ENTS Big Tree Listing

ENTS Big Tree Listing

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TOPIC: ENTS Big Tree Listing
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/8117ec17c96446bc?hl=en
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== 2 of 8 ==
Date: Tues, May 6 2008 12:02 pm
From: doncbragg@netscape.net

ENTS--

There is definitely a need in the scientific community for the maximum dimensions of trees to be accurately measured and available for use.? The use of champion tree data to help certain aspects of research programs can be quite pervasive, even if not well recognized.? For example, a lot of forest simulation models (the popular gap models, for instance) define parts of their optimal growth equations using species-specific maximum heights and diameters.? A number of height models use champion tree heights as an asymptote to fix the upper height possibilities of a species, while other models use parameters like maximum tree age to define response functions.? I believe the evidence is strong that we can use champion trees to help better define the shape of height:/diameter functions that are used in many vegetation simulators.? Other issues related to relative tree size include the ecological role of supercanopy species (e.g., eastern white pine) in managed landscapes, or vertical structure of forests and their relationship to ecosystem function, etc.? Most people using the champion tree data do not likely pay close attention to the source of the data, and its reliability.? This, in turn, could have dramatic results on the outcomes of their simulations.

The first thing I noticed about the most recent National Register of Big Trees is the number of ENTS-nominated trees that are on the list.? I think it's great that at least some of these trees have reliable measurements.? The next thing I noticed was that there are still major problems with the AF register--Will highlighted a great example with that picture of a multi-stemmed northern whitecedar.? To me, this does seem to suggest that ENTS may have something of incredible value to offer the public (scientific or otherwise).? Exactly how this arises, and how it can/should be implemented is up for debate within ENTS.? However, as editor of the Bulletin of the ENTS, I will be willing to work with whatever arises, once it is formally defined and accepted.

Don

p.s.:? For those that recently submitted trees to the AF register, note that it can take a couple years to see them appear in print and on their website--if I understand the process right, they issue a new register once every two years, and if you miss their publication deadline, it could be a while...it took about 2 years for the champ shortleaf pine I sent them to appear...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don C. Bragg, Ph.D.
Research Forester
USDA Forest Service
Southern Research Station
DonCBragg@netscape.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The opinions expressed in this message are my own, and not necessarily those of the Southern Research Station, the Forest Service, or the USDA.

== 4 of 8 ==
Date: Tues, May 6 2008 5:47 pm
From: "Will Blozan"

Bob,

Considering this NRBT issue is pretty lacking in supporting even their own
criteria I think you may be on to something. A spicebush I nominated the
LAST day of the nomination deadline made it in yet the utterly huge "Laurel
Branch Leviathan" hemlock that Jess Riddle found and nominated long before
mine did not. I don't know if they know what they are doing or which hand
knows what the other is doing. I could probably spend a day up there in DC
and straighten things out pretty well. I'd toss the multi-stems out first
and then any tree over the ENTS maxima for the eastern species. I'd get an
ENTS measurer to measure it. And first and foremost take the "red hickory"
off the list that is one of the most gorgeous bitternuts I have ever seen.
Blah, blah, blah.

It just isn't worth it though. TNRBT is NOT a repository of accurate,
credible tree dimensions even though it is cited as such. That is
unfortunate but we know better. Sure, ENTS should get as many trees on there
as possible but the fact is the legitimate trees we measure will soon be
dethroned by a 200 foot dogwood somewhere that will remain unchallenged by
AF. At the very least our TDI maxima should be the end-all authoritative
ruler to their nominations. I have personally requested offering this
"service" to them but obviously it was not considered.

We have to do our own list, no question.

Will

== 8 of 8 ==
Date: Tues, May 6 2008 5:04 pm
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

Don,

I like the way you talk, i.e. "ENTS should pull out all stops on accuracy issues! ". We have made that our slogan, our motto, so we need to make sure that we live up to our talk.

Bob

== 6 of 8 ==
Date: Tues, May 6 2008 6:46 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

Don,

We had a list of tree height maximums that was maintained by Colby Rucker before he died. Since then no one else has stepped forward to take up the challenge of constantly updating list of tell, fat, or big trees. I don't have time to do it, and we have not had any volunteers to do it.

Ed

== 5 of 8 ==
Date: Wed, May 7 2008 6:08 am
From: doncbragg@netscape.net

Ed/ENTS--

Surely some of our more recently retired ENTS are looking for something to fill that gap that work once filled--any takers?

