How Does Our Garden Grow?

(Picture by Ryan Tessier)

The photo above shows what the tree cover looks in most of our hectare area. As you can see in the picture, there is blue sky visible but most of the area is covered with branches and leaves, indicating that the canopy trees are healthy, but the forest as a whole is still maturing. Even though it is late September, this picture is still a good representation of the tree cover because not many leaves have dropped yet.

The canopy cover of this site is quite diverse, composed mostly of northern hardwoods (maples, white ash, birches, shagbark and bitternut hickory, and northern red oak) as well as a few large pines and a very large American basswood, and there is much diversity in the understory, including red maple, American beech, striped maple, honeysuckle, barberry, hobblebush, and Virginia creeper. A large area of our site is covered by a horsetail tentatively identified as Equisetum hymale, or scouringrush horsetail; the rest of the herbaceous cover consists of sensitive and intermediate fern as well as club mosses and lichens in the wetter areas. Common buckthorn, an invasive species, is also prevalent throughout the site.

The total tree density of the site is roughly 301.4 ft²/hectare, or 27.13 m²/ha, extrapolated from a 4% sample of our 1-ha plot. No single species truly dominates the canopy, but some trees, especially the hardwoods, are much larger than others in terms of trunk volume. The total estimated wood volume is 31,232 board-feet/ha, again extrapolated from a 4% sample of our plot. While this sounds like a sizable haul for a single hectare, much of the wood is low-quality and difficult to harvest due to a prevalence of crooked trunks and abundance of burls in each tree.

Given that this stand is still relatively young and contains some good growing stock, the most efficient management plan for timber harvest would be to gradually cull out unacceptable growing stock, allowing straight-bole trees to mature and encouraging understory regeneration. However, since this is within a state park, our management plan will be more concerned with preserving the diverse natural communities that currently exist on the site. In this case, the best course of action would be to leave the site as it is, and perhaps remove highly shade-tolerant trees to allow less tolerant trees such as oak and hickory to regenerate.

Shown in the table below is the structure of our hectare and how much it has to offer. In the plots we set up, there was some merchantable trees but a lot of them were young seedlings and saplings. The table shows tree heights, diameters and the volume of the trees. As you can see, the most prominent tree species are American elm and eastern white pine.

Stand Location Plot # Species DBH (ft.) Merchantable Height (ft) Volume in Board Feet Wet, ash-elm-EWP From Corner 1 1 Eastern white pine 1.40 81.9 378.12 65°, 57.5m American elm 0.73 81.9 101.4 Sandy, mixed hardwoods From soil pit 2 American elm 1.02 31.4 76.8 Oak-ash-hickroy-elm 267°, 15m Red oak 0.48 15.4 8.33 Yellow birch 0.52 24.3 15.49 White ash 0.65 21.1 21.01 American elm 0.44 Sandy, mixed hardwoods From soil pit 3 Red maple 0.43 12.5 5.5 Oak-ash-hickroy-elm 120°, 16.5m American elm 0.55 15.0 10.7 Shagbark hickory 0.31 Shagbark hickory 0.39 American elm 0.58 22.1 17.5 Paper birch 0.48 14.4 7.8 Red maple 1.08 23.4 64.12 EWP overstory From corner 3 4 Eastern white pine 1.17 35.5 114.5 Mixed hardwood understory 252°, 31.5m Eastern white pine 0.96 65.9 143.07 Eastern white pine 1.20 35.5 120.46 Sugar maple 0.29 Mixed northern hardwoods From corner 4 5 Bigtooth Aspen 1.30 23.4 92.97 N (0°), 37m Bigtooth Aspen 0.95 23.4 49.65 64°, 15m Total Board Feet Tallied 1227.42 Total Board Feet per Hectare 31232.06107