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Wind damage to forests is determined by numerous factors that interact to produce complex, seemingly random damage patterns. However, the complexity may lie mostly among stands and be less within stands: in this study, I attempted to discern how predictable tree fall risk is within five southern boreal forest stands in northeastern Minnesota. I sampled five stands in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, following a July 1999 catastrophic windstorm. Levels of damage varied from 29.5% to 86.8% of basal area fallen and 23.3% to 63.4% of stems fallen. In all sites, the disturbance reduced mean trunk diameter of standing trees. In general, Abies balsamea (L.) Mill. was the most vulnerable species. I split the data set from each site into predictor and test portions and used the predictor data sets to derive logistic regression parameters for the relationship of tree size (trunk diameter) to probability of tree fall. Models based on these parameters allowed quite accurate predictions of the levels of damage in the test portion of each stand. For the five sites, the proportion of test trees predicted to fall differed from the proportion observed to fall by 5.7%, 3.9%, 8.3%, 1.4%, and 3.7% of the total test sample size. This suggests that while numerous factors indeed influence tree fall risk, the sizes and identities of trees may account for most of the within-stand variation in damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large wood recruitment and redistribution mechanisms were investigated in a 3.9 km² basin with an old-growth Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco and Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg. forest, located in the southern Coast Range of Oregon. Stream size and topographic setting strongly influenced processes that delivered wood to the channel network. In small colluvial channels draining steep hillslopes, processes associated with slope instability dominated large wood recruitment. In the larger alluvial channel, windthrow was the dominant recruitment process from the local riparian area. Consequently, colluvial channels received wood from further upslope than the alluvial channel. Input and redistribution processes influenced piece location relative to the direction of flow and thus, affected the functional role of wood. Wood recruited directly from local hillslopes and riparian areas was typically positioned adjacent to the channel or spanned its full width, and trapped sediment and wood in transport. In contrast, wood that had been fluvially redistributed was commonly located in mid-channel positions and was associated with scouring of the streambed and banks. Debris flows were a unique mechanism for creating large accumulations of wood in small streams that lacked the capacity for abundant fluvial transport of wood, and for transporting wood that was longer than the bank-full width of the channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]