Don

== 6 of 8 ==
Date: Wed, May 7 2008 8:15 am
From: James Parton

ENTS,

I think us doing our own big tree list and keep it updated would be a
good idea. Not to compete with the AF one but to keep an accurate one
for ourselves.

JP

== 7 of 8 ==
Date: Wed, May 7 2008 9:45 am
From: zacstew@bellsouth.net

Ed and others,

I apologize for my lack of participation in the past several months (I have had very little to contribute, so I have just let the pros discuss things without my input) , but I must mention that for a while now I have been searching through the Field Trip reports on the ENTS website and keeping a personal list of the largest measured trees of all species that I could find on the site, thus updating the old list from November 2004. Given time, I could probably help update the list if I was instructed on what to do.

- Zac

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, May 7 2008 8:07 pm
From: James Parton

Lowland Larry!

Cool, Your experience in documenting Live Oaks & Baldcypress would
make you a good choice at this. Let's see what you can do!

James P.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: An ENTS Register of Big Trees?
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/484c2b9544fb04c7?hl=en
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Thurs, May 8 2008 8:25 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

Zac,

Nice to hear from you. You should post more often. I don't know what will happen with an ENTS list of Big Trees. You have expressed an interest in the list and so has Larry Tucei.

Zac and Larry,

I have a spreadsheet with all of the species found in eastern US on the Files page of the Google List site. For a maximum list we would need to keep the tree that has the greatest girth, the tree with the greatest height, I would like to see average crown spread but we have so few collecting that data. As for volume, the best thing at this point would be to list all of the trees with volume measurements as there are still relatively few of them. It would be good to list the top several for each species in each category.

The model used by Colby on the 2003 listing could be used, one for height one for girth...

Ed

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Thurs, May 8 2008 8:59 pm
From: Larry

Ed, Thanks for the spreadsheet on the file page. Wow, Colby spent a
lot of time with his listing I hope I can pick up where he left off.
Maybe Zac and myself can team up and work together, and or along with
anyone else that wishes to help. ENTS should discuss the listing
more, with everyone and figure out what we want do. Larry

== 2 of 7 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 6:06 am
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

Don,

Excellent points. I especially support your point that "(sine method and tape drops/direct height pole measurements) should be acceptable. Our whole measuring effort to clean up the tree dimension record shouldn't be diluted by including dubious heights.

Bob

== 3 of 7 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 6:08 am
From: "Bruce Allen"

Larry, Don,

Data collected should include both spatial and temporal information as well.

Bruce

Bruce P. Allen
West Chester, OH 45069
513-779-3360
http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?osu1179427491
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/lianas.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289966,00.html
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2007/07/19/co2_may_cause_increased_vine_growth/4434/

== 4 of 7 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 6:08 am
From: Larry

Don, I agree 100%, thanks I'm sure I'll need your assistance and
imput. Larry

== 5 of 7 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 11:31 am
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Larry/Don/et al-
Would this be a good time to re-consider appropriate levels of information security?
-DonRB

== 6 of 7 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 5:56 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

Don,

I would like to see the tree location information as it would appear on the website to be state, and either county, town, or park. GPS information should be compiled for all of the biggest trees, but should not be published on the website. My opinion.

Ed

== 7 of 7 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 7:55 pm
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Ed-
Agreed, although Park maybe too specific, but it's the right idea!-DonRB

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 8:01 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

I was thinking in terms of big national parks GSMNP or Congaree, as opposed to small city parks in the park category. if the data is too generalized it is of no use to anyone.

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 8:14 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

Don,

For the most part I think listing state parks like Cook Forest or Mohawk Trail is specific enough to be useful, but general enough to not endanger the specimens. I doubt that someone with a mindset such as the arsonists of the Webster Sycamore would take the required effort an time to locate a specific tree in a relatively large park to harm if it were not easily accessible, pointed out to them, or was not one of sufficient notoriety to make their efforts noteworthy.

Ed

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Fri, May 9 2008 10:12 pm
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Ed-
I'd sure hope so...our East High bored kids that caused$140K of vandalism won't do any jail time or even service time, our Service High kids who superglued ALL locks, preventing entrance/exit from the school will get wrist-slapped...not sure we're sending the right message...
-DonRB

== 2 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 6:29 am
From: Ed_Frank

Larry,

We need to be sure we get the tree or trees with the largest girths
for each species even if they are not in the top tier of tal trees,
because that data is needed to to the TDI (Tree Dmension Index)
Listings. I want to see a lsting of average crown spreads as wedll
even though the data is limited. Jess Riddle di a nice start on ths
process in a spreadsheet of his data updated through Dec 2005. I
liked his format also

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/measure/tdi/jess_max_list1.htm

Maybe the site location information is too detailed? What do people
think? I like your ideas Larry.

