North Rim Inventories    Don Bertolette
   Jun 18, 2003 20:01 PDT 
---- Original Message -----
    From: Don Bertolette
    Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 7:41 PM
    Subject: Re: Old Growth Articles - Distant Thunder & Northern Woodlands


    Bob-
    Part of the data meta-analysis we did at the Grand Canyon this winter and spring involved looking at such data...from 1900 through 1927, the General Land Office surveyed portions of what is now the Kaibab NF and the Grand Canyon NP...one of my co-workers did his masters on assessing vegetation through the Section/Quarter Corner Witness Trees/Line Trees in Northern Arizona...we brought him in to do our GLO data. We also had a 1935 NPS Branch of Forestry (who knew!?) vegetation inventory to compare to, including some amount of photopoint documentation. Fascinating stuff!!!
    -Don

----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Leverett
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 6:26 PM
Subject: Re: Old Growth Articles - Distant Thunder & Northern Woodlands


Don:

     Please tell us more. What was learned from the survey?

Bob

-------------------------------
reply sent Jan 18, 2003

Bob-
From the first year I wandered about the North Rim forests, I intuited two things...one, that ponderosa pines had dominated all of the north rim in the past (even in the spruce-fir zone, where few if any ponderosa remain)...and two, that young white fir had been invading the mid-elevation ponderosa pine forest type.

Eventual viewing of palynological records from nearby sites supports the first observation. And our meta-analysis supports the latter.

As our analysis will be soon assembled for publication, I can't rely pre-release details.   I can tell you that our 1935 National Park Service vegetation inventory (through our own Bureau of Forestry!, no longer active) may be the most complete, spatially diverse Southwestern vegetation dataset. One of our archeologists located this dataset in our collections archive, showing that multiple lines of inquiry is the key to more fully establishing reference conditions.
-Don
Multiple Lines of Inquiry    dbhguru
   Jun 22, 2003 09:19 PDT 
Don:

    Your observation: "showing that multiple lines of inquiry is the key to more fully establishing reference conditions", is especially relevant in attempts to reconstruct conditions of a prior time where hard data are not available. I once perused a set of vegetation maps produced at the University of Massachusetts by students under the supervision of a well known professor. The maps covered areas with which I have great familiarity. While the species identifications were correct, forest structural features were not. Additionally, I have often observed CFI plots and wondered who set up the specific transects. The choice of precise locations is seldom as random as study designs call for. In the case of several of the CFI plots, outcomes would have been very different had the transect been relocated just a few yards. A relocation would have resulted in plots more representative of the specific areas in which the transect are located. My point is that these two sources used for their data can lead to inaccurate pictures. One needs to know what measures and descriptions are reliable and which ones aren't. Unfortunately, this is far from easy as witnessed by the very different views researchers and historians have of the forest primeval.

    Chasing down big trees low these many years has made me keenly aware of the very different views that amateurs and professionals alike hold about forest composition and its structural features past and present. I know well what are the prevailing views of the eastern forest, but views/opinions about the forests of the Rocky Mountains zone of even 100 years ago is foggy. The colored perceptions of different constituencies with vested interests doesn't help. I'd be inclined to put a lot of stock in the observations of early survey parties, but don't read many accounts. Have you come across accounts of the pre-European settlement forests of the Rocky Mtn west other than what is in Bonnicksen's book? I find the latter very useful and interesting, but not completely authoritative in the sense of resolving the questions about the composition and 'health' of pre-settlement forests.

Bob
Re: Multiple Lines of Inquiry    Don Bertolette
   Jun 22, 2003 18:43 PDT 
Bob-
Re "accounts of the pre-European settlement forests of the Rocky Mtn west", there's a very interesting read called "Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares..." which is an excellent example of researching 'multiple lines of inquiry', as applied to the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. I believe that the lady author was a doctoral candidate at the time of her publication, and her research sound...she went on to provide a reasonable account of how the USFS (at least in Eastern Oregon) ended up where it is...
Her accounts of the impact of grazing (sheep and cattle) and how quick the range was decimated is at least as disheartening as the rapacious behavior of other commodity extractors otherwise known as pioneers...
Re Bonnicksen, I'm still meaning to check out some of his citations...
-Don