Over the last 30 years, the structural development of western old-growth ecosystems has been of great interest in ecological research. As the loss of historical forested acreage in western Montana became more widely recognized, the preservation of frequent-fire old-growth stands became a focus of forest management. And, although old-growth studies are commonly found in the literature, few studies focus on long-term carbon (C) storage associated with interior old-growth. This limited understanding of the C storage capacity and patterns in old-growth forests of western Montana leaves little ability to evaluate the role of old-growth forests in ecosystem level C storage capacity. Further, there is a disconnect between old-growth definitions and old-growth management. Forest Service definitions for interior old-growth ecosystems inadequately describe the structure, composition, and function of these ecosystems, and definitions applied from the Pacific Northwest do not capture the unique qualities of old-growth of the Northern Rockies. In this thesis, I first present a review of existing literature on definitions and characteristics of old-growth ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest and contrast these with old-growth forests of the Northern Rockies. In the second chapter, I present studies undertaken to generate empiric data on C storage in old-growth forests of this region. Specifically, studies were conducted to compare ecosystem C of old-growth western larch (Larix occidentalis) stands to that of paired 30-40 year old second growth stands in western Montana. Old-growth forests were found to store nearly three times more C than second growth forests, with most of the difference coming from C stored in the overstory. Finally, the third chapter describes a web-based plant guide that simplifies the challenge of plant identification by eliminating the use of technical vocabulary, focusing instead on visually recognizable plant characters and providing students with a more user-friendly means of identifying specimens and obtaining species-specific information.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-12042008-143126 |
| Date | 15 January 2009 |
| Creators | Bisbing, Sarah M |
| Contributors | Dr. Martin Nie, Dr. Paul B. Alaback, Dr. Thomas H. DeLuca |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-12042008-143126/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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