| Woodruff,
WI and Colonial Point, MI trip reports |
Don
Bragg |
| Jul
22, 2006 09:55 PDT |
ENTS--
This is the second part of the report of the trip I recently
made to the
northern Lake States. The last report, on Spring Mill State Park
in
Indiana, was actually the last site I visited to measure big
trees. The
first site I visited (with my father) was actually just
southeast of the
town of Woodruff, Wisconsin along highway 47 in the American
Highlands/Northern Legion State Forest. As you approach Woodruff
along
this highway, you enter an impressive stand of second-growth
eastern
white and red pine that arose following the extensive logging of
the
area in the late 1800s. This stand has experienced some
windthrow in
recent years, and has been thinned over the decades, but still
has a
fair amount of nice pine timber on it. The stands (there are
many acres
of this kind of timber along the highway) are on pitted outwash
and
ground moraines that would typically be northern hardwood sites
(there
are abundant sugar maple in the understory, as well as other
flora that
make the sites of the mesic Acer-Tsuga-Dryopteris habitat type).
However, the abundance of pine, northern red oak, aspen, and
birch in
the overstory hint at the severe logging and (probable)
extensive
burning that followed.
The site I visited was about a 1/4 mile down Timberlane Road off
of
state highway 47, picked for convenience of access more than
anything.
The white and red pine are a substantial component of the
overstory,
forming a supercanopy, with a mixture of other hardwoods
(primarily
maples, birches, and aspens) and conifers (mostly balsam fir,
white
spruce, and some eastern hemlock) forming the bulk of the canopy
and
midstory. The understory is dominated by patches of beaked
hazel, maple
(red and sugar), and balsam fir. None of the trees are huge,
although
they are classic representations of the "Northwoods":
Species: DBH(in) CBH(ft) SineHT(ft)
Red pine 22.9 6.0 92.5
n. red oak 25.0 6.6 86.5
n. red oak 25.6 6.7 83.6
e. white pine 29.4 7.7 109.0
e. white pine 30.5 8.0 104.2
beaked hazel 0.9 0.2 14
(estimated)
red maple -- -- 82.5
e. white pine 34.2 8.9 110.6
e. white pine 34.1 8.9 108.4
quaking aspen 14.4 3.8 82.1
The quaking aspen was nothing special--just accessible along the
road.
I could have picked up a number of other species, but the bugs
were
getting bad, and I needed to get my dad back to town. While the
hardwoods may be topping out on this site for their height,
there was
little evidence that the pines had maxed out, given their
relative youth
and vigor of their growing tips (still showing plenty of apical
dominance).
The next day, while traveling through my hometown of
Rhinelander, I
decided to stop and measure a large eastern cottonwood in the
yard of a
local business. I had passed this tree almost daily growing up,
and
always meant to get out and take a closer look, but never did
until this
day:
Species: DBH(in) CBH(ft) SineHT(ft)
E. cottonwood 63.3 16.6 94.9
This tree was over just 8 feet shorter than the tangent height
(103.0
ft) calculated by the default height program used by the laser
rangefinder--further confirmation of the value of the sine
method.
We left the following day to visit my in-laws in lower Michigan.
After
a pleasant drive across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we
drove to a
parcel owned by the University of Michigan just east of the town
of
Pellston in the northern Lower Peninsula. This site is part of
the
University of Michigan's Biological Station, and is called the
"Wells
Plot" after someone who had studied it some years ago. I
remember that
as an undergraduate student worker, we used this stand in a
study of a
developing radar technology, and I had been impressed by the
size of the
bigtooth aspen. The Wells Plot is on a large moraine that drops
off
into outwash to the east and west. The large, 90+ year old aspen
on the
mesic (northern hardwood site) moraine quickly grade into
shorter and
more stunted timber as you head east along the road into
progressively
harsher sites (heavy till soils to deep, coarse outwash sands).
The
aspen in the worst sites are the same age as those on the
moraines, but
are perhaps only 1/3 of the height:
Species: DBH(in) CBH(ft) SineHT(ft)
bigtooth aspen 24.7 6.5 98.5
(probably short)
bigtooth aspen 16.0 4.2 104.2
bigtooth aspen 22.7 5.9 99.4
A dense mid- and understory of American beech and sugar maple
limited
the number of trees I tried to measure. I recall measuring aspen
>30
inches DBH in this stand in the early 1990s, and I'm sure some
are still
around (I just didn't find any). I would be that some aspen on
this
site are over 105 ft, and may exceed 110 ft. Some of the aspen
have
begun to die, making it hard to move through parts of the stand.
There
are a few scattered large trees of other species mixed in the
stand, but
I did not attempt to measure any of them at this stage.
The final stop on our trip to lower Michigan was not far from
this aspen
stand, and was another stand I remember fondly from my
undergraduate
days. Colonial Point Memorial Forest is just under 300 acres of
remnant
old-growth owned by the University of Michigan on the shores of
Burt
Lake (one of numerous, very large natural lakes in this touristy
area of
Michigan). This parcel had been privately owned for most of its
history, and was owned by a local sawmill and slated for logging
until
local interest and the willingness of the landowners allowed for
the
land to be acquired by the university with very little logging
done on
it. It is a hardwood dominated stand, primarily maple (red and
sugar,
but mostly red), American beech, ash (primarily white), and
northern red
oak. There are scattered supercanopy eastern white pines, and
some
large eastern hemlocks in the stand as well.
Species: DBH(in) CBH(ft) SineHT(ft)
bigtooth aspen 25.6 6.7 103.2
red maple 38.0 9.9 110.0
n. red oak 32.5 8.5 98.3
red maple 44.9 11.8 108.5
(an underestimate)
e. white pine 28.2 7.4 113.3
e. white pine 34.8 9.1 --
white ash 26.5 6.9 100.6
(likely an underestimate)
n. red oak 35.3 9.2 96.4
Am. basswood 23.7 6.2 --
white ash 21.0 5.5 92.1
eastern hemlock 34.9 9.1 --
(dead top)
American beech 24.2 6.3 82.5
Though not nearly as impressive as hardwood forests in the
southeast,
given its favorable site conditions and age, this stand has the
potential to have some of the tallest hardwoods in the northern
Lake
States. I was only able in the little bit of time I had to
measure a
handful of trees over a few acres at the entrance to the forest,
so
there are a LOT of big trees yet to be tallied. A dense
understory of
beech and maple also complicated height measurements. I would
guess
that virtually all overstory hardwoods at Colonial Point will
easily
exceed 100 ft, and that red maples between 110 and 120 ft will
be found.
There are definitely taller American beech, white ash, and
American
basswood that I measured. I'm pretty sure hemlock will also
exceed 100
ft in this stand, and eastern white pine will probably exceed
120 ft. I
will definitely be coming back to this stand!!
Don
*****************
Don Bragg, Ph.D.
Research forester
***************** |
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