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hello my name is alexander harris and i'm a graduate student at western washington university today i'm going to be giving a brief overview of my graduate research project and reviewing some of the methodology and the research techniques that i'll be using to investigate community forestry i'll share my screen and enter here the focus of my research project is the stuart mountain community forest which is a collaborative effort amongst numerous stakeholders here in whatcom county to develop a community forest i'll be getting into more detail later but throughout the presentation remember that this is my focus and everything else i'll be talking about relates to this one focus area so here's a brief overview of what i'll be addressing i'll give a quick introduction and some background information about the south fork watershed i will run through some of the literature that i've been reviewing to build my research project and design my methodology and then i'll actually get into the methods the last section will be what kind of methods i'll be using and what the timeline is for my research so starting at the top with the introduction my research question for this project is which model of community forestry is most conducive to restoring the nook sac watershed and recovering salmonid populations sounds like a pretty complex question but we're going to be unpacking that so hopefully it will make more sense at the end to begin this is the south fork valley this is where my partner and i live here in the community of van zant i took this photo um from stewart mountain looking east towards mount baker and the twin sisters the south fork watershed is uh one of the three major forks of the nooksack watershed here in northwestern washington and it's a very important watershed for a lot of different purposes for salmon for native people for recreation and for numerous industries uh there's a major agricultural and timber industry in the watershed and uh there's also communities that live here and um depend on on the watershed for a variety of uses you can see on this map this is a map from the department of ecology everything that's in red or yellow is a fish bearing stream some of these waterways in fact most of the yellow or red are going to be open to anadromous cell monids so anadromous meaning ocean fairing salmon and steelhead populations whereas the blue on this map are non-fish bearing streams this is the upper south fork where a lot of the salmon spawning actually takes place it's closed to most commercial fishing in most recreational fishing because of how crucially uh endangered critically endangered a lot of these fish populations are this is a very important area to both the lummi and nook sac tribes and historically was a major location where hundreds of people would gather during the fish runs to to fish and of course we know clc peoples depended on fish not only for sustenance uh and in their economy but also uh spiritually and culturally salmon were a very important part of their of their cultures and still are uh here's the lower south fork this is right next to where i live this is potter road bridge if you know the area the lower south fork you can see is much wider still runs clear most of the year but it is there's definitely a lot more sediment in the river by this point because of cumulative impacts this differs starkly from this is a picture of the north fork this is actually down river of the confluence of the north and middle forks so this is uh near the community of welcome notice how the glacial till in this water is so different than what you see here in the south fork and the reason is because the south fork watershed has some glaciers that feed the watershed but essentially none it's it's a very negligible amount so in other words most of the watershed is fed from snowpack and rain and aquifers and uh those sources all uh really there's just not a lot of snow melt or aquifer fed uh in-stream flow by the late summer so the south fork is known for really having a lot less water in this in the late summer and that of course is a major issue to fish species uh here is a video taken by a friend of mine of chinook salmon in the south fork just a few miles from where i live uh he got this this footage and you can see here chinook salmon migrating upstream to spawn the south fork is a very important restoration priority because glaciers do not feed this watershed climate change is already contributing to less and less snowpack so in the next few decades less and less water in this in this waterway is going to be a major impediment to fish populations in particular chinook salmon that you see here uh this is really important also in the north and middle forks but they have so many more glaciers that they have a few more decades before they hit crisis uh they're in crisis mode uh they scientists expect that the latter half of the 21st century is when those watersheds will experience uh major uh in-stream float deficits and uh salmon could also be impacted by that so i've been talking about salmonids let me briefly explain what i'm even talking about notice on the left this is the salmonid family i've broken this chart down by genus so known as the ankarankis these are all of our five specific salmon chum chinook sockeye coho and pink those are the five and then there's also two more of this same genus those are the steelhead trout and the cutthroat trout all of these are in the south fork watershed as well as these native char populations bull trout and dollyvarden very closely related but there is a distinction uh you can also find other species that are not native uh in the watershed but these ones that i just went over are all the