Preserving 'old growth:' efforts to salvage trees and terminology in the Pacific Northwest

This thesis examines ecology's acknowledgement and incorporation of a social dimension. I focus broadly on ecology in the United States from 1930 to 2001, and narrowly on a case study of old growth forest ecology at the H.J. Andrew Experimental Forest in Oregon from 1970 to 2001. During this period, Andrews ecologists adopted an ecological rather than industrial perspective on old growth forest science. I examine this change by teasing apart multiple definitions of "old growth," a term with embedded forest values. Forest interest groups defined "old growth" independently, on the basis of specific forest values. Multiple definitions existed, and exacerbated a national debate over logging in old growth forests. Andrews ecologists responded to this dilemma by crafting a forest management plan, New Forestry, that integrated society's divergent forest values with an ecological understanding of the old growth forest. But interest groups' unwillingness to compromise nullified this solution.

Keywords: old growth, forest, ecology, H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Douglas fir,International Biological Program, Jerry Franklin