Description of site/What will happen to the site

When taking a look upon our site (Site 7), our site was certainly a good representative to the forest around it. Since every week we had to hike around to get to our spot, which was pretty high up we would identify trees on the way up. Since Connor, Amie, and I are in dendrology, it is good to keep tabs upon identifying the trees. The trees that were near the beginning of the Muhley Trail were the same were the same for when you climbed up 400ft up to our site. To name a few trees we saw prior to our site and within the site are red pine, red maple, sugar maple, chestnut oak, white oak, and iron wood. Our site was also very steep so it was able to have different species within our site as it was not just a flat area. These trees made up most of the forest, with looking at other group’s data; they had a few of the same trees, along with a few differences of trees within the same species. So, overall our site did resemble the surrounding forest. When searching the area, there will be a few differences upon soil context and different trees in some areas, but it is all relatively the same for the forest. 

Without any disturbance from climate, weather, animals, or human construction the site of the forest in 2111 will be a stand of American beech, sugar maple, and white oak, as the shrub layer right now are those threes. As a forester, we look at that layer and we picture what might happen in a hundred year time frame. What will happen is the existing red oak and red maple will end up dying off and the other trees will come in and end up taking their place. The stand will look like how it is now, just with other species. So the majority of it will consist of American beech, sugar maple, and white oak. These species are large growth species, shade tolerant, and late sessional trees. When they get the chance to sprout more and have the resources to grow, they will be the trees to be the big component of the stand. That is what I believe the stand will look like in about one hundred years.

We loved the view of Mansfield view we got. That point was our destination site on the first lab. The trail was easy to follow, yet it was a bit of a hike, we saw a lot as we traveled to our destination. It was diverse with trees, had a good canopy layer, and a good understory layer. We were impressed by these factors and are great characteristics of the site. Another good thing about the site that is certainly favorable to the site was the course woody debris we saw, and the standing snags. These places are great habitats for things such as grouse, deer, salamander, and other animals upon the area. The location was perfect, couldn’t ask for a better area. All these characteristics made the site a good site for resources and had what it needed to be organisms to live within it.

A few signs of humans upon our site would be that the trail was in most of the site. When we were in lab a lot of the times we saw people walking by.  A dog even ate a granola bar from Claire’s backpack. Many dogs were around and we even saw some reminisce of them being there. Other factors are the markings of the tails on the trees, and the posts of the Island view trail are also factors of humans being in the area. Those were the big factors that were of human were in the site.

As a Forestry major I took a class on small woodland management, and learned about many techniques. Seeing that our site had a thick red maple, it would be good to get rid of some of those. Within the site I would suggest doing a single tree selection. Since a clear cut would not work at a higher elevation, and would not really be good for the forest, and a group selection wouldn’t really work either, I would suggest taking out just a few trees to get new growth within that part of the forest.  We had a total of six red maples and our largest tree was a red maple too. In my perspective I would say cut the second highest and the second lowest DBH trees to sport some new growth within the sites. So with our data it would be an 11.5in DBH red maple, and a 9.5in DBH red maple. Other factors to account would be the plots we mark within the site. But the most important thing is you never want to get rid of the biggest tree. Always keep that one of the species as it is the defining factors to have seedlings of it grow. We would not cut our 28.9in DBH get cut down.  By cutting these red maples, other trees such as sugar maple and oaks could grow in there. Sugar maples are very valuable in the sugaring process along with being good timber too. We had a white oak within the site too and they are one of the most valuable timbers out there, so if we were able to grow more white oaks within the area, the land would be good. Plus the oak supplies great habitat and other resources to animals, such as deer and a few birds, such as the woodpecker. Other things to manage for besides the trees would be things such as animals and soil.