openings

Today we took a new years trip, five of us, to Humboldt Redwoods State Park. First we did the standard old-growth loop, in this case through the Rockefeller Forest; half a mile of some very impressive trees.

Then we headed deeper into the park, to a grassland opening on a south-facing slope. It's a fairly steep climb, and only three of us chose to give it a shot. Eventually we made it to the top edge of the opening, some 500 feet above the parking lot.

I've sampled this particular opening a number of times, but hadn't been there in about three years. It's changed quite a bit since then. First, it's slumped. Half the road is closed and the lower part of the trail is completely gone. There are new ravines in places I don't remember any. That's probably one reason the grassland opening exists; the entire slope is dynamic, a slow-motion landslide. Large trees can't get established in much of the area. In presettlement days, the openings were probably burned on a regular basis, and their position on a south facing steep slope also contributes to the open character. Still, the vast majority of the park is forested.

Trees are encroaching from the edges of the openings. Oregon oaks, like the one in the top right of the photo above, are being shaded out by Douglas fir. A few years ago, State Parks began to manage a few of the openings, and that effort is evident in the photo. There's a dead Douglas fir in the top left, girdled or burned, and stumps of a few smaller ones that were cut.

Thus far, I'd say it's a draw. The opening is a bit larger than I remember it in a few places, a bit smaller in a few others. The dynamic nature of the site is striking though; shifting ground, shifting hydrology, shifting treelines. All in only a few years.

An hour of effort indicated that the amphibian community is doing just fine. In that time I found six California slender salamanders, five ensatina, and three arboreal salamanders. Considering it's been colder than usual recently, that's not a bad tally for a short search. As at other sites I've monitored, the amphibians are coping well with clearing and burning. At this particular site that's important, because amphibians (and reptiles) are more abundant at the edges of the grassland opening, and especially around the oaks, than they are in the interior of the adjacent conifer forest (although a couple of stream-dwelling species would rarely venture into the clearing). I'll head back in the spring, in March, the time of year when most of my pre-burn sampling took place, and get some more directly comparable data then. Several additional species should be surface active by then.

The view from the top was well worth the climb; tens of thousands of acres of forest, with the grassland opening and Bull Creek in the foreground.