RESILIENCE:
the capacity to recover quickly from disturbances.
A healthy forest resembles a mosaic.
Each patch—or “forest structure”—has a unique mix of growth and decay, ages and sizes of trees, animal habitats, soil types, sun and shade. Every forest structure responds to disturbances differently, and every disturbance—a fallen tree, a wildfire, an opening in the canopy—becomes an opportunity for new life.
The diverse forest structures of the Roslyn Urban Forest and adjacent lands include old stands of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir with sunlit pinegrass understories...
...younger trees that filter light through to snowberry, oceanspray, and serviceberry...
...riparian (stream and/or river-based) ecosystems where vine maple, red osier dogwood, and thimbleberry grow densely in moist soils...
...and open spaces with sandstone formations and important pathways for migrating animals.
This mosaic of conditions enables a forest-wide cycle of disturbance and regrowth.
Imagine a patch of young, thin-barked trees and shrubs that doesn't survive a low-intensity fire. Nearby are mature ponderosa pine trees with thick, fire-resistant bark and deep-rooted flowering plants.
The area with older, more fire-adapted plants stays mostly intact, and even disperses some heat-loving seeds. The younger burnt patch soon receives sun, rain, and regrowth.
Resilience and biodiversity go hand in hand.
A healthy forest offers diverse habitats to many species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. This network of organisms provides the forest with services like nutrient cycling, seed dispersal, pollination, carbon storage, and water filtration. When you visit the Forest Resilience Trail, see how many of these native species you can find.
Hover over the information icons to see species names.
The forests around Roslyn provide migration routes for bears, deer, elk, and cougars. Their routes are opened up by prescribed burning and forest thinning, while patches of dense trees provide food and shelter. Learn more about these species and their habitats from the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife.
How do people keep the forest healthy?
Since time immemorial, local Indigenous communities have used cultural burning regimes to mimic the cycle of low-severity fires that are a natural part of local landscapes. These burns help support healthy forest functions, including the influx of plant and animal life that naturally occurs after a fire. Huckleberry patches, fields of camas flowers, and migrating animals all benefit.
A Yakama woman harvests huckleberries from a regularly burned forest in the 1930s.
A natural cycle, suppressed
As tribes were forcibly removed from their land and railroads, ranchers, settlers, and government entities moved in, western landscapes became more prone to wildfires. In 1910, a series of devastating wildfires swept across areas of Idaho, Montana, and Washington. These fires led the U.S. Forest Service and other land management agencies to create policies around putting wildfires out as soon as possible—also called fire suppression—that remained in place for over 100 years. Without their natural cycles of disturbance and growth, western American forests lost resiliency. They became overgrown, with too many trees of the same age and species. This made them more prone to stress and massive die-off during events like fires, drought, and insect outbreaks.
"The usual causes of fire in order of frequency are railroad engines; lightning; careless campers, fishermen, and hunters; settlers burning brush to clear land for cultivation; logging engines and sawmills; malicious incendiaries."
- F.A. Silcox, Fire Prevention and Control on the National Forests, 1910
Burned timber in Lolo National Forest, Montana after the 1910 fires. Explore photos comparing Washington forests before and after decades of fire suppression here .
20th century management practices suppressed fires in the forests around Roslyn, too. Before European settlement, these forests were adapted to high-frequency, low-intensity fires that maintained an open structure and promoted biodiversity. Without careful burning or thinning, trees became too dense and more susceptible to high-severity fires and insect outbreaks, putting forest health and community safety at risk. Today, many partners, landowners, and forest managers use a variety of forest management practices to help keep local forests diverse and healthy, and to protect the community from the impacts of wildfires.
The aim is to return the modern landscape to historic conditions: a mosaic of open ponderosa and grand fir forest, with varying degrees of tree densities and canopy closures, low volumes of hazardous fuel, and adequate habitat for many species.
- Roslyn Urban Forest Land Stewardship Plan, 2008
Methods of managing the forest
Each patch of managed land in and around the Forest Resilience Trail receives customized, intentional forest restoration treatments—selected from the strategies below—that build resiliency in the forest and nearby communities.
Planning: Foresters, prescribed fire specialists, biologists, landowners, and independent contractors work together to design forest restoration treatments that promote tree health, improve wildlife habitat, reduce wildfire risk, and mitigate climate change impacts.
Commercial or overstory tree thinning: Thinning trees reduces competition and helps create densities, patterns, and species compositions that increase resilience to drought, insects, and future wildfires.
In some cases, cut trees are sold for commercial products, and proceeds are returned to the landowner or community who owns and manages the forest. This can help pay for more expensive forest restoration projects in the area.
Non-commercial thinning and understory fuels reduction: Vegetation and dead woody material on and near the forest floor can become ladder fuel, or material that enables fire to climb into tree canopies and intensify. Workers selectively remove shrubs, underbrush, and small shade-tolerant trees that have grown in the absence of natural fire cycles. The lower branches of trees may also be pruned, then piled and burned or made into wood chips. As understory fuels are reduced, they may be removed using chainsaws or with large machines such as masticators.
