DecAID - Decayed Wood Advisor

What Is the DecAID Advisor?

Introduction
Decayed wood elements -- snags, down wood, and live decaying trees -- are habitat for many organisms that live in terrestrial ecosystems, and contribute to other aspects of ecosystem productivity and diversity. Maintaining an adequate level and mixture of these habitat elements can be a challenging task for any forest land manager. An advisory system called “DecAID” is being developed from a new synthesis of data and research results pertaining to forests in Oregon and Washington. The DecAID Advisor is a planning tool intended to help advise and guide managers as they conserve and manage snags, partially dead trees, and down wood for biodiversity.

DecAID is an advisory tool to help managers evaluate effects,of forest conditions and existing or proposed management activities on organisms that use snags and down wood. DecAID also can help managers decide on snag and down wood sizes and levels needed to help meet wildlife management objectives. It can help managers articulate those objectives in specific, quantitative terms that could be tested in the field. In this way, the name “DecAID” can be read as decayed wood advisor and management aid (“decay-aid” or "decision-aid"). The DecAID Advisor can help long-term planning, as over "decades" of time.

Background

Wildlife species models and advisory tools related to managing decayed wood elements (principally, snags and down wood) on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest were first developed in the 1970s and 1980s (Thomas and others 1979, Neitro and others 1985, Marcot 1992, Raphael 1983), including some snag dynamics models (e.g., Morrison and Raphael 1993, Marcot 1992). Although these tools were based on sound empirical information and expert knowledge available at the time, the data and model structures have become outdated. A considerable amount of new information about the ecology, dynamics, and management of decayed wood has become available since the 1980s. There has been an evolution in thinking of snags and down wood just as habitat structures for terrestrial vertebrates, to thinking of decaying wood in the broadest sense as an integral part of complex ecosystems and ecological processes.

Several key themes prevalent in recent literature include:

decayed wood elements consist of more than just snags and down wood, such as live trees with dead tops or stem decay

decayed wood provides habitat and resources for a wider array of organisms and their ecological functions than previously thought

“wood decay” is an ecological process important to far more organisms than just terrestrial vertebrates (“wildlife” in the traditional sense)

Also, more recent field studies, particularly in eastern Oregon (e.g., Bull et al.1997), suggest that the amounts and sizes of snags selected by wildlife are far greater than those depicted by existing models.

Because of the extensive amount of new information and ideas published over the past twenty years, it was apparent that the empirical foundation of existing models needed to be updated and revised (e.g., see synthesis in Rose et al. 2001 ). The DecAID Advisor is being developed to fill this need.

What is DecAID?
The DecAID Advisor arose from the recognition by Pacific Northwest Region, USDA Forest Service, of the growing need to update guidelines for managing snags and down wood. It was described in the wildlife Species Habitat Project of Washington and Oregon (Rose et al. 2001 , Johnson and O’Neil 2001). DecAID developed into a major data synthesis project under USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, and Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, with contributions of expertise from USDI Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agencies and institutions.

Modeling biological potential of wildlife species (particularly only of primary cavity excavator birds) has been used in the past, and we developed the DecAID Advisor to avoid some pitfalls associated with that approach. There is no direct relationship between the statistical summaries presented in DecAID and past calculations or models of biological potential. Field studies have suggested that predictions of biological potential (relative or absolute population sizes of snag-associated wildlife species) do not match research findings.

DecAID is organized around “vegetation conditions” that combine wildlife habitat type, vegetation alliance, structural condition (average tree size and canopy closure), and geographic location (subregion). Wildlife habitat types and structural conditions as used in DecAID were derived from the wildlife habitats and structural conditions defined in the Species Habitat Project (Chappell and others 2001).

DecAID provides interpretation and advice on the roles of insects and pathogens in the creation and dynamics of dead wood, and the implications of snag and down wood management on ecosystem health, and offers mitigation considerations. It includes information and advice on relationships between forest insects and pathogens and snag and down wood management, and summarizes the occurrences of specific pathogens within various vegetation conditions.

DecAID also provides a summary of forest inventory data representing the range of “natural” (unharvested) and current conditions of snags and down wood in forests of all ownerships and disturbance histories. The DecAID Advisor presents information from research studies and inventories about range of natural conditions where available, and can be used to help identify knowledge gaps and areas of needed research.

DecAID describes fungi associated with decayed wood in Oregon and Washington, including a summary of their ecological roles, the importance of dead wood to fungi, and considerations for maintenance of fungal biodiversity. At present, DecAID does not specifically address effects of fire.

Because forest management has evolved to address forests as ecological communities and dynamic ecosystems, DecAID addresses far more than just wildlife (terrestrial vertebrate) use of snags and down wood. Ecosystem management acknowledges how organisms link to their environments and how human activities influence more than just individual species. In this spirit, DecAID provides information on the array of key ecological functions and functional groups of wildlife that use snags and down wood, and can be used to describe the impact of changing snag and down wood levels on those functions and functional groups.

