selection location under a constraint that for each 100-acre treatment area, there would be 15 acres of group selection and the groups would be limited in size to about 3 acres maximum. Since the groups were planned for planting of ponderosa pine, this would tend to move species composition towards greater emphasis on ponderosa pine over time as the plantations developed.
For more information about this study and these data, see Ritchie (2005) and Ritchie (1997).