Moss Harvest Research

Harvest Recovery

The burning question, then, is how quickly, and how well, do these epiphyte communities recover following harvest?  The stems that were tagged in 1994 after simulated commercial harvest let us evaluate that.

Returning to those stems every year between 1995 and 1999 and then again in 2004 was a bit sobering.  In the early years only the tiniest tidbits of moss had regrown and species turnover was very high (Peck 1996b, 1999, 2004).

After a decade (in which my hair got straighter and shorter yet), the average stem had regained 50% cover and had moss species similar to the mats that had been harvested, but the biomass was still only half of what had been there before.  [Colleague and friend Tom Rambo helped assess the regrowth.]

The data suggested it would be another decade before the average stem reached 100% cover.  Regrowth was highly variable, with stems that were overgrown by sword fern failing to regrow much at all, while others with less competition had filled in completely (Peck 2006b).

The species richness story was even more interesting.  Richness was down for the first year or two, but then surpassed pre-harvest levels right up until year 10, prompting the successional analyses.

I returned to similarly harvested sites on BLM land in the drier Cascade Range in 2005 and found that after 11 years only 1/3 of the stem had regained a cover of moss (Peck 2005c).