On What is DecAID Based?
DecAID is a summary, synthesis, and integration of published scientific literature, research data, wildlife databases, forest inventory databases, and expert judgment and experience. The information presented on wildlife species use of snags and down wood is based entirely on scientific field research and does not rely on modeling the biological potential of wildlife populations.

The information presented on ranges of snag and down wood amounts under natural and current conditions is based on forest inventories, research studies, and other sources. Forest inventories include: the Current Vegetation Survey (CVS), conducted by USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, on National Forest lands; the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA), conducted by USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, on nonfederal lands; and the Natural Resource Inventory (NRI), conducted by USDI Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on BLM lands in western Oregon. Inventory plot data are unavailable for reserved areas outside BLM lands and National Forests, such as on National and State Parks.

The information on insects and pathogens is based on empirical studies, CVS, NRI, and FIA inventory data, and expert understanding of potential effects.

For the current version of the DecAID Advisor, December 2005 was the cutoff date for incorporating papers and data sources. To select the studies to include in DecAID, we relied primarily on published literature and theses that had empirical data on wildlife use of size and amount of dead wood. Data used in the wildlife cumulative species curves were those on mean, variance, and sample size. For use in the down wood cumulative curves, the data needed to be reported in units that we could convert to percent cover, such as down wood volume. Data on down wood reported as pieces of down wood per unit area were not able to be converted to percent cover of down wood.

Components of DecAID

DecAID contains an extensive amount of information. However, it is not all-encompassing and it is important to clarify what it can and can not do.

DecAID is:

a thorough review of published literature and other available data on wildlife use of decayed wood elements, primarily in Oregon and Washington

a statistical synthesis of data showing levels of use by individual wildlife species of decayed wood elements

a summary of the patterns of use of decayed wood elements by wildlife species in Oregon and Washington (number of species using specific snag or down wood sizes or amounts)

statistical summaries of forest inventory data on snags and down wood in unharvested forests and entire landscapes across Oregon and Washington

a helpful tool for making informed decisions

DecAID is NOT:

a forest stand growth simulator

a snag and down wood decay simulator or recruitment model

a wildlife population simulator or analysis of wildlife population viability

a substitute for making professional decisions based on experience

Also, DecAID does not address decayed wood elements in aquatic or riparian environments, although we recognize the high value of such elements in providing habitat for associated fish, wildlife, invertebrate, and other species.

Who Could Use DecAID?
DecAID is being developed with the intent for use across all land ownerships in Washington and Oregon. The DecAID Advisor will be useful to a wide array of private, commercial, city, county, state, and federal land managers, as well as planners, policymakers, and researchers. Our DecAID science team (see authors) consists of wildlife biologists, research ecologists, forest inventory specialists, forest entomologists, and mycologists. The team also consulted with professionals from diverse specialties including wildlife research, fire ecology, timber management, plant pathology, silviculture, and land use planning.

We intend DecAID to be used broadly by land planners, timber consultants, and forest managers. We hope the DecAID Advisor serves as a template for use in other geographic areas, given similar literature reviews, research data, and summaries of expert judgments.

How Can DecAID Be Used?

DecAID presents information on wildlife use of snag diameter, snag density, down wood diameter, and down wood percent cover, and on the range of natural (unharvested) and current (all) conditions of snag density and down wood percent cover by diameter classes. The information is presented at three statistical tolerance levels which may be interpreted as three levels of “assurance:” low (30% tolerance level), moderate (50% tolerance level), and high (80% tolerance level). Minimum and maximum values are also presented. Additional available data on dead wood species, decay condition, etc. are summarized but not analyzed statistically.

DecAID allows the user to specify a vegetation condition, and to:

view a synthesis of empirical data on wildlife use of wood decay elements in Washington and Oregon;

determine which selected wildlife species would be associated with specific sizes or amounts of snags or down wood at various statistical levels;

determine the sizes or amounts of snags or down wood to meet specified wildlife species objectives;

view a narrative interpretation of these data along with the literature sources;

view summaries of the range of snag and down wood levels in unharvested forest, representing ranges of natural conditions, and across all current forest conditions;

determine effects of present or expected stand conditions on wildlife using wood decay elements;

determine implications of insect and pathogen activity on the creation and management of snags and down wood for wildlife habitat;

view advice on the roles of insects and pathogens in creation and dynamics of snags and down wood; and

determine implications of snag and down wood levels on managing for overall forest ecosystem health.

