Draft Logging Research?

[Carl Russell]

@Baystatetom 38179 wrote:

…… forestry is an art and not just a science……

……we were all agreeing about an issue but for some reason were still compelled to yell about it.
~Tom

One of my mentors would say, “Send seven foresters into the woods, each with a different color paint, and when they came out, every tree would have paint on it of one color or another”.

Carl

[Andy Carson]

@Baystatetom 38179 wrote:

This also reminds me of one time at my Uncles place when I returned home across the field and my wife asked who was fighting. I replied nobody. She then asked why we were all yelling. I just laughed and said we were all agreeing about an issue but for some reason were still compelled to yell about it.

Ha! So true. This made me laugh too.

[Carl Russell]

Adding some texture to this thread, here is a short video that I made to try to highlight some of the factors I have been trying to describe…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-xKt-uaLE8

Hybrid-Power Forestry.m4v

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-xKt-uaLE8

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Carl Russell 38129 wrote:

…..I agree that private landowners have personal objectives, and that is fine, but I think we need to be realistic. You can’t have it both ways. I don’t think we can just accept that some people are willing to make investments to protect ecological principles. If folks make a purely economical decision about timber management then they need to know that they are taking something that may not belong to them……

So in an attempt to get close to some measurable standards, a few months ago I made contact with Resource Economists at UVM to try to quantify the relative loss to the ecosystem by employing financially motivated timber harvesting to implement forestry. After the first of the year I will follow up, and I may be able to work with some of them at the UVM Research Forest to try to address this hypothesis.

Carl

[Andy Carson]

Here’s a link to a youtube video with many images from old growth forests in vermont. I also think that the speaker has interesting points, but he does mention balancing economic and ecological values. It this offends, turn the volume off and just look at the forest. Compare and contrast this with the forest before and after Carls logging video. Science begins with observation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIYmTFZTt3s

Now, compare and contrast these two videos to the conventional logging video posted below. This was also from vermont. Take special note of the “action” that starts at about 1:50, and the wide angle shot at 3:32. How does this forest (before and after) compare to the forests in the other videos?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tKhkV9IFh4

By eye, these are dramatic, obvious differences. It is easy to see which two are most alike. I find it impossible that we cannot find scientific parameters that measure these easy to see differences!

[Tim Harrigan]

This has been a very interesting and informative discussion that I have not had the energy to join. What I find really interesting about forest ecology is the long time scale needed to see the impact of some decisions, how easy it can be to reconstruct events and decisions that took place 50 years ago, and also the immediate response of vegetation to the intervention, usually in my case a harvest or thinning activity. I think we always have some outcome in mind and that clouds our perception of what an ecological disturbance is, and what the net result will be.

The ash problem here is an example of a severe disturbance, but as Carl generally points out, the ecological response is dynamic and self-organizing as new opportunities arise. This sensitivity has caused me to be very observant and careful. It sometimes causes me to work much harder than perhaps necessary because I will drop a tree to an unfavorable lay if it means protecting desirable saplings. The cut ash will regen from stumps, and I hope that means we will once again have ash trees in our forest, but not in my life time to any extent. But then I see where the deer (too many) are browsing heavy on the regen, not only the ash but other favorable species as well, like sugar maple. So I do not see nearly enough desirable regen as I would like. But then I also see the invasive multi-flora rose that Will and I hate, and in many woodlots herbicide treatments are used to eliminate it. But deer don’t like it any more than I do, and what do you know, it protects the shade tolerant species like sugar maple from the browsing deer.

This is just one example and probably not particularly perceptive, but is illustrates that we don’t often have a long-term view, we don’t have perfect understanding or perfect information about how the forest will respond to some of these insults. But I think the approach of treading lightly, observing closely and trying to make the connections between what happens today what the forest will be like 80-100 years from now is a good approach.

Now I just need to get my mind right about box elder.

[near horse]

Tim – a well-made point. When I was a graduate student there was an “argument” put forth that clearcutting, specifically in the Tongass National Forest in SE Alaska, was beneficial to wildlife by increasing food availability – browse for deer, elk, moose. That was true … for about 3-5 yrs at which point the quality browse was beyond reach of most animals. The time frames and long term effects are often overlooked.

Andy – I understand your frustration with not being able to measure or quantify the benefits of draft logging v conventional but I don’t think it’s in ability to measure that’s the fly in the ointment. It’s inability to know (or agree?) what things we desire as outcomes so we can then determine how to measure/collect data etc. For a long time (and in some places even now) it was totally based on timber production (maximizing growth of desirable/marketable species) and that was pretty easy to measure. Once you start trying to take ito account the impacts on a whole ecosystem that is dynamic in its own right, you’ve exponentially increased the complexity of what to measure, how to do it, and for how long.

An example – in 1989 my project was to help determine the carrying capacity for grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park (partly funded by USFS). Shouldn’t be too hard ……. a fixed area defined, figure out the nutritional value of natural foods available, how much of those foods are available in the Park and the nutritional requirements for a grizzly and BANG – Yellowstone should have X number of bears. Over the last 20+ yrs there still has been much debate over what X should be —- bears eat whitebark pine nuts that are in serious decline and are a masting crop. How much importance value (a realterm) does that food get? ……

Not sure if he’s still relevant but Jack Ward Thomas was the guy to read back then —-here’s one of his more recent quotes

“The Forest Service is going to be a leader in ecosystem management,” Thomas once said. “Right now, it’s more a concept than a practice. What does ecosystem management mean? It means thinking on a larger scale than we’re used to. It means sustaining the forest resources over very long periods of time.”

IMO – the question we’re confronted with is: How do we define forest resource? Untilwe