Ed,
I couple more thoughts to add to what you've said, and said well.
Sometimes it is good to go into a forest with blinders on to all but one
or two species as opposed to wandering about trying to stay sensitive to all
species. When I activate my stripped maple filter, the large, bright green
leaves stand out in the understory and I can quickly and easily home in on
stripped maples that are above 50 feet in height. So far in MTSF, I've measured
three striped maples over 60 feet and have this beautiful understory species
pretty well mapped out. I'll soon turn my attention onto witch hazel. I'll have
to install another mental filter to be active from 20 to about 35 feet maximum
- I think.
I completely agree that documenting the growth maximums for all species,
short and tall can provide us with a much better understanding of the growth
potential of an area. Some of the shorter species may be far more useful than
personally have heretofore understood. The ones growing in southern New England
forests are usually shortlived. Consequently, we can see many more of them
through their entire life cycles and therefore have a better opportunity to
catch more at their peak heights. That's far less likely for species that live
for three or more centuries and are economiclaly valuable at 60 years of age.
Bob
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Edward Forrest Frank" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
ENTS,
A listing of this sort also has other advantages. It is what Colby described
as a complete species profile for the site. It allows easy calculations of
various Rucker Indexes. But also by having this list, you can look at it and
it will jump out at you that "Oh, I saw a taller Sassafras just the other day
than the one listed here." You can see at a glance if there are taller trees
you just haven't measured. Most people really into it know how tall the
tallest species are, but the heights of the shorter species may not be as
completely at the tip of your tongue. A listing of all the species measured
tells you at a glance what species you haven't measured. This is often just an
oversight, or they have not been measured because they are not that tall, but a
listing such as this begs for missing data and measurements to be taken.
Ed
ENTS,
I might suggest that the best way to keep up with the Rucker Indexes for all of
the sites would first to have a listing of all the trees from the site, ordered
however you want. Then a second listing for the site would include only the
tallest tree of each species, and every species measured at the site should be
included, and have this list sorted tallest to shortest. Whenever a new taller
specimen is found for a species, the old would be deleted from this tall list
and the the new one inserted at the proper place in the hierarchy. Calculating
a Rucker Index would then just consist of copying the contents of the top 5,
10, or 20 cells to an adjacent column, summing those, and dividing by the
number of cells. That is what I did with Dales RI20 listings and our composite
listings for the Allegheny River Islands. It worked very well.
Ed
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