Moist mixed-conifer sites (hereafter Moist Mixed sites) are characterized by several plant associations – such as White fir/snowbrush/strawberry, White fir/serviceberry,
and White fir/sedge (Johnson et al. 2008) – that are indicative of cooler and moister conditions than on the Dry Mixed sites. Transects were assigned to PVTs and, by extension, to habitat or site types using ESRI’s ArcMap software (release 10). For areas sampled after 1919, transects (1.6 ha) falling at least 90% within a ponderosa pine or mixed-conifer habitat type were selected for this analysis. The majority of the Chiloquin and Black Hills study areas were inventoried Ion Channel Ligand Library screening before 1919 (Fig. 1), while all of Wildhorse was inventoried in the early 1920s. Protocol during the earlier inventory period was to combine data for all transects in each quarter section on a single record. We assigned quarter sections to a habitat type if at least 90% of the area of the quarter
section fell within the mapped area of a single habitat type. Contemporary forest conditions were approximated with Current Vegetation Survey (CVS, www.fs.fed.us) data collected between 1998 and 2006 and restricted to live trees ⩾15 cm dbh. CVS plots (n = 95) classified in the check details field by survey crews as ponderosa pine or dry or moist mixed-conifer plant associations and located within the townships in each of the three study areas were included in this comparison. The CVS inventory system used a series of nested, fixed-radius subplots with each 1-ha sample
unit located on a 2.74 km square grid ( Max et al., 1996). Our results are based on a population of 424,626 conifers ⩾15 cm dbh located on 3068 transects covering a sampled area of 6646 ha. This represents a 10–20% sample of 38,651 ha of ponderosa Montelukast Sodium pine and dry and moist mixed-conifer sites within the 117,672 ha of the combined study areas. Stands with moderate basal areas, low tree densities, and dominance of large-diameter ponderosa pines characterized the inventoried forests across all of the habitat types from PIPO Xeric to Moist Mixed sites. Stand basal areas averaged 16 m2/ha over all plots with a standard deviation (SD) of ±7 m2/ha (Table 5). Basal area values ranged from 0 to 83 m2/ha, but the 95th percentile value was 24 m2/ha basal area (Fig. 3). Large diameter trees (>53 cm dbh) made up 83 ± 16% of total basal area (Table 5). Ponderosa pine overwhelmingly dominated both total (78% ± 21%) and large tree basal area (81 ± 20%, Table 5). Tree densities averaged 68 ± 29 tph (range = 0–296 tph, Table 5) with a 95th percentile value of 121 tph (Fig. 3). Mean large tree density (>53.3 cm) was surprisingly similar to mean small tree density (15–53 cm dbh) –38 ± 27 vs. 30 ± 14 tph respectively (Table 5). Small diameter trees (15–53 cm dbh) contributed just over 50% to mean tree density in historical forests.