Ed

== 3 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 6:54 am
From: pabigtrees

Ed, Ents

Maximum spread should be used, not average, with the TDI, correct?

Scott

== 4 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 7:04 am
From: pabigtrees

Ents

I had offered to list the Pa tree height champs on the Pa Big Tree
website when talking to Dale a bit ago. I still intend to do that.
Just haven't made the time. Another good rain day like yesterday will
provide the time.

Scott

== 5 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 7:14 am
From: "Edward Frank"

Scott,

That was a matter still under debate when the arguments trailed off with TDI. I was on the side of average crown spread. I felt, and still do, that crown spread dimension was being used to characterize a cross sectional area or shape rather than as a single linear dimension. A value such as height should be characterized by the maximum dimension, while spread is to represent the cross-sectional area of the crown not a simple measurement of how ;lopsided the tree may be. In that regard the same is true of tree girth, but tree trunks are rarely as wildly asymmetrical as the crown, so a single value is Ok if not perfect to represent the cross-sectional area of the trunk. A second point is that the trunk is being measured around its entire girth and not being represented by its maximum diameter dimension. If crown spread were being measured as a girth rather than a "maximum diameter or maximum crown spread" it would be more representative. Average crown spread is a better way to characterize the cross-sectional area of the crown that the single largest dimension.

I know you have opted to use maximum crown spread for you PA Big Tree Listing. It bothers me a lot that a steeply leaning tree may exaggerate its maximum crown spread in the direction of the lean that it is not representative the actual bulk of the trees crown. In asymmetrical crowns using the maximum dimension basically "counts" the areas of the crown that are not there in the short spread direction.

Ed

== 8 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 7:56 am
From: Beth Koebel

Larry, Ed, and ENTS,

Every tree that I measure I take the height, girth ,
and location. For at least 80% of them I also take
the crown measurement. Unless I'm deep in the woods,
were most of us are, and the trees have leaved out I
turn on my GPS unit and then go about taking my
measurements and the last thing I get is the location.

Beth

== 9 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 8:08 am
From: "Paul Jost"

I would think that you would list the max spread and the spread at a
normal/right angle to is so that you could create either an ENTS TDI or an
AmFor score...

== 11 of 12 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 2:32 pm
From: Larry

Ed,
Jess Riddles format looks pretty good. Larry

Here are some map view drawings of the crown of several idealized trees:

Which tree do you think has the biggest crown? In my way of looking at it tree A has the largest crown, but it is a distant third if the crown is measured by maximum spread. The purpose of measuring trees is to characterize their size, not to manipulate measurements to generate arbitrary numbers. Using average crown spread for the size of the crown is the best way to characterize the cross-sectional area of the crown. That is the value I believe we should be using in our ENTS measurements. Can anyone honestly say that in the examples above that maximum spread is a more realistic representation of the size of the crown than average spread? This is where the logic disconnect seems to have occurred with the argument that "since we are using the maximum height we should use maximum spread." Crown spread is meant to represent an area rather than a linear dimension. If you can't honestly say that in the above examples maximum spread better characterizes the size of the crown, then we should use average spread which does.

Edward Frank

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 8:38 pm
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Ed-
I don't know if this helps, but much of the work done by those in remote sensing/aerial photogrammetry involves crowns in the context of crown cover. This puts the crown in two dimensions from an 'unearthly' perspective, and would be appropriately measured in terms of units squared of area...meters, feet, inches, etc., usually up to a maximum of 100% crown cover for a fairly dense forest. Forest ecologists don't do too much in the way of remote sensing, typically, and see the crown cover from the perspective of the ground (dendrometers laid on ground)...and view the crowns in a three-dimensional perspective, so that with multiple 'stories', i.e., understory, overstory in the most simplistic stand like Ponderosa Pine/grasses, to that of multiple stories...such that there can be a cumulative total of greater than 100%.

In the above scenarios, it wouldn't matter if the crowns were 75 foot of a hundred foot eastern hemlock or a hypothetically thin crown of 1 yard thickness.

