Robinson Field Briefing 12/10/2006   rayof-@ndws.com
  Dec 10, 2006 20:12 PST 

Hello all.

Bob Leverett and myself conducted a field trip and investigation
into Robinson State Park today. We were told of more tulip
poplars that had to be located and checked.

tulip22b.jpg (171339 bytes) 
One of the tulip poplars at Robinson on a  CLEAR COLD morning

We discovered that there is a stand that runs along
a network of brooks and ravines, and joins a previous
group that we located early on. Totaling the trees
in this stand, its right at 35. This group is a distance
west of the "valley of the tulips", and the deep ravine that contains
the big champs.

In addition, I rechecked a stand still further west from this one, and
counted 15 in that stand. I'm told I missed a few by the local group.
The GPS data wasn't great, hard to get satellite coverage today in
the valleys. Need to go remap them all.

We tracked down a report of one lone tree way west of all of these
but found no others near that one. Its on the riverbank.

So, we have now 45 additional trees to the 80 in the "valley of the tulips"
stand, plus about a half dozen in the valley with the champs. Most of these
are all 117 to 120 ft tall.

One alarming thing we did find is a couple of healthy tulips in the 35 stand
that are marked for harvest in the proposed cutting plan. This is in
addition to one that has some health issues. Also noted quite a bit of harvest
taking place on slopes that go into small brooks.

Robinson is turning out to be the tulip poplar location of the state at the
least, if not the Northeast.

Bob has some numbers on some other species we found and measured as well.

Ray
Robinson SP   Robert Leverett
  Dec 11, 2006 05:50 PST 
ENTS,

       On Sunday, Ray Weber and I spent 4 hours roaming around in
Robinson SP. We confirmed more tuliptrees as Ray explained in his earlier
e-mail. We also confirmed a white pine to 128.3 feet, raising the Rucker
index to 118.7. We will eventually push the index to 119 or slightly
over, but that is where it will likely remain until natural tree growth
allows a gain of a few 10th of a point. we did discover a splendid
American sycamore with dimensions (111.7, 12.4). A second sycamore
tipped the scales at a most respectable (112.7, 10.4), and a third one
trailed at (107.6, 9.1). The tallest of the new tulips that we measured
is (122.6, 7.7).

     We noticed several tulips marked for cutting, an action with no
justifiable ecological purpose. I suppose that we'll eventually
inventory between 130 and 140 tulips in Robinson that have their crowns
in the canopy. This number will be out of a population of trees in
Robinson that, I suspect, is between 60,000 and 90,000. Robinson's tree
population needs to be determined for a variety of reasons. However,
assuming for the sake of argument that the total number of canopy trees
in Robison is 60,000 and further assuming that we eventually get our
count of canopy tulips up to 150, then the tuliptree population would
still account for at most a quarter of one percent of the trees forming
the Robinson SP canopy. To be marking any of the seed-bearing tulips for
cutting represents the myopic view of Robinson's forests as valuable
mainly as a source of commercially valuable oak and pine - a perception
of Robinson SP that is fatally flawed. It is a view that I do not
believe is held by Massachusetts Chief Forester James DiMaio. It is a
view that I believe is held by some of his staff.

Bob       
Re: Robinson Field Briefing 12/10/2006   rayof-@ndws.com
  Dec 11, 2006 14:28 PST 

They are not, if at all. We are now in meetings with DCR
to document the special nature of the park, and the flaws in
the idea to harvest there.

Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Holly Post 
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:25:16 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Robinson Field Briefing 12/10/2006
 
Hi There: I thought they were not going to harvest at
Robinson for at least a year?
Re: Robinson Forest   rayof-@ndws.com
  Dec 14, 2006 20:30 PST 

A quick field trip report also, I checked out the opposite side of the
river in the forest today, and found zero tulips there so far. I checked
quite a few ravines with similar habitat as those in Robinson, but
so far nothing. There have been a few sighted in an area that is
closed off for the winter. I may hike that later on when I have more
time, or wait for spring. Most of the forest I looked at today was
flood plain, with oak, white pine, hickory, and sycamore the most
common, with a few beech seen.

Ray