A Study Of Forest Lands In Wyoming

"This report presents a summary of the most recent inventory information for Wyoming's forest lands. The report includes descriptive highlights and tables of area, number of trees, biomass, volume, growth, mortality, removals, and net change. Most of the tables are organized by forest type, species, diameter class, or owner group. The report also describes inventory design, inventory terminology, and data reliability. Results show that about 18 percent, or 11.4 million acres, of the total land area of Wyoming is forest land. Fifty three percent of the forest land is administered by the USDA Forest Service. About 33 percent of the forest land in Wyoming is in reserved status. Lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forest types combined account for 40 percent of total forest land. Lodgepole pine totals 1.2 billion trees or 27 percent of all live trees on forest land. Gross annual growth of all trees on forest land totaled 331 million cubic feet. Annual mortality of all trees on forest land totaled 172 million cubic feet."--Page [i].

This report presents a summary of the most recent inventory information for Wyoming's forest lands. The report includes descriptive highlights and tables of area, number of trees, biomass, volume, growth, mortality, removals, and net change. Most of the tables are organized by forest type, species, diameter class, or owner group. The report also describes inventory design, inventory terminology, and data reliability. Results show that about 18 percent, or 11.4 million acres, of the total land area of Wyoming is forest land. Fifty-three percent of the forest land is administered by the USDA Forest Service. About 33 percent of the forest land in Wyoming is in reserved status. Lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forest types combined account for 40 percent of total forest land. Lodgepole pine totals 1.2 billion trees or 27 percent of all live trees on forest land. Gross annual growth of all trees on forest land totaled 331 million cubic feet. Annual mortality of all trees on forest land totaled 172 million cubic feet.

An approach for synthesizing the results of ecological research pertinent to land management is the analysis of the historic range of variability (HRV) for key ecosystem variables that are affected by management activities. This report provides an HRV analysis for the upland vegetation of the Bighorn National Forest in northcentral Wyoming. The variables include live tree density, dead tree (snag) density, canopy cover, abundance of coarse woody debris, species diversity, fire return intervals, the abundance of various diseases, the proportion of the landscape in different land cover types, and the degree of patchiness in the landscape. The variables were examined at the stand and landscape scales, using information available in the literature and USFS databases. High-elevation landscapes were considered separately from low-elevation landscapes. Much of the report pertains to forests dominated by lodge-pole pine, subalpine fir, and Engelmann spruce at high elevations, and by ponderosa pine, aspen, and Douglas-fir at lower elevations. We defined the HRV reference period for the BNF as approximately 1600 to 1890.