Prescribed burn unit preparation: After the understory fuels reduction treatment is complete, control lines are prepared to help prevent fire from spreading beyond the prescribed burn area. These lines may be dug by hand or by mechanized equipment, or adapted from existing roads or streams.
Safety response tools like water hoses and water cache systems are put in places where they can be used to quickly extinguish a fire, if needed.
Prescribed burn: Fire is carefully reintroduced under pre-identified weather conditions and fuel moistures. The goal is to generate low-intensity burns that primarily move along the ground, consuming needles, branches, shrubs, and small trees.
Ideally, prescribed burns are repeated every 5-10 years as a maintenance treatment that mimics natural fire cycles.
This illustration by The Nature Conservancy's Erica Sloniker shows how a prescribed burn works.
This map shows areas of managed land along the Forest Resilience Trail. If you have questions about upcoming treatments in this area, contact Amy Ramsey at amy.ramsey@dnr.wa.gov
Western pine bark beetle damage on a tree in an overly-dense forest
What challenges are faced?
Building and maintaining forest resiliency in a rapidly changing world is not easy, and things don't always work exactly as planned. These are a few of the local challenges of forest restoration activities and some strategies for moving forward.
Insect outbreaks
As the climate gets hotter and drier and vegetation grows too dense for the water available, trees become stressed. Stressed ponderosa pine trees can lose their natural defense mechanism: a sticky resin that pushes out native beetles that burrow into bark to lay their eggs. Mountain and western pine bark beetles target stressed trees. After a successful infestation, they send out pheromones (chemical signals) that attract more beetles to the tree. After their eggs hatch, the larvae eat the sugars—or phloem—inside the tree, then emerge as new beetles in the spring and summer. In areas of forest with too many of the same species and age of tree, these infestations quickly multiply and can result in high numbers of dead trees.
Left: An overly dense forest with beetle-caused mortality. Right: After thinning treatments in 2021, land in and around the Roslyn Urban Forest became more resilient to native insect outbreaks.
Solution - In the Roslyn Urban Forest, western mountain pine beetle damage killed trees in areas that were overly-dense and stressed for water due to historical fire suppression and to current impacts of climate change and drought. In 2021, a commercial thinning project reduced tree density in areas of the forest. This enabled the remaining trees to uptake more water, reducing their stress and vulnerability to native bark beetle outbreaks.
How can you help? Learn to recognize native vs. invasive insects and beetles, then report invasives so that experts can limit the spread of these species.* Visit the Washington Invasive Species Council's website to access a list and pictures of priority species, more information, and instructions for reporting a sighting. *Note: At this time, there are no known invasive pine beetles in our state. The WA Invasive Species Council will update their list to include invasive pine beetles if and when they are found in Washington.
Native beetles like the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae, above) and the western pine beetle (not pictured) have co-evolved with their host trees, so that both the beetle and the tree have natural mechanisms of attack and defense against each other. Invasive tree-attacking beetles have not co-evolved with host trees and can cause wide-spread mortality to those trees.
Invasive plants
Invasive plants such as Canada thistle can quickly colonize areas that have been disturbed or have bare soil as a result of forest restoration treatments or wildfire. With few natural competitors, invasives can grow easily, spread seeds, and take growing space and other resources (like water and nutrients) from native plants.
Canada thistles are a common management challenge in local forests.
Solution - Properly identifying, removing, and disposing of invasive and noxious plants is the best plan of action for local forests and natural areas. Other tactics include spraying invasive weeds with herbicides, dispersing native seed mixes immediately after management activities, and reducing as much soil disturbance as possible when conducting forest restoration activities.
How can you help? There are learning and work party events that can help with mitigating the spread of invasive weeds. Find out about upcoming events from the Washington Invasive Species Council .
Erosion
Higher-intensity prescribed burns sometimes yield bare, loose soils. With less vegetation to slow the flow and movement of rainwater or snowmelt, erosion can become an issue. It's important to keep this sediment from entering seasonal riparian areas and other sensitive locations.
Left: Prescribed burns can leave behind a lot of loose, charred soil. Right: After a California wildfire, a scientist examines the "soil burn depth" to understand how to control erosion in the area.
Solution - Forest managers are still learning how to combat erosion in and around the Roslyn Urban Forest. One solution is to re-plant native tree seedlings, shrubs, and seeds as soon as possible after a high- to moderate-intensity burn. Another is to carefully control the heat of prescribed burns so that more soil and vegetation remains intact. Experts plan for this during burn preparation activities.
How can you help? By planting native plants on your property and following Forest Practices Regulations while conducting restoration treatments, you can help control erosion throughout your neighborhood and in nearby forests. If you live in or near the Roslyn Urban Forest, consider planting species on this list from the Washington Native Plant Society. Another great resource from the Kittitas County Conservation District is here.
Wildfire
100+ years of fire suppression have left western American forests overstocked. Add to this an increasingly hot, dry climate, and it makes sense that wildfires can quickly grow out of control.
Imagine a lightning bolt igniting a fire in a forest with a lot of dry vegetation. Dead woody material begins to burn on the ground, then flames move to shrubs and low tree branches that create a "fire ladder" to taller trees. This creates a “crown fire” in which the forest's dense canopy burns at high speeds and temperatures, and any wind that blows can intensify the wildfire and cause it to spread more rapidly in the forest.
