Fraser, CO, ‘Pulse’

Issue: 
Network News Fall 1989, Vol. 6 No. 1
Section:
Site News

During the week of June 11, 1989, scientific personnel from the H.J. Andrews LTER, Central Plains LTER, the Network Office, and the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment stations conducted a collaborative field exercise at the Fraser Experimental Forest in the Front Range of Colorado. The Fraser site is dominated by old-growth forests of lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce-subalpine fir and by alpine tundra. It has a long history of research on hydrology and forest management.

A major objective of the research ‘pulse” was to measure tree growth and mortality n five large (over ____ hectares each) permanent sample plots established about 50 year in undisturbed old-growth forest. The mortality data will be an important data set for the LTER synthesis workshop on tree death planned for March 1990. The research teams also collected base data on aquatic (stream) and river communities, amounts and dec____ rates of coarse woody debris (standing dead trees and down and spatial distribution of tree

These data are comparable to data already available at several LTER sites but provide information ecosystem types not currently represented within the LTER Network.