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An Experimental Comparison Of Stand Management Approaches To Sudden Oak Death: Prevention Vs. Restoration, Gissella B. Quiroga, Allison B. Simler-Williamson, Kerri M. Frangioso, Susan J. Frankel, David M. Rizzo, Richard C. Cobb

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many coastal forests stretching from central California to southwest Oregon are threatened or have been impacted by the invasive forest pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, the cause of sudden oak death. We analyzed a set of stand-level forest treatments aimed at preventing or mitigating disease impacts on stand composition, biomass, and fuels using a before–after-control-intervention experiment with a re-evaluation after 5 years. We compared the effects of restorative management for invaded stands and preventative treatments for uninvaded forests with two stand-level experiments. The restorative treatments contrasted two approaches to mastication, hand-crew thinning, and thinning with pile burning with untreated controls replicated …