Forestry Quarterly (Volume 3) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FORESTRY QUARTERLY Vol. Ill] MAY 1905 [No. 2 AN ADAPTATION OF METHODS IN FOREST WORK The work of applied forestry in the United States is so varied in its practical form that the utmost pliability in methods is necessary to bring about satisfactory results. The following concrete case of adaptation in accepted field methods may be of interest to the profession. Any general line of work being decided on, the next care is to so arrange the details of field work that the best results may be had in the shortest time. In every case the measurement work falls under these heads: 1. The construction of a map. 2. The determination of the number and occurrence of the merchantable species. 3. The measurement of average trees of every age to get the normal growth and volume of the desired species. The construction of the map and the counting of the trees can of course be done at the same time, but a method must be employed which is most expeditious and efficient Properly, the method selected should vary with every broad type of forest encountered. At McCloud, California, where the methods about to be described were put into effect in the preparation of a fire plan for a lumber company, the western yellow pine type of forest is generally very open after logging, with six to twelve scattered young poles to the acre. The ground cover is more or less dense chaparral interspersed with excellent reproduction often in large thickets. In many places the young trees occur in dense stands, generally in long, narrow strips. In very broken forest of this kind the usual strip valuation is of little value unless a high per cent of surveys are taken and an average acre used for the whole tract Since an estimate of the present and future yields of timber on each quarter-section ...