native populations native fish in the northwest are steeply declining and experts uh generally agree for the reasons uh habitat and water quality fish impairments or passage impairments being the most important it's essentially habitat fish are not able to gain access to spawning grounds their habitat has been degraded the water quality has been degraded and the result is very stunning we've seen over the last five decades a steep decline in fish populations as experts expect that fish in the northwest native fish populations in the salish sea are roughly 10 percent of their historical numbers before european settlement so we know it's it's uh capital a capitalism and other industrial processes that have contributed to this problem there is debate about what has contributed the most and what has been the most important well today i'll be getting into one of those major variables which is the degradation of habitat through forest degradation as science has matured over the last several decades we've learned that salmon are an old-growth species in other words we usually think of the spotted owl or the marble marlette or other endangered species as old growth species species that depend on old mature forest but science is now also telling us that salmon also depend on mature forest both to shade the forest and keep it cool and to mitigate the amount of mudslides sediment flows mass wasting that contributes to high levels of turbidity and degrades habitat so all the pictures that are in this presentation i actually took uh so you don't have to worry about me sourcing any of these on the left you'll see that the south fork uh experiencing some solar radiation uh south fork is an impaired waterway under the clean water act it actually violates the clean water act under section 303 d it's an impaired waterway for being too hot the temperatures are too hot picture on the right is also of the south fork and you'll notice during times of the year the river runs brown it's chock full of sediment and mud and the south fork is also impaired for two excessive amounts of turbidity in other words too much sediment in the water the south fork is also impaired for stream flow meaning there's not enough water in the late summer in particular and there are a variety of reasons that that is but uh as we'll get into industrial forestry plays a major role there the nook sac tribe working with other partners has developed a series of log jams these are engineered log jams eljs they're called in the field and you'll notice one here they are trees you know trunks and bowls of trees that are drilled into the ground and strung together by metal cables and they allow fallen trees and debris to be caught like this which contributes to greater sinuosity and and greater uh complexity in the way that the river flows the stream channel morphology has been greatly altered by agriculture and industrial forestry and the tribe and other partners are trying to ameliorate that problem by blocking up the river in some areas and contributing to a more migratory and meandering shape of the river if you will okay so that was a really quick overview of the south fork let me get into some of the literature regarding industrial forestry and the role it plays in uh contributing to salmon habitat or degrading salmon habitat so industrial forestry uh as i will be demonstrating has led to a decline in salmon populations there really is no debate about that in the scientific community um that's objectively uh true it's just a matter of how much that's been the case um and that is up for debate the south fork as i went over violates the clean water act for temperature turbidity and water quantity uh there are alternatives being explored that are not regulatory but traditionally to improve forest practices uh the laws have essentially needed to be changed regulations have needed to be amended and that is a very lengthy complex process it's politically toxic industry hates regulation and does everything they can to to keep things as they are and not uh increase the amount of regulation that they have to deal with and there are a lot of valid reasons that they dislike regulation um but the slow pace of regulation has contributed to uh people in the field looking for alternative approaches in other words instead of just regulating forestry more what else could we do to improve forest practices and therefore improve the watershed this is a clear cut on stuart mountain that is uh one of the freshest clear cuts i took this uh in the fall this is my my buddy we were on a bike ride and stumbled upon this cut this is i think about 120 115 acres i forget the actual uh acreage but this is one of the larger clear cuts that have recently happened and you can see a clear-cut is exactly what it sounds like it is uh a complete uh annihilation of all vegetative matter across a large swath of land um so all plants are killed uniformly and replanted as plantations and they are sprayed routinely in their first few years to ensure that no other vegetation grows except for the target crop the uh the dug fur is usually what it is so you can see here a blanket of doug furs on stewart mountain the co this contributes to very dense stands growing with essentially no understory there really is a single species throughout their lifetime until their clear-cut in the process starts again these are known as plantations so what does the scientific literature say well i'll go over a few different angles of the impacts the hydrologic impacts of industrial forestry but by no means is this an exhaustive list of the literature one of the focal points of my research will be on hydrologic maturity and the role that it plays in contributing to higher stream flow levels in the late summer so