Document Type

Report

Publication Date

1-31-2014

Subjects

Vegetation Soil survey

Abstract

This project was conducted in the Tiller area east of Canyonville, to develop a landscape perspective of historical vegetation for the early settlement era. The project area covered about 128,214 acres, of which 42% was private land, 17% BLM, and 41% USFS. This area of complex topography, transitional between interior valleys of the Umpqua River and the Cascade Range, has a small rural population base sometimes impacted by local natural resource problems and management. The study area includes portions of the South Douglas County Wildland-Urban Interface zone.

Historical land survey notes from General Land Office (GLO) were used to create a historical vegetation cover for the study area. Surveys began in the 1850’s and were completed in the more remote areas by 1923. Retrieval of the early GLO data to both describe and map historical vegetation, was done using standard protocols developed since 1994 by the Oregon Natural Heritage Information Center, and have been used for historical vegetation research in numerous parts of Oregon.

The historical vegetation matrix can be simplified using groups with similar structural characteristics called classes. Prairies (all types) covered 2.2% of the project; shrublands (brush fields and thickets) covered 0.7%, savannas with sparse tree cover (17%), woodland or open tree stands (2%), riparian forests (1%), and upland forest with thick tree cover (77%).

Rights

© 2014 CC BY-SA 4.0

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44280

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