A recently released decade-long study under Washington’s Adaptive Management Program looked at water quality in working forests, focusing on temperature and sediment. The conclusion was that streamside Forests & Fish buffers of trees are keeping water cool for fish.
The study (informally known as “Hardrock”) measured temperatures in non-fish bearing waters that flow downstream into fish-bearing waters – during the two years before timber harvest and for nine years after timber harvest, the part of the forest cycle when forests are replanted and start to regrow.