Forests, Fuels and Fire in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Idaho

INTRODUCTION THE Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness (SBW) is a 1.2 million-acre (486,000 ha) forested tract located in northern Idaho and portions of adjacent western Montana (46°00' N, 1150 W, Fig. 1). This wilderness represents the largest roadless area' in conterminous United States classified under the Wilderness Act of 1964. It lies within portions of the Nez Perce, Bitterroot, Clearwater and Lolo National Forests (Northern Region, USDA Forest Service) which collectively provide control and management for this wilderness. Two of the current wilderness management objectives in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness are (1) the determination of the natural role of wildfires within the varied forest communities composing the wilderness, and (2) the determination of suitable means of returning to wildfire at least some of these natural functions (Habeck and Mutch, 1973). The successful pursuit of these management objectives requires the development of a detailed description of forest compositions and distributions as well as an assessment of organic fuel production and accumulations within different forest types. Wildfire is believed to have played a critical ecological role as a decomposer of organic matter in many of the northern Rocky Mountain coniferous forests (Habeck, 1972, 1973; Habeck and Mutch,