| Schall's
Gap, Centre County |
Ernie
Ostuno |
| Jul
26, 2004 00:51 PDT |
This small stand of old growth hemlocks was investigated by PSU
forestry
students a few years ago. A graduate student did some coring and
counted
540 rings on one of the biggest trees in the stand, placing it
at
roughly the same age as the oldest of the Alan Seeger hemlocks.
I visited this site on 1/25/01 and found about 25 acres of old
growth
hemlocks, white pine and yellow birch in a gap between two
ridges. It
appears that all but a 3-5 acre section was selectively cut. The
biggest
hemlocks have a dbh of 45 inches and are in the 100-110 height
range.
The trees are in the Rothrock State Forest and are fairly easy
to get
to, being only about a mile off of PA Route 45. The open fields
between
Route 45 and the trees are part of the Penn State University
agricultural research site called Rock Springs.
Some of the dendroecological study at Schall's gap is described
in this
paper:
Eastern White Pine Versatility in the Presettlement Forest
Issn: 0006-3568 Journal: BioScience Volume: 51 Issue: 11 Pages:
967-979
Authors: Abrams, Marc D.
DOI: 10.1043/0006-3568(2001)051<0967:EWPVIT>2.0.CO;2
|
| RE:
Schall's Gap, Centre County |
Ernie
Ostuno |
| Aug
16, 2004 16:45 PDT |
I found another publication that describes this stand. Bryan
Black was
the PSU grad student I referred to before. His doctoral thesis
has info
on the history of disturbance and species composition of this
site. The
paper itself is an interesting read from the perspective of
dendroecological studies of forest disturbance. You can get the
.pdf
version of it at:
http://etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideFiles/ETD-396/etd.pdf
Ernie
|
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