Paying Attention to Scales of Space and Time

A critical consideration in use of DecAID is that of scales of space and time. DecAID will be best applied at scales of subwatersheds, watersheds, subbasins, physiographic provinces, or large administrative units such as Ranger Districts, National Forests, or BLM Districts.

DecAID is not intended to predict occurrence of wildlife species at the scale of individual forest stands or specific locations – there are far too many other factors influencing the presence or absence of organisms at that scale than could be reasonably depicted here. DecAID is not intended to predict the specific species composition in a given geographic area. Instead, it is intended to be used to help advise on broad, cumulative patterns of species occurrence and distributions in generally-described habitat types and structural conditions. Validation of other wildlife-habitat relationships databases (for example, Dedon and others 1986, Fielding and Haworth 1995, Raphael and Marcot 1986) suggests that any information of this type would likely err on the side of commission, that is, including species that may not really occur on any one site, particularly with smaller geographic areas such as an individual forest stand. DecAID is intended to be a broader planning aid than a species- or stand-specific prediction tool.

Because DecAID is not a time-dynamic simulator (such as Marcot 1992 for snags; Mellen and Ager 2002 for snags and down wood; and Bragg 2000, for down wood in riparian systems), it does not account for potential temporal changes in vegetation and other environmental conditions, species functional and numerical responses, population dynamics and demographics, fire likelihoods, and ecosystem health. DecAID could be consulted to review potential conditions at specific time intervals and for a specific set of conditions, but dynamic changes in forest and landscape conditions would have to be modeled or evaluated outside the confines of the DecAID Advisor.

Regarding the use of inventory data to represent ranges of natural and current conditions, the dead wood estimates must be interpreted in light of the inherent scale imposed by the inventory designs. Each observation that entered our summaries was an individual field plot. Each plot encompassed about a one- or two-hectare area, within which snags were sampled on fixed- or variable-radius subplots and down wood was sampled on line transects. Plot area, subplot sizes, and transect lengths varied somewhat within and among the data sets. Within-plot variability is not represented in this study. Also, because the plots sampled an area that is smaller than a typical forest stand, the plot-level observations should not be thought of as representing stand-level conditions. Rather, our summaries describe the aggregate properties of the variability of dead wood on multiple plots that sample a given wildlife habitat. We believe it is reasonable to apply distributional information about dead wood that is based on many inventory plots in a given vegetation condition to a management “unit” at the scale of a landscape or sub-watershed.

Also, the distribution and estimated variation of dead wood within each wildlife habitat is the result of the interaction between plot size and the spatial pattern of dead wood. Smaller plot sizes would result in greater variability, since smaller plots are more likely to sample dense clumps of dead wood or fall in gaps where no dead wood exists.

Although the estimates of amounts of dead wood are from plots measured at a single point in time, the current conditions express events that have occurred over the past decades to centuries.

Availability, Progress, and Related References
As of this writing, the DecAID project is an ongoing, dynamic process. The DecAID Advisor will be available as a Web site operating as an interactive program. Current plans include training sessions to help users understand how to run the program and use and interpret results.

We have presented work to date in other publications. An overview of DecAID was provided in Mellen and others (2002). The wildlife component of DecAID was described in Marcot and others (2002) and the ecological functions of wildlife pertaining to decayed wood were presented by Marcot (2002) and Marcot and Vander Heyden (2001). The forest inventory summaries were described in Ohmann and Waddell (2002). The ecosystem productivity implications of decayed wood were presented in Rose et al. (2001).

Literature Cited
Bragg, D. C. 2000. Simulating catastrophic and individualistic large woody debris recruitment for a small riparian system. Ecology 81(5):1383-1394.

Bull, E. L., C. G. Parks, and T. R. Torgersen. 1997. Trees and logs important to wildlife in the interior Columbia River basin. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-391. USDA Forest Service, Portland OR. 55 pp. http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/publications/pnw_gtr391/

Chappell, C. B., R. C. Crawford, C. Barrett, J. Kagan, D. H. Johnson, M. O'Mealy, G. A. Green, H. L. Ferguson, W. D. Edge, E. L. Greda, and T. A. O'Neil. 2001. Wildlife habitats: descriptions, status, trends, and system dynamics. Pp. 22-114 in: D. H. Johnson and T. A. O'Neil, editors. Wildlife-habitat relationships in Oregon and Washington. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis OR.

Dedon, M. F., S. A. Laymon, and R. H. Barrett. 1986. Evaluating models of wildlife-habitat relationships of birds in black oak and mixed-conifer habitats. Pp. 115-120 in: J. Verner, M. L. Morrison, and C. J. Ralph, ed. Wildlife 2000: modeling habitat relationships of terrestrial vertebrates. Univ. Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.

Fielding, A. H., and P. F. Haworth. 1995. Testing the generality of bird-habitat models. Cons. Biol. 9(6):1466-1481.