Any forest health specialist will tell you that "it's not a matter of if, but when a wildfire will happen." What's critical is how the wildfire, the forest, and people interact once the burn is underway.
In 2017, the Jolly Mountain fire (red area on map) burned nearly 21,000 acres in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and impacted the nearby communities of Ronald, Roslyn and Cle Elum.
Solution - To reduce the potential negative impacts of high-severity wildfires, sources of fuel on the landscape need to be removed periodically and broken up. The Roslyn Urban Forest and surrounding lands are managed so that if a large wildfire moves towards the community, it will drop to the ground and lose intensity until it is controllable. Proactive restoration increases land managers’ ability to allow wildfire to fulfill its natural role while supporting the safety of firefighters, protecting communities, and adapting to climate change impacts. The forest restoration activities that partners have conducted on lands surrounding the Forest Resilience Trail show some great solutions to this challenge.
How can you help? If you are a private landowner with questions about the risk of wildfire in relation to your property, please contact your local WDNR Service Forester . Foresters will visit your property and develop a plan, often called a prescription, to help mitigate wildfire risks and make your property more resilient to wildfire and other forest health threats. Foresters can also provide you with information on WDNR’s cost share program, which can help offset some of the expenses associated with managing your land for wildfire and forest health resiliency.
You can also contact the WDNR Community Resilience Program for assistance with the defensible space immediately around your home. Specialists can assess your home and other buildings to identify priority action items and steps you can take to make your structures less likely to ignite during a wildfire.
Visit the Forest Resilience Trail!
This multi-use trail system winds through a variety of managed lands where you can see the effects of past prescribed burns, forest thinning, and mastication (using machines to break up fuel sources like shrubs and woody debris).
The land along this trail is owned and managed by a mix of private and public entities and the City of Roslyn. This public recreational-use landscape was initiated by the City's acquisition of the Roslyn Urban Forest (the forest adjacent and closest to town) in 2004. Adjoining landowners have been working together ever since to accommodate and develop recreational opportunities to benefit the community and visitors alike.
In 2022, the Washington DNR, community members, and other forest health partners collaborated to create interpretive designs (including this story map) in association with these trails. The goal is to spark more public communication about local forest management, provide educational resources, and share engagement opportunities for people interested in helping to keep forests healthy and resilient.
Before you go
Download a digital map. The Roslyn Fire Department created a map of this trail system, downloadable through the free Avenza Map app. Search for the Roslyn Forest Resilience Trail map within the app or scan the QR code to the right.
Plan your route. Within a two-mile loop with an elevation gain of around 250 feet, you can explore a diversity of forest types and see evidence of various forest management activities. The extent of the entire trail system is around 15 miles.
Be aware of the environment. These are minimally marked trails that are covered in snow in the winter. Bears, cougars, wolves, and other wildlife live here. This National Park Service video provides information about how to stay safe when hiking in bear country. You can buy bear spray from Basecamp Outfitters in Cle Elum.
Trailhead
The trail starts at the Roslyn Urban Forest Ewok Trailhead at Alaska Street Alley and North 6 th Street. The welcome kiosk at the trailhead offers interpretive brochures with a trail map, as well as a QR code that links to the Roslyn Forest Resilience Trail map in Avenza.
Land treated with thinning and mastication
Using the trail brochure or the Roslyn Forest Resilience Trail map in Avenza, explore areas of the forest that have been managed with tree-thinning or mastication. Consider how long it has been since management took place. Notice indicators of forest resiliency such as a diversity of species and ages of trees, and new growth on older trees as a result of increased water intake post-thinning.
Forest management interpretation
After a one-mile ascent through Douglas fir and ponderosa pine forest with an understory of pine grass and shrubs, you'll find a storage shed featuring a large map and interpretation of forest restoration activities.
Land treated with prescribed burning
Using the trail brochure or the Roslyn Forest Resilience Trail map in Avenza, explore areas of the forest that are regularly managed with prescribed burns. Consider how long it has been since the prescribed burn took place. Notice indicators of forest resiliency such as birdsong, fire-adapted trees with thick charred bark, and open understories with shrubs and flowers.
Additional Resources
Want to learn more about forest ecology and management in central Washington? Below is a collection of links and further reading.
- The Central Washington Initiative
- The DNR's Cle Elum Planning Area Landscape Evaluation Summary (2020)
- The Nature Conservancy's management plan for Central Cascades Forest
- List of native plants in the Roslyn Urban Forest
- Puget Sound Energy's efforts to prepare for, and help prevent, local wildfires
- Roslyn Forest Land Stewardship Plan (2008)
- Learn more about Washington's riparian and shrub-steppe ecosystems from the Department of Fish and Wildlife
- WDNR 20-Year Forest Health Strategic Plan: Eastern WA
If you have questions about upcoming forest management in and around the Forest Resilience Trail and the Roslyn Urban Forest, contact Amy Ramsey at amy.ramsey@dnr.wa.gov