So the question that comes to mind is, what would we be trying to measure, when we are looking at a trees crown? Speaking for myself, if I'm thinking champion tree, I'm thinking champion crown, in breadth, height, essentially volume, as if a very big shrinkwrap guy wrapped the crown for shipping...the volume that 'shrinkwrap' contained would be in units cubed.

But to my knowledge, ENTS doesn't take measurements of bottom of crown, just top of crown.

When I was modeling fire area growth, we first had to provide the model with data input, and our sampling included height from base to crown bottom, and height from base to crown top . Next field was computation of crown height, which allowed computations of volume of foliage. Over an entire stand or forest, we'd accept research standard averages per species, but we'd collect species percents in mixed forest (eg, in a mythical 100% crown cover stand of 35% pine, 25% white fir, 25% douglas fir, and 15% aspen). Since we were "burning" volumes of foliage, and knowing fuel moisture....

You get the idea...I don't know if ENTS needs to, or wants to, collect height to crown base. But surely ENTS wouldn't be getting crown spread, or crown spread averages, just because American Forests does...collect the base data that is required to derive future desired data, and if it includes (likely it would) AF crown dimensions, fine...

Hmmmm, probably no help at all, sorry if I mucked things up...
-DonRB

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 8:51 pm
From: "Edward Frank"

Don,

Some time ago Bob Leverett posted a list of parameters that could or should be measured for a tree if it were to be done thoroughly. I am working on something about crown volume to post sometime this summer. To break down a tree into just three measurements is simplistic, but I think that average crown spread is the most basic of crown measurements that can be taken. It can be measured by anyone with minimal equipment. In uses like TDI where we want to compare a large number of trees, I think average crown spread is the most useful of the easy to measure parameters to include. Once you start looking at crown density, crown thickness, crown shape in 3D, the number of measurements becomes overwhelming and impractical to measure on every tree. Average crown spread as measured either by intersecting right angle diameters or as a series of radial splays can be measured fairly quickly and therefore is more likely to be done for a larger number of trees. I would like to see more detailed measurements of the crowns of exceptional trees, but getting basic crown spread info on larger numbers of trees also provides useful information.

Ed

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Sat, May 10 2008 9:07 pm
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Ed-
If ENTS does restrict itself to crown spread, it should be with established protocol, such that for example, the crown spread is measured on 17-107-197-257 cardinal bearing axis (choose a number, but stick with it, so that there is a statistical chance for randomness...;>}
-DonRB

== 2 of 3 ==
Date: Sun, May 11 2008 6:02 am
From: Larry

Ed, Bob, Don,
ENTS,
Your illustration of Crowns was a great example,in my opion the Avg.
Spread should be used. In the Live Oak I use Max. crown because these
crowns are always round. As are many Oaks are, however there are lots
of trees that have irregular crowns, conifers, etc. It would be
great to get the crown volume if time permits, just my thoughts.
Larry

== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Sun, May 11 2008 7:07 am
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

ENTS,

There is reason to record both maximum crown spread and average crown spread for champion trees. Going beyond to compute crown volume is a doozy of an undertaking, but I'm game to participate in an exercise to develop a measurement protocal. With my TruPulse 360, I'm probably in the second best postion to work on the problem. Those with Impulse Lasers are in the best position.

Bob

== 2 of 3 ==
Date: Mon, May 12 2008 9:23 am
From: dbhguru@comcast.net

Don,

Excellent undertaking. Thanks. You da man! Let me know if I can be of assistance. I'm pretty proficient with MS Access to include the ability to develop programmed solutions in the underlying Visual Basic of Applications language, which is built into MS Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc. I don't know if you are aware, but I taught computer programming within several area colleges over a period of 24 years (retired now) to include FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, various versions of BASIC to include Visual BASIC, which is my preferred language, and various dialects of SQL. I also did a little in C. I developed specialized solutions in the medical field using VB for the medical field for a 10 year period. In the distant past I programmed a little in machine language (binary) and its symbolic equivalent, assembly language. Nobody in his/her right mind does that anymore.
The area of programming that I have neglected is Internet programming with metalanguages that combine traditional computer logic structures with specification structures and Internet-peculiar protocals and communications. At my stage in life, I'm not inclined to want to exapnd into that area, but so long as we stay within the domain of Access, I would be most happy to assist you as you feel the need.

Bob

== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Mon, May 12 2008 9:41 am
From: Chris Morris

I don't know what type of website hosting ENTS has, but you may be able
to get or already have a mysql database installed....

- Chris M.

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