I. The Three Step Formula-

I.  I am studying the balancing of land-use within Northwestern forest planning specific to the purposed changes of the WOPR and the Northern Spotted Owl...

II. ...because I am interested in:

a) how spatial modelling can be used to balance sustained-yield-logging with continued conservation of old-growth forests (vis a vis the Northern Spotted Owl), and;

b) if the preferred alternative of the WOPR meet ESA requirements for protection of the Northern Spotted Owl...

III.   ...in order to aid federal land agencies of the Pacific Northwest meet opposing missions of conservation and sustained-yield logging.  Balancing these contrasting goals are difficult and inherently complex, especially when determining where to cut and where to conserve.  I feel that land-use plan revisions found in the WOPR are not as spatially explicit as necessary, putting the Northern Spotted Owl at risk.  Spatial modelling of habitat quality can provide a 'language to better describe the landscape'.  Closer exploration of the spatial impacts on owl habitat allow plan revisions can be adapted to be more 'spatially appropriate', especially in reference to the ESA, while increase the likelihood that the plan receives broad support.

II. Question-

I. Within Northwest (NW) Forest Planning, is it important that habitat of Northern Spotted Owls (NSO) be considered in an spatially explicit manner?

•  How was owl habitat spatially considered within the design of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP)?

II. Does the [lack of] spatial specificity of land-use changes proposed within the Preferred Alternative of the West Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) jeopardize recovery of the NSO?

•  How was owl habitat spatially considered within the design of the WOPR?

III. Is there a statically significant  preference of NSOs to certain spatial / structural / compositional characteristics forest stands?

IV. Do model habitat assessments match with on-ground owl occurance?

•  What models exist that predict owl habitat quality within NW Forests?  How do they compare and contrast?  What do these models take as inputs, how is habitat capacity determined?  What omissions exist?

V. Do model results indicate loss of quality habitat under the WOPR? 
In other words:

Based on model results, what quality of habitat exists within purposed land-use changes of the Preferred Alternative of the WOPR?

•  Are modifications necessary to minimize damage or loss of existing quality habitat within the Preferred Alternative?

III. Hypothesis-

If owl occurance can be statistically linked to spaticic habitat 

AND

owl habitat stastically matches model predictions

AND

the purposed WOPR land-use changes contain habitat predicted to be of a high quality

THEN

modifications must be made in order to ensure owl recovery is not jeopardized by additional habitat loss.

IV.  General Approach and Rationale-

This study will analyze the 'spatial appropriateness' of preferred alternative of the WOPR against the BLM's conservation mission specific to the North Spotted Owl (under the ESA) by comparing proposed land-use changes to the potential of the owl habitat affected, by:

Developing model to assess purposed land-use changes in the WOPR:

a) for ‘spatial appropriateness’ of land-use changes: does this allow for best balance of multi-use approach to forest land

b) indicating potential jeopardy caused to NSO through distruction of habitat

c) recommend changes to revisions to protect high quality habitat as predicted by model

 

Limit range of study to the Coastal Range of Lane County, for the reason of

a) focused on areas identified to be highly modified under the preferred alternative (my pilot study)

b) detailed vegetation data available from CLAMS assessment project (Ohmann and Gregory)

c) well supported and verified owl-habitat model developed in 2005 to use as baseline

d) represents 'wetter variety' of old-growth forest identified as most important to continued conservation (Thomas et al. 2005)

e) first section of the coast range that connects closely with Cascasdes owl reserves and population

 

Use the model to cross-analyze proposed land-use plan revisions on Western Oregon forested public lands (BLM & USFS) against proposed owl-conservation plan revisions using spatial explicit landscape modeling, because:

a) these revisions to plans within the BLM and USFWS occured simultaneously

b) BLM revisions (WOPR) rely heavily on draft statement of the new USFWS conservation strategy

c) USFWS draft highly criticized in peer-review session