Cottonwood and willow demography on a young island, Salmon River, Idaho

Abstract

Woody colonizers of stream deposits are often aged to reconstruct flow and sedimentation history. Precise work requires knowledge of age structure of putatively even-aged stands or cohorts of colonizers. The demography of cottonwood and sandbar willow on a young island along the largely unregulated stream indicates that there can be 4 years of age variance between individuals that established within 2 meters of each other. Size of individuals indicates their relative ages, but sediment composition can also influence size.