that's a that's a lot of jargon let me unpack that a little bit currently a lot of waterways in the northwest are running too dry in the summer there there's just not enough water that's a water quantity issue and scientists have been able to figure out a few different reasons for why that is climate change being one of those reasons but more pronounced uh in at least at our time in the 21st century is the role that plantations have on watersheds so scientists two different studies uh conducted in oregon one in 2020 one in 2017 they each analyzed different experimental forests in oregon that had been set aside for research back in the 50s and they looked at 60 years of data one of the studies looked at 60 years of data in the h.j andrews experimental forest near eugene and the southland qua experimental forest near roseburg and they found that uh when comparing the stream flow levels with uh the logged basin and the unlocked basin stream flows were 50 lower in the logged basin than they were in the unlocked basin so in other words they clear-cut one basin they left the other one alone and they watched those waterways for six decades in these two different parts of the state and they found the same thing uh 50 percent less water where logging had taken place then in 2020 there was another study that was conducted on a different in a different area with a different set of multi-decadal data and they corroborated the study groundbreaking study and it has had major implications in forest policy so far diminished stream flow doesn't just last for three or five years it actually lasts for mult multiple decades the scientists found that uh starting 20 or 30 years into a plantation's life there were marked declines in uh stream flow levels and that persisted for decades so to translate that into what it means for us clear cutting today is actually contributing to streamflow deficits for decades to come and those decades to come of course are going to be characterized by climate destabilization by glacial retreat by a steep decline in snowpack much more precipitation will fall as rain much less will fall as snow there is also a lot of science about the role that industrial forest practices have on stream flow sorry water quality so we just went over quantity right how much water there is there's also been a lot of research showing that industrial logging contributes to lower quality of water there's one uh study science synthesis that i i'm very fond of it was conducted by the u.s forest service in 2008 and instead of doing primary research it synthesizes over a hundred peer-reviewed articles that are studying this exact question and it really is so far in my research the most comprehensive uh summary of the literature and where it stands in regards to industrial logging and water quality no surprise industrial logging uh contributes to increases in peak flows uh peak flow is basically the opposite of summer stream flow storm stream flows when the water is lowest and peak flows are when the water is highest so these are when flood events happen this is when landslides and mass wasting happen and these kinds of peak flow events can actually contribute to more channelization of the river so less meandering of the river that can also lead to warmer temperatures it eliminates a lot of the vegetation along the banks so you have bigger beaches without uh vegetation that is shading the river so it actually can increase temperature and of course this increases sediment in the water the more landslides the more mass wasting the more turbidity that will be affecting salmon okay so we can get into that uh in greater detail later for today's purposes uh let's now move on to alternatives to the industrial model what are the alternatives well ecological forestry is the blanket term for the alternative approach to silviculture that does not require clear cutting implantations and aggressive herbicide spraying and whatnot essentially long-term watershed restoration requires long-term commitment to forest stewardship so you need to take the long view you need to think of a forest in tree years not in human years not in wall street years that's the most important difference you advance selective thinning and other kinds of silver cultural approaches that increase biodiversity increase diversity of structures and in tree ages and most importantly increase the complexity of the forest think of a plantation as being uniform and simple and homogeneous it's very different than a natural forest which is complex and diverse and ever-changing ecological forestry is not uh just leave it alone you can manage a forest and increase diversity and increase tree rigor and forest health through a variety of techniques and still produce wood products while eaving a forest behind you can you can leave an understore you can leave other trees behind and still obtain economic value and that's the whole idea balancing economic goals with with other goals community forestry fits very well into that community forestry is a way of democratizing natural resource management it's a way of managing a forest for numerous values and uses without prioritizing just one such as such as timber production it's also a way of engaging a community to really figure out what their priorities are and then establishing a management regime that reflects the community's values ideally this would be democratic and open to different voices and different interests and there would be certain people who don't want to log the forest and there would be certain people who want to log it more and ideally you'd find some way to log certain areas certain areas would be prioritizing timber production other areas there'd be some timber production but there would also be trails and there would also be habitat restoration and then other areas say like right along waterways would not be logged um they'd be conservation areas for wildlife and for watershed health it's a nuanced and complex way to manage a forest but that's what that's what we need that's what climate change and salmon recovery demand in order to be successful the stewart mountain community forest is a proposed community forest here in wacom county and i'm working closely with wacom land trust the nook sac tribe evergreen land trust in wacom county to advance this project i'm trying to get western washington to be more uh involved the university and so far folks at the university have been very interested in getting more involved the community forest would be a working forest that continues to produce wood products while balancing a range of ecological economic and community benefits so we already went into this the chief goal of the community forest would be to restore the south fork watershed and recover salmonid populations through improved forest practices but there are also other goals some of those goals are to promote economic development expand recreational access produce high quality light large diameter wood products and bolster community autonomy so notice bellingham on the left and mount baker on the right this is where i live in the community of vanzant you can see all the blue lands here are dnr all of the uh golden brown and maybe that's an orange that's all county land and everything else that's not highlighted in the color on this map is uh private you'll notice federal and green off here on the right with all these unshaded lands those are private the area that we are trying to acquire for a community forest is right here so it's between the south fork valley and lake whatcom on the eastern side of stuart mountain and to show you from different from a different angle here's lake watkin there's bellingham in the distance and this is stewart mountain here's the south fork right here and you can see the north fork here this is where the confluence is and they run that way another angle uh to show you the area we're looking at i made this map to show phase one of the community forest this is the first 500 acres that we're trying to buy and we've written now two grants to try to acquire this forest so uh where does my research fit into this larger picture and what is my research going to do well the basic questions that are guiding the research are what are the various models of community forestry what are the advantages and drawbacks of each model and which model is most conducive to stewart the stewart mountain community forest goals this is a timetable of how i will implement my research project so starting at the top this is phase one of my research project design the research project do a preliminary assessment of the literature recruit a graduate research committee pursue research grants and defend the research proposal so this is all the what i'm doing um this year my first year of grad school i'm also starting uh in the spring to conduct my inventory i'll be identifying every single community forest in the northwest and developing at least a spreadsheet with data and information about each one i'll then create a typology that categorizes these different community forests based on who owns the land and how they're managed and after i categorize them this will be phase three i will identify one case example from each categories and i'm gonna shoot for six categories six case examples i'll build a case example uh profile uh for each one that really gets into depth on how the forest is managed who it's owned by uh how they balance all these different values how they engage their the community how democratic really is it then i will um sorry before i get into that next step i will have to do a lot of interviews for this part of the research project i'll also be conducting site visits and reviewing some of the planning documents to build each of these profiles then i conduct my analysis and this is probably the uh area that i'm least clear on i'm still developing my evaluation criteria and figuring out how i'm going to conduct this analysis but essentially i distill the key variables that are conducive to each model figure out what the advantages and the drawbacks are of each model and the goal is to produce a final recommendation that has been informed by all this research that i've done and the recommendation would be hand it over to the stakeholders who i'm working with and it would basically be a path forward it wouldn't necessarily be the path forward it would just be my recommendation for how stakeholders should advance the community forest which entity should own it how it should be governed and how the forest should be managed how much timber should come off the mountain how much conservation and restoration do we need to prioritize it would be a more generalized strategy for how the community forest could move forward so that's the entirety of my project uh at least as it currently stands here's my works cited you're able to pause this if you're watching this recorded and review some of my work cited to close i believe community forestry can be a really powerful and effective tool to restore salmon and watershed and water quality while also advancing other goals such as rural economic development timber production and here in macomb county especially recreation there are there's major recreation potential here hopefully some of the pictures i showed you show uh demonstrated how amazing this place is and how it actually has a lot of potential to serve the community in so many more ways than it currently is so with that that's everything i uh look forward to your comments and your questions thanks