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TOPIC: Milestone Reached
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/f7c8dc48e8160dba?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Oct 10 2008 10:41 pm
From: dbhguru@comcast.net


ENTS,

Across its path in Massachusetts, the Connecticut River Valley has deep, rich soils and sufficient moisture to grow large trees. The sycamore, eastern cottonwood, silver maple, sugar maple, and n. red oak all reach large size in the valley corridor. Many other species do quite well too, however, I've never struck it rich when it comes to tree heights in the valley the way I have in the Berkshire region just to the west. I'm unsure of why unless it has to do with the added level of protection and abundant moisture that the deep Berkshire ravines provide.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours on Mount Tom State Reservation and succeeded in confirming a large, three-stemmed white pine to 141.0 feet in height. The white pine is the tallest ENTS-measured tree in the Connecticut River Valley region that I've measured in Massachusetts. New Hampshire has taller pines in the valley corridor in at least two places.
The only competition the white pine has in the valley region is a tall tuliptree in Robinson State Park, which I currently list at 140.9 feet. However, over several independent measurements, I do not consistently get heights over 140 for the tulip, so 140.9 may be generous. I hope to remeasure the tuliptree later this fall. For the present, I'm leaving its height at 140.9 feet.
I can say with confidence that the 140-foot height threshold has definitely been passed with the Mt Tom white pine. About 10 or 11 other pines on Mount Tom are above 130 feet and one white pine in Easthampton may now be 140. Regardless, trees in this height class are extremely rare in the valley corridor, and as of now, the Mount Tom tree is the valley height champion. Mount Tom's RI now stands at 115.7 and I'm sure will rise with further searching and measuring.

Bob

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sat, Oct 11 2008 1:19 pm
From: "Edward Frank"


Bob,

Congratulations on finding another tall pine over 140. I have been thinking about how to deal with Rucker Indexes along the lines Jess suggested - i.e. plotting a rucker height index on a graph versus increasing area. I am wondering if it would be appropriate when comparing rucker indexes of sites within a larger area such as the Connecticut River Valley with the area of the valley itself or whether it would be better to just compare the individual sites to the composite area of the patches included in the overall rucker index? What I am saying is that much of the area of the valley contribute nothing to the rucker index as it has been cut over and farmed again and again, so should these non-contributing areas be included in the rucker index area of valley as a whole? Since the measurements are made from a patch of sites here and there, should not the area for the valley just consider the area of those patches.

I have been talking to Dale about compiling a species profile for the Clarion River corridor (defining it to basically just include the flood plains and flats, rather than the entire drainage basin). If all of the species were listed in a single table along with the heights of the tallest ( or fattest) examples of those species, then you could more easily see what gaps there were in the information, what trees were missing, or represented by undersized specimens, etc. I should have did this before my river trip Thursday with Carl, and I know I would have grabbed some measurements of trees, which were unspectacular in terms of Cook Forest, but would have contributed to the Clarion River corridor. This is something that should be considered for other broader reaches which are initially a composite of pieces of other sites. The main problem with the Clarion River stuff is that Dale has all of the data, so any scheme I come up with, means more work for poor Dale.

Ed Frank

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Oct 12 2008 4:29 pm
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

Ed,

I'm glad you brought up the subject. I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking about how to bring area into play to facilitate fair comparisons among our sites. However, I fear I have often erred by following political boundaries to advertize an area, more as a sporting event than the practice of science. However, if we want to do it right, we do have areas to experiment with where we could do various kinds of hypothesis testing. In particular, MTSF provides us with a wealth of data that can be sensitized to area computed in a variety of ways. In fact, Mohawk amply reveals how important it is to organize around habitat. Fortunately, most of the forests in Mohawk fall into the mature to very mature classification, so area expansions don't bring into play very young forests or buildings and sidewalks. There is very little truly young forest in Mohawk.
By contrast, the Connecticut River Valley is a patchwork of fields, towns, and forests. There are swaths of mature trees along stream corridors, in yards and parks, and in the forested zone bordering the valley. But there seems little to be gained by merely expanding an area in the valley unless the expansion incorporates big tree habitat. Expanding into areas that don't have have trees sufficiently mature to communicate species potential has limited value.
In Mohawk, concave areas on ridge sides, toe slopes, and ravines contribute most of our big/tall tree habitat. I'm inclined to add up the acreage in those areas instead of starting at a point and expanding outward.

Bob