Johnson, D., and T. O'Neil, editors. 2001. Wildlife-habitat relationships in Oregon and Washington. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis OR.

Marcot, B. G. 1992. Snag Recruitment Simulator, Rel. 3.1 [computer program], USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, Portland OR.

Marcot, B. G. 2002. An ecological functional basis for managing decaying wood for wildlife. pp. 895-910 In: Laudenslayer, William F., Jr.; Valentine, Brad; Weatherspoon, C. Philip; Lisle, Thomas E., technical coordinators. Proceedings of the symposium on the ecology and management of dead wood in western forests. 1999 November 2-4; Reno, NV. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-181. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/gtr-181/068_Marcot.pdf

Marcot, B.G., K. Mellen, S.A. Livingston, and C. Odgen. 2002. The DecAID Advisory Model: Wildlife Component. pp 561-590. In: Laudenslayer, William F., Jr.; Valentine, Brad; Weatherspoon, C. Philip; Lisle, Thomas E., technical coordinators. Proceedings of the symposium on the ecology and management of dead wood in western forests. 1999 November 2-4; Reno, NV. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-181. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/gtr-181/044_MarcotDecAid.pdf

Marcot, B. G., and M. Vander Heyden. 2001. Key ecological functions of wildlife species. Pp. 168-186 in: D. H. Johnson and T. A. O'Neil, ed. Wildlife-habitat relationships in Oregon and Washington. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis OR.

Mellen, K., and A. Ager. 2002. A coarse wood dynamics model for the western Cascades. pp 503-516. In: Laudenslayer, William F., Jr.; Valentine, Brad; Weatherspoon, C. Philip; Lisle, Thomas E., technical coordinators. Proceedings of the symposium on the ecology and management of dead wood in western forests. 1999 November 2-4; Reno, NV. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-181. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/gtr-181/040_MellAger.pdf

Mellen, K., B.G. Marcot, J.L. Ohmann, K.L. Waddell, E.A. Willhite, B.B. Hostetler, S.A. Livingston, and C. Ogden. 2002. DecAID: A decaying wood advisory model for Oregon and Washington. pp 527-534. In: Laudenslayer, William F., Jr.; Valentine, Brad; Weatherspoon, C. Philip; Lisle, Thomas E., technical coordinators. Proceedings of the symposium on the ecology and management of dead wood in western forests. 1999 November 2-4; Reno, NV. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-181. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/gtr-181/042_MellenDec.pdf

Morrison, M. L., and M. G. Raphael. 1993. Modeling the dynamics of snags. Ecol. Applic. 3(2):322-330.

Neitro, W. A., V. W. Binkley, S. P. Cline, R. W. Mannan, B. G. Marcot, D. Taylor, and F. F. Wagner. 1985. Snags (wildlife trees). Pp. 129-169 in: E. R. Brown, ed. Management of wildlife and fish habitats in forests of western Oregon and Washington. Part 1 - chapter narratives. USDA Forest Service, Portland OR.

Ohmann, J. L., and K. L. Waddell. 2002. Regional patterns of dead wood in forested habitats of Oregon and Washington. Pp.535-560. In: P. J. Shea and W. Laudenslayer (Ed.). Proceedings of a conference on The Ecology and Management of Dead Wood in Western Forests, Reno, Nevada. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station General Technical Report PSW-GTR-181.

Raphael, M. G. 1983. Cavity-nesting bird response to declining snags on a burned forest: a simulation model. (pp. 211-215) In: J. W. Davis, G. A. Goodwin, and R. A. Ockenfels (Ed.). Snag habitat management: proceedings of the symposium. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RM-99. Flagstaff AZ.

Raphael, M. G., and B. G. Marcot. 1986. Validation of a wildlife-habitat relationships model: vertebrates in a Douglas-fir sere. Pp. 129-138 in: J. Verner, M. L. Morrison, and C. J. Ralph, ed. Wildlife 2000: Modeling habitat relationships of terrestrial vertebrates. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. 470 pp.

Rose, C. L., B. G. Marcot, T. K. Mellen, J. L. Ohmann, K. L. Waddell, D. L. Lindley, and B. Schreiber. 2001. Decaying wood in Pacific Northwest forests: concepts and tools for habitat management. Pp. 580-623 in: D. H. Johnson and T. A. O'Neil, ed. Wildlife-habitat relationships in Oregon and Washington. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis OR. Rose et al. 2001

Thomas, J. W., R. G. Anderson, C. Maser, and E. L. Bull. 1979. Snags. Pp. 60-77 in: J. W. Thomas, ed. Wildlife habitats in managed forests the Blue Mountains of Oregon and Washington. Agriculture Handbook No. 553. USDA Forest Service, Portland OR.