Ed,
You are absolutely right. The subject has come up before. As I'm frequently
guilty of doing, I shot from the hip in that email - a spur of the moment
thing. But, I do hope we will pursue the subject of crafting useful site
criteria and definitions. To that end, I'm always interested in your and Lee's
thoughts. I'd also be very very interested in hearing Don Bertolette's and Don
Bragg's thoughts on the subject. They've had to deal with property vs.
ecosystem boundaries throughout their professional careers.
As I think about it a little, I think that my biggest challenge in
establishing boundaries is to decide what my primary motivation (or
motivations) is for drawing any particular boundary. Am I drawing lines for
political purposes, just for property identification, for sport, for science,
etc.?
In drawing a set of boundaries associated with a new property, I usually
have more than one objective in mind. I constantly use Mohwak Trail State
Forest as my guide, since for that property, I have identified and balanced the
different objectives of that property pretty well. That leads me to first map
out the forest types and species distributions, followed by the age structures,
and then the high and low productivity areas. I can then go well beyond the
simple maintenance of an overall property-based index. However, refining the
boundaries involves a lot of exacting work. To stay on top of the job, the
services of my buddy Professor Gary Beluzo and his GIS expertise are needed. I
can, if I have to, plug along on my own with less sophisticated tools (oh the
pain, the pain ..... Gary, are you listening?).
As a digression, one point I suspect is pretty clear to those who know me
and read even occasional posts of mine on Rucker analysis is that I use RHI-RGI
to actively promote exceptional properties and educate the public. The
promotional angle is never far from my thoughts. To this end, I give a high
priority to identifying exceptional properties and there are several property
managers in Massachusetts in charge of some real beauts. One is the Trustees of
Reservations. That great organization has some exceptional properties loaded
with big trees and mature forests that lend themselves to Rucker Analysis.
BTW, I'm looking forward to being shown around some additional Trustees
properties by ecologist Dr. Julie Richburg. So far my time has been devoted
primarily to three Trustees properties (Bryant Homestead, Petticoat Hill,
Bartholomew's Cobble), but I hope this state of affairs will soon change. I'll
soon be combing a large Trustees property in the Berkshires - Notchview. I've
not seen the best that Notchview has to offer. Eventually, I'd like to compute
a RHI for all major Trustees properties with decent-sized trees.
In terms of state properties, DCR has some absolutely outstanding forest
sites and I have assigned myself the role of helping DCR know which property
fits into the outstanding category. Under Green Certification, with its active
management mandate, it is critical that outstanding sites, thus far not
identified, be identified and appropriately protected. Unfortunately, there is
far more acreage out there than this old boy can cover. Fortunately, partly
through sheer blind luck, I think I've identified most, if not all the
absolutely best sites in so far as RHI and RGI analysis can identify them, and
it will come as no surprise to Ents that MTSF sits squarely at the top of the
pecking order, which brings me to the last topic in this ramble.
I'm looking extremely forward to the upcoming ENTS rendezvous as a way to
maybe add a few tenths to the RHI for Mohawk. Darn, I sure wish the full
Pennsylvania A Team was coming. What an incredible resource! But regardless,
I'm betting that my buddy Will Blozan is going to lead the pack of us in adding
those tenths. I'm also hoping that Ent John Eichholz will show up and make a
contribution such as he has done in the past. John, are you out there, buddy?
Bob
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Edward Frank" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Bob,
Off the top of my bead, I would suggest the following for a site definition. A
single patch of old-growth forest can be considered a site with its boundaries
defined as the boundary between old growth and younger forests. Multiple
patches of old-growth forests that are connected by an unbroken contiguous
patch of younger forests can be considered as a single site, with each
individual patch considered a sub-site. Otherwise a site should be considered
to be all of the forest young and old in a contiguous patch. Contiguous
patches are those not separated or interrupted by man-made or natural openings
or breaks. Dirt or gravel roads and secondary roads should not be considered
as a break in a contiguous patch, while broader or divided highways can be
considered as breaks. Sub-sites may be defined by topographic, physiographic,
or other distinguishable boundaries within the context of a larger site. The
definition of a site should not bee simply arbitrary, but needs to be somewha
t pragmatic as well in its application.
Bob, you have suggested in the past that the definition of a site be left to
the individual describing it. We have brought up this subject before:
http://www.nativetreesociety.org/measure/site_definition.htm
At that time, Lee indicated the following hierarchical organization he used for
studies from
small to large spatial scale:
Tree
Neighborhood, a grove of adjacent trees within a stand.
Stand, an area of one forest type with fairly uniform soils and disturbance
history within a site.
Site, a cluster of similar stands (i.e. pine stands on moraines, lowland
stands along a river, dwarf forests along a ridgetop).
Study area, a cluster of sites that may be very heterogeneous and have
several forest types, usually defined by political boundaries (i.e. Great
Smoky Mountains, MTSF, Porcupine Mountains).
Region, a large are defined by political or biogeographical boundaries
(i.e. the Southern Appalachians, New England, deciduous forest biome).
I don't think that my suggestions above are inconsistent with Lee's
organizational structure, although I tried to suggest some more specific or
pragmatic boundary definitions. I also would add a category of sub-site
between the Stand and Site categories simply for data organization purposes.
Ed Frank
Join me in the Eastern Native Tree Society at http://www.nativetreesociety.org
and in the Primal Forests - Ancient Trees Community at:
http://primalforests.ning.com/
The challenge is to decide on what represents a separate site. Maybe we can
think through a site definition criteria. As an example of what I find myself
up against, fairly large properties like Mt Tom State Reservation, MTSF, MSF,
etc. have clusters (sites?) of white pine that are sufficiently separated from
one another to warrant separate treatment especially if thinking at the stand
level. MTSF has at least 4 distinct pine areas and one could argue for more.
However, it is convenient to think of MTSF as a single site. I constantly
waffle on places like Mohawk. I'm sure Dale has the same concerns with Cook
Forest State Park. How should we define a site?
Bob
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