Policy interventions and competing management paradigms shape the long-term distribution of forest harvesting across the landscape.

Industrial economic models of natural resource management often incentivize the sequential harvesting of resources based on profitability, disproportionately targeting the higher-value elements of the environment. In fisheries, this issue is framed as a problem of "fishing down the food chain" when these elements represent different trophic levels or sequential depletion more generally. Harvesting that focuses on high grading the most profitable, productive, and accessible components of environmental gradients is also thought to occur in the forestry sector. Such a paradigm is inconsistent with a stewardship ethic, entrenched in the forestry literature, that seeks to maintain or enhance forest condition over time. We ask 1) how these conflicting paradigms have influenced patterns of forest harvesting over time and 2) whether more recent conservation-oriented policies influenced these historical harvesting patterns. We use detailed harvest data over a 47-y period and aggregated time series data that span over a century on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada to assess temporal changes in how logging is distributed among various classes of site productivity and terrain accessibility, corresponding to timber value. Most of this record shows a distinct trend of harvesting shifting over time to less productive stands, with some evidence of harvesting occurring in increasingly less accessible forests. However, stewardship-oriented policy changes enacted in the mid-1990s appear to have strongly affected these trends. This illustrates both a profit-maximizing tendency to log down the value chain when choices are unconstrained and the potential of policy choices to impose a greater stewardship ethic on harvesting behavior.

High-throughput environmental sequencing reveals high diversity of litter and moss associated protist communities along a gradient of drainage and tree productivity.

Although previous studies, mostly based on microscopy analyses of a few groups of protists, have suggested that protists are abundant and diverse in litter and moss habitats, the overall diversity of moss and litter associated protists remains elusive. Here, high-throughput environmental sequencing was used to characterize the diversity and community structure of litter- and moss-associated protists along a gradient of soil drainage and forest primary productivity in a temperate rainforest in British Columbia. We identified 3262 distinct protist OTUs from 36 sites. Protists were strongly structured along the landscape gradient, with a significant increase in alpha diversity from the blanket bog ecosystem to the zonal forest ecosystem. Among all investigated environmental variables, calcium content was the most strongly associated with the community composition of protists, but substrate composition, plant cover and other edaphic factors were also significantly correlated with these communities. Furthermore, a detailed phylogenetic analysis of unicellular opisthokonts identified OTUs covering most lineages, including novel OTUs branching with Discicristoidea, the sister group of Fungi, and with Filasterea, one of the closest unicellular relatives to animals. Altogether, this study provides unprecedented insight into the community composition of moss- and litter-associated protists.

Archaeological data provide alternative hypotheses on Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) distribution, abundance, and variability.

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), a foundation of coastal social-ecological systems, is in decline throughout much of its range. We assembled data on fish bones from 171 archaeological sites from Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington to provide proxy measures of past herring distribution and abundance. The dataset represents 435,777 fish bones, dating throughout the Holocene, but primarily to the last 2,500 y. Herring is the single-most ubiquitous fish taxon (99% ubiquity) and among the two most abundant taxa in 80% of individual assemblages. Herring bones are archaeologically abundant in all regions, but are superabundant in the northern Salish Sea and southwestern Vancouver Island areas. Analyses of temporal variability in 50 well-sampled sites reveals that herring exhibits consistently high abundance (>20% of fish bones) and consistently low variance (<10%) within the majority of sites (88% and 96%, respectively). We pose three alternative hypotheses to account for the disjunction between modern and archaeological herring populations. We reject the first hypothesis that the archaeological data overestimate past abundance and underestimate past variability. We are unable to distinguish between the second two hypotheses, which both assert that the archaeological data reflect a higher mean abundance of herring in the past, but differ in whether variability was similar to or less than that observed recently. In either case, sufficient herring was consistently available to meet the needs of harvesters, even if variability is damped in the archaeological record. These results provide baseline information prior to herring depletion and can inform modern management.

Effects of Patch Size on Birds in Old-Growth Montane Forests.

Following habitat alteration or fragmentation, competition, parasitism, and predation from species that live in the new habitats may reduce the survival and reproductive success of species living in the original habitats. Negative influences from species that live outside the remnant patches are expected to be greater in small rather than in large remnant patches because more "external" species are expected to move through the centers of small remnant patches. We surveyed birds within remnant patches of old-growth montane forests on Vancouver Island, Canada, (1) to evaluate whether the richness and abundance of non-old-growth bird species were larger at the center of small rather than large patches and (2) to evaluate whether the opposite was true of old-growth bird species. More non-old-growth bird species were present at the center of small remnant patches of old growth than in large old-growth patches. We found no relationship, however, between patch size and richness or abundance of old-growth bird species at the center of remnant patches of old growth. This was true for old-growth species with open, cup-shaped nests and cavity nests. Old-growth birds may have been affected less in our study area than in other areas because they evolved within heterogeneous montane forests and interacted with non-old-growth species throughout their evolutionary histories or because the contrast between old-growth forests and logged areas was less than that between the forests and agricultural/urban areas that were surveyed in other studies. Efectos del tamaño de parches sobre las aves en bosques primarios de montaña.

Resumen: Luego de la alteracion o fragmentación del hábitat, la competencia, parasitismo y predación de especies que viven en los nuevos hábitats pueden reducir la supervivencia y el éxito reproductivo de las especies que viven en sus hábitats originales. Se espera que las influencias negativas por parte de las especies que viven fuera de los parches remanentes, será mayor en los parches pequeños que en los grandes, dado que se espera que una mayor cantidad de especies "externas" se traslade a través de los centros de los pequeños parches remanentes. Estudiamos pájaros dentro de los parches remanentes de los bosques primarios de montaña en la Isla de Vancouver, Canadá, para (1) evaluar si la riqueza y abundancia de especies de pájaros en los bosques no-primarios fue mayor en el centro de los parches pequenños que en el centro de los grandes y (2) evaluar si ocurría to opuesto con las especies de pájaros de los bosques primarios. Una mayor cantidad de especies de pájaros de bosques no-primarios, estuvieron presentes en el centro de los parches remanentes pequeños de los bosques primarios que en los parches de mayor tamaño. Sin embargo, no encontramos relación alguna entre el tamaño del parche y la riqueza o abundancia de las especies de pájaros de bosques primarios en el centro de los parches remanentes en los bosques primarios. Esta situación se observó para las especies de bosques primarios con nidos abiertos en forma de taza y nidos en cavidaaes. Los pájaros de los bosques primarios podrían haber sido menos afectados en nuestra área de estudio en comparación con otras áreas, porque evolucionaron dentro de bosques montaños heterogéneos e interactuaron con especies de crecismiento no-primario a través de sus historias evolutivas o por que el contraste entre bosques primarios y áreas taladas es menor que entre bosques y áreas agriculturales urbanes que han sido consideradas en otros estudios.