Reserve West Seedling Establishment and Growth after Fire 1988 - 2009

In 1983 an 8,600 acre human-caused wildfire, the Rosie Creek Fire, burned through about 1/3 of the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest unit of the Bonanza Creek LTER in central Alaska. The stand that burned was a productive white spruce dominated stand about 200 years old. This study of tree regeneration was initiated in 1989 in a 100m by 100m reference hectare at the perimeter of the Rosie Creek Burn, located between 100m and 200m from the surviving stand edge. The Reserve West reference hectare was reserved from salvage logging and artificial reforestation. All regenerating white spruce trees in the hectare have been mapped and seedling survival and height elongation have been measured annually since 1989 (1988 and 1987 tree heights were back calculated from internodes). Seedlings are tracked by a subdivision of the hectare into 100 cells of 10m by 10m. The total number of trees that have been tracked in the database is 2,527. This is one of the largest and longest complete data series examining forest regeneration in the boreal region.