ENTS Several recent discussions have touched on the subject of old growth forests and the disturbance history of these forests. Some people have a more liberal definition, while others are more conservative in their definition of old growth forests. Others have proposed various different functional or structural definitions of old growth, or favor terms such as primary forest over the term old growth. These alternatives have the benefit that they can be more discretely defined, but I do not believe that necessarily makes them superior. certainly the boundaries of what is called or is not called old growth us an anthropogenic construct, but that does not mean it is not valid, nor does it mean that the concept is not useful. I want to stick with the concept and term old growth because it is part of our own, and part of everyone's day to day lexicon. There may be disagreements of what should or should not be called old growth, but everyone can agree that it exists ( at least conceptually).
On the more conservative end of the spectrum an old growth forest old growth forests that have not been directly or intentionally disturbed by people. Slightly less restrictive is a definition that also includes minimal disturbance but requires the forest canopy to be dominated by trees over some arbitrary age to e considered old growth. This definition would allow some human activity to have taken place including a limited amount if selected logging. On the more liberal side of the spectrum would be definitions, like the one I proposed for urban old growth, in which when deciding whether a forest was old growth or not, the degree disturbance that had taken place in at that particular forest should be considered in the context of the degree of disturbance that had taken place other forests in the immediate area. Thus in an area where most of the forests have been significantly disturbed, a forest with even a few old trees might be considered old growth. I know that the late Bruce Kershner had developed a classification where the definition of what was old growth was fairly liberal, but within that definition there were several distinct categories or grades that represented the quality of that old growth from a pristine stand to stands with only a few remnant old trees. I would favor overall, for the purposes of the ENTS (Eastern Native Tree Society) documentation effort, that a more encompassing definition of old growth was used, but within that old growth category, there is no reason why a quality grade could not be assigned to these stands. The question then becomes what would be a workable and fair breakdown of these categories? I am looking for what ideas each of you might have with regard to the grading categories and criteria for those categories. Ed Frank http://nature-web-network.blogspot.com/ http://primalforests.ning.com/ http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=709156957 -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
