Oak Habitat Mapping and Monitoring in the Southern Eugene Ridgeline

Presenter: Alexandria Russell, Matthew Silva, Matthew Liston, Environmental Science

The prevention of fire regimes, in combination with increasing urbanization, has led to a drastic decline in woodland oak habitats over the past 150 years in the Pacific Northwest. Currently, less than 2% of pre-European settlement oak habitat remains in the Southern Willamette Valley. Oak habitats are home to a wide range of rare plants and animals. As a result, the City of Eugene made conserving oak habitats one of their top priorities. As members of the Ridgeline Oaks Team, we collected data within these native oak habitats to help the City of Eugene implement a future management plan and protocol. We compared the accuracy of previous habitat delineations to the data we collected in the field and found that the former habitat delineations were only 55% accurate. We collected baseline data as well as data on heritage trees, which are mature trees that are important for their ecological and historical value. We also modified the protocol to adapt to the conditions in the field and improve efficiency. Our implementation of the original protocol helped us to develop more efficient ways to collect the data. The ecological data will assist the City in determining priority restoration and management areas within the Ridgeline. In addition, the data we collected will serve as a baseline against which future changes can be compared.