Timber Harvesters Ignore Streamside Management Standards

Newswise — Timber harvesters on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee fall well short of complying with accepted streamside management guidelines, according to a study by the Landscape Analysis Laboratory at Sewanee: the University of the South.

The study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Forestry, revealed that only about 15 percent of streamside management zones (SMZs) on property that had been subject to timber harvesting since 2000 were in compliance with management guidelines set by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international environmental group.

"Our results raise another huge red flag for the sustainable management of forests on the Cumberland Plateau," said Dr. Jonathan P. Evans, a professor of Biology at Sewanee, and one of the study's authors. "The fact that only 15 percent of SMZs meet a management standard endorsed by the Tennessee Division of Forestry is alarming to say the least."

Streamside management zones, also known as riparian buffers, are areas of vegetation along the banks of streams that prevent soil erosion, filter pollutants and provide habitat for wildlife.

The study is the first of its kind to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and aerial photography to study the width and slope of SMZs for compliance with management standards.

"Previous studies have relied on a sampled set of ground surveys which are prone to bias when landowners refuse entry to researchers; those studies therefore give potentially inaccurate assessments of overall compliance across the landscape," Dr. Evans said. "We were able to look at all recently created SMZs in a six county area and did not require site visits to assess compliance."

Evans and his team examined 567,259 acres of Tennessee plateau surface in Bledsoe, Grundy, Marion, Sequatchie, Van Buren, and Warren Counties.

The study also revealed that one quarter of SMZs examined failed to comply with a much more lenient set of standards set by the timber industry.

"The biologically rich hardwood forests of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee are among the highest conservation-value forests remaining in North America today," Evans said. "This region contains some of the largest remaining tracts of privately owned temperate deciduous forest left on the continent. These forest tracts represent critical migratory songbird habitat and serve as the headwaters to the most biologically diverse, freshwater stream systems found in the world."