Runoff and erosion from small forest watersheds on the Priest River Experimental Forest

Ten small watersheds ranging in size from 1.7 to 6.5 hectares (ha) were installed at the Priest River Experimental Forest (PREF) in the northern panhandle of Idaho approximately 12 kilometers (km) (7 miles (mi)) northeast of Priest River, Idaho. The long term objective of the study was to compare impacts of different management activities, simulated wildland fire and salvage logging from those wildland fire simulations. No natural disturbances or treatments occurred on any of the watersheds during the first three years of the study. Two watersheds were designated as controls and the remaining eight watersheds received treatments between 2006-2009; a timeline with the treatment schedule is provided within the supplement folder. Weather data for this publication contains daily temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and solar radiation recorded from approximately 2003 through 2010. During 2006-2007, hemispheric photos were collected at the snow water equivalent (SWE) collection points for nine of the ten watersheds before and after the treatments. Last the GIS folder provides a shaded relief map of the hillslope and raster image file of the PREF area, along with shapefiles providing the boundaries of each watershed, point locations for weather stations, and the snow course within each watershed.
The purpose of this study is to measure the watershed impacts of current forest fuel management practices, simulated wildfire, and to present the runoff and erosion rates observed on these watersheds prior to and following any treatment in order to evaluate natural variability in small watershed studies.
For additional information regarding this study and the pre- and post-fire analyses of these data see Elliot and Glaza (2007 and 2009).