Dr. Erick Knapp to present at November meeting.

Fuels Reduction by CHIPS-Washoe Crew.  Photo courtesy Washoe Tribe.

As part of the Alpine Biomass Committee’s program to educate agencies and the public on issues surrounding forest and watershed health we are pleased to announce that Dr. Eric Knapp will be making a presentation at our November meeting.  His presentation and research should be of particular interest to those that are concerned about what makes a healthy forest, how our forests today are different from the forests prior to logging and aggressive fire suppression, and how the scientific research is being done.

Dr. Knapp is a Research Ecologist with the US Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station in Redding, and has done much of the research at the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest.  His current research is focused on forest ecology in relation to disturbance, particularly fire. He is interested in understanding changes that have occurred in the absence of fire and as forests have recovered from past logging disturbance, and the effect of these changes on forest resilience to fire, climate change, and other disturbances.  He uses historical information from photographs, old vegetation plots, and fire scars as a means of understanding the extent, severity, and frequency of past disturbance, as well as studies of areas with intact or near-intact fire regimes.  Both can provide important lessons for the management of our forests today.  Other interests include understanding the ecological effects and fire behavior implications of different forest and fuel management practices, the ability of fuel treatments (mechanical and prescribed fire) to emulate natural disturbance, the effect of fire on the habitat of plant and animal species, and the effect of prescribed fire season.

For more detail on Dr. Knapp’s research see http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/ff/staff/eknapp/.

The November meeting is scheduled for Tuesday November 1st  at 6:00 pm at Turtle Rock Park.

The Alpine Biomass Committee is supported by a grant from the National Forest Foundation with funds coming from Region 5 of the U.S. Forest Service.  This organization is an equal opportunity provider.