Forest Description
The Andrews Forest is located in Oregon, in the Cascade Mountains. The entire 15,800-acre (6400-ha) site is the watershed, or drainage basin, of Lookout Creek. The landscape is steep, with hills and deep valleys. Elevation ranges from 1350 to 5340 feet (410 to 1630 meters). Cold and fast running streams flow through the many valleys of the forest. Most of the landscape is covered in dense forest. Huge, iconic Pacific Northwest old-growth conifer forests grow here with cedar, hemlock, and moss-draped ancient Douglas fir trees. Some of these trees grow as high as 250 feet (75 meters), and many of them are 300, 500, a few even 700 years old.
The Andrews Forest is a center for forest and stream ecosystem research in the Pacific Northwest. We collaborate with dozens of university and federal scientists, students, and managers to support ecosystem science, education, natural resource management, and the arts and humanities. The program has its roots in the establishment of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in 1948 by the US Forest Service. In the early decades, Forest Service researchers focused on timber and watershed management. Beginning in 1969, university scientists became active at the site and research began to focus on forest ecosystems, especially old-growth forests and streams. The Andrews Forest became a charter member of the LTER program in 1980, and long-term measurement programs continued on experimental sites and watersheds with a focus on questions about climate, streamflow, water quality, vegetation succession, biogeochemical cycling, and effects of forest management. For over 65 years the Andrews Forest has served as a major source of discovery about the pattern, dynamics, and functions of mountain forest and stream ecosystems. The research is ongoing, and continues to reveal surprising and important information.
The Andrews Forest is administered cooperatively by the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station (USFS Research), Oregon State University (OSU), and the Willamette National Forest. Funding for baseline research comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and other sources. The Andrews Forest is one of 25 major ecosystem research sites funded through NSF's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program and one of 81 USDA Experimental Forests.
"The Andrews…is the most studied primal forest ecosystem on this continent, and perhaps the planet. That does not mean that scientists here have found every cog and wheel, much less every relationship between them. But here they have discovered a host of species previously unknown to science, and interactions in the forest ecosystem that no one previously imagined. Here, in the shadows of this woods, in its rivulets and streams, under its soil, and high overhead, they have discovered a hidden forest."
(John Luoma, from the book, "The Hidden Forest" 2006)
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