Bob-
Are you familiar with the term "basal area", and how it is derived, how it can
be used to characterize and area for volume prediction based on simple variable
plot size sampling technique?
-Don
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:42:54 +0000
From: [email protected]
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CC: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
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Subject: [ENTS] Frog Pond Follies
ENTS,
Yesterday Monica and I returned to the Frog Pond area of MTST. I've
written about Frog Pond before and send a few images. However, I'll be
concentrating more on Frog Pond for the remainder of this year and will be
photographically documenting it. I need to get with Gary Beluzo to learn how to
make optimal use of my iPhone for photographic documentation tied to GPS
coordinates and other data. Now to the images.
1. The first attached image gives us a peek at it. The brown on the banks
is not dirt, but pine needles.
2. The second two images highlight the meadow adjacent to the Frog Pond
Pines. The first of the two is of what? Yes, big bluestem grass. It grows in
both upper and lower meadows. There are many clumps of it in the lower meadow,
plus a ton of little bluestem.
3. The third image was taken from very near the Frog Pond looking toward
Hawks Mountain and the Trout Brook Cove. Hawks is a small mountain rising from
a basal elevation of 560 feet to just over 1800 feet. It has a little old
growth on it it a a couple of places. There are many white ash trees growing
near its base surpass 120 feet in height. On the side of a connecting ridge
between Hawks and the west side of Trout Brook grows 'Sweet Thing' a 150.2-foot
white ash. It is the tallest of its species that we know about in the
Northeast. I will photograph it later in the summer or early fall.
4. The fourth image was taken in the Trees of Peace. It is of the Mirror
Pine, a 156-foot tall, 11-foot circumference big boy. It isn't the mirror image
of any other tree, but mirrors the tall trees of the Trees of Peace Grove from
the road. Its base is deep in the duff below the road (the old colonial Mohawk
Trail), which continues to accumulate. Were its root system better exposed so
that 4.5 feet up the trunk from the chosen base point would stop at a lower
point on the trunk, the girth would likely be at 11.4 or 11.5 feet. Will and I
measured the tree 3 years ago. Time flies when you having fun.
While at the north end of Frog Pond, I measured two more lofty young
pines. The measurements are:
1. Height = 146.7 ft, Girth = 7.4 ft 2. Height = 147.2 ft, Girth =
6.8 ft
These two bring the total to 3 that exceed 145 feet in height and probably
don't exceed 100 years in age. The Sweetie Pie Pine at the south end of Frog
Pond is the 3rd 140-footer. More specifically, it was 140.5 feet last year. It
is now at least 141.5. There are probably 3 or 4 other 140s in the Frog Pond
stand, plus many in the 130s. Virtually all of them are over 120 feet. The
pines are young and have the potential to put on 10 to 20 feet more of height
before height growth diminishes to 2 or 3 inches per year. It is a stand to
watch. Girths among the young trees are modest. Big girths will be slow in
coming because the pines form dense stands except for a few bordering the old
Shunpike. A fewpines eventually may make it to around 12 feet in girth. They
have the potential. At the present, most are from 6.5 to 8.5 feet around. A few
trees exceed 9 feet. The Frog Pond Pines are sequestering a lot of carbon
each year at a rate that belies the timber community's belief that mature trees
do not efficiently sequester carbon (the trees are young by my criteria, but
mature by theirs). Later this summer, I intend to delineate a fixed area in the
Frog Pond stand, measure every tree in the area, calculate the total standing
volume, and the rate at which the stand is currently accumulating mass. It will
be a numerically intensive exercise. I'll submit an article to the Bulletin on
the results. Basically, each pine will be measured and a volume form
factor assigned. The average radial and height growth will be determined for
each tree for the past growing season. The Macroscope 25/45 will be used to
determine the annual growth increment. Volume analysis will be done using
approaches outlined in the latest Bulletin of the Eastern Native Tree Society.
Bob P.P. I'm sending this report to WNTS as well as ENTS to give our
exclusively western membership an idea of the kinds of analyses and
documentations we commonly do in ENTS and by extension, WNTS.
_________________________________________________________________
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