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The area I have chosen as a field site encompasses roughly 50 hectares of land and lakeside in the Lakes District approximately one hour south of Burns Lake BC. It is located within a couple hundred meters of a relatively small lake called Bickle lake and is partially on private land (permission to access granted) and partially on crown land designated as “Old Growth management area” by the Province. The ecosystem classification of the entire site as per BEC-web is Sub-boreal Spruce dry-cool (dk) with some site series variation. Slopes are minor with some short steep sections directly adjacent to the lake. My area of interest will likely become smaller as I refine my research question but for now I’m looking at several environmental gradients. These include two particular areas which I will describe in the following paragraphs documenting my initial site visits.
The first area was visited on January 4th, 2021 at around 4:05 pm, accessed by cross-country skiing on the lake. The weather was clear, sunny (sunset) and the temperature was around -1 degree Celsius. Located on a promontory of the lake south of the private property, this section of forest is within the Old Growth Management Area (OGMA) (iMap BC) and has forested lakeside edges that are both north, west, and southwest-facing. Along the north aspect the stand contains large-volume spruce with a good deal of blown-down dead pine (most of the pine in the area was killed by the Mountain Pine beetle epidemic in the early 2000s), which gives way to younger spruce towards the point of the promontory, and then an open aspen-leading stand on west- and southwest facing slopes. I saw old moose prints on the lake and the willows along the shore were browsed so heavily they looked spiky, though the interspersed alder was not browsed. I saw and heard several ravens flying by, but saw no other live animals. A large raptor nest (known from previous summers to be bald eagle-made) was located at the top of a tall aspen
, and I saw a cavity nest on an aspen snag at the point of the promontory.
The second area was visited January 7th, 2021 at around 9:05 am, accessed by snowshoe. The weather was calm, partially cloudy, just after dawn and approximately -9 degrees Celsius. Located within the private property north of the OGMA, the site is on the edge between a partial-harvest clearcut (logged circa late 1990s) and the mature mixed forest directly south of it which leads down to Bickle lake. This clearcut is undergoing natural reforestation (it wasn’t planted) and the lakeside is also undergoing a succession process as it was heavily influenced by beaver activity 15-20 years ago. I walked through moose tracks that were left days ago as well as weeks ago. I noticed how spruce and aspen regeneration was occurring in a patchy manner, with dense heavy clumps and strips scattered between sparser strips. Within the adjacent forest were places where criss-crossing immature spruce blowdown cluttered the forest floor, as well as places where larger spruce and aspen had fallen. Was this just natural forest disturbance? Was it related to the “edge effect” of the clearcut? Or could it be that the wind events that have been occurring have been more severe recently? (Due to climate change?) As I walked into the mature forest I felt, saw, and heard the presence of more animal life. I watched a squirrel munching on spruce cones (and it watched me) and heard several squirrel alarm calls. I heard chickadees calling; and I followed the tracks of a small canine – probably red fox. I noticed a large opening with blown-down trees with 5-6 scattered trees broken off at around 5m, some live, some dead.
Three initial questions come to mind regarding my observations:
- Why is there an apparent difference in tree species concentrations on different aspects – even within a small “old growth” area? What ecological attributes form the basis of a designation such as “old growth management area,” and can these attributes be measured in differently organized forest stands? (e.g. open aspen stands with heavy saskatoon/snowberry shrub component as opposed to a high-volume spruce stand)
- Does the heavy density of coniferous regeneration that appeared to naturally return to a harvested site – similar to the super-heavy pine ingress I’ve observed following a forest fire – provide some sort of stand resilience or biodiversity advantage as succession progresses? I’m comparing Nature’s method of succession to the Industry standard of an evenly-spaced tree crop.
- The heavily browsed forage species I observed at first made me question whether there was inadequate browse options to support the local moose population but this goes against local anecdotal evidence which suggests moose populations aren’t at over-capacity. Also, upon further observation, there appeared to be plenty of browse species individuals that were hardly touched by moose. Could plant individuals that were hyper-browsed simply be located in moose thoroughfares and were thus casualties of being “along the main trail?” Or could there be some strategy at play to produce more new shoots on one plant individual, thus decreasing a moose’s need to travel further than otherwise?
