Coastal Western Hemlock forest field observations

I visited an area of mature conifer forest that is about a 2 km walk from my house, In Campbell River BC. The land is privately owned by a forestry company and contains various unofficial walking trails on the old logging roads. The area I am interested in was logged, then replanted, in 1942 and is now classified as a coastal western hemlock (CWH) stand, low sloping, with a riparian area (Woods Creek). I verified the forest classification using iMapBC along with initial observations that the stand was dominated by hemlock and fir trees. I estimate the potential study area to be more than 10 hectares but would likely adjust this to suit whatever scale is required for my study.

When I explored the area on January 9, 2021 it was clear sky and roughly 5^οC (based on closest weather station report). There was snow accumulation on the ground of roughly 30 to 50 cm, depending on the amount of canopy coverage. It is atypical in this region of Vancouver Island for snow to accumulate and seasonally we typically see small amounts of snow (a few cms) that are easily washed away by the typical rainfalls. While walking through the area, the snow was melting from the tree branches and “raining” down.

While looking around, I could see Oregon-grape, sword fern, and salal sticking out of the snow, and various mosses and lichens growing on the tree trunks. There were also smaller alder trees in the survey area.

Some topics I considered during my walk:

• What is the species composition of ground cover in a CWH forest
• What is the species composition of mosses growing on tree trunks
• Does moss only grow on the “north” aspect of a tree
• Does moss grow preferentially on hemlock versus fir in a CWH forest

(Some research afterwards told me that it may be a bit too much of an undertaking to look at mosses and species composition with the 350+ species and me having no experience in identifying them!)