Elliott State Research Forest Timber Cruise, Oregon, 2015–2016

The Elliott State Forest, created in 1930 and now the Elliott State Research Forest, is 33,700 ha of rainforest located 10–32 km inland from North America's Pacific Ocean coast. Its location in the central part of the Oregon Coast Range (Oregon, United States) places the Elliott Forest at lower elevations in the central portion of the Pacific Temperate Rainforest, which are characterized by ecosystems having coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) as the dominant tree species. Red alder (Alnus rubra), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) are also abundant. The temperate climate (11–12 °C mean annual temperature, 1900–2800 mm year⁻¹ mean annual rainfall) supports rapid tree growth, with 40 year old dominant and co-dominant Douglas-fir reaching 35–40 m in height and 40–50 cm DBH (diameter at breast height). Due to infrequent stand replacing disturbances (often 200–800 year fire return intervals and rare large scale blowdown from strong mid-latitude cyclones), large trees exceed 65 m height and 100 cm DBH. Since portions of the Elliott Forest have never been commercially logged while other areas have been subject to intensive planted silviculture since 1955, the Elliott Forest contains stands with old, complex forest structures and wildtype genetics as well as young, plantation stands of trees with often some amount of selective breeding for sawtimber production. As part of the transition from the Elliott State Forest to the Elliott State Research Forest, about half of the Elliott Forest was randomly sampled by stratified timber cruising over the winter of 2015–16. The resulting cruise records, released in this dataset, are therefore of interest as they capture an unusually diverse range of Coast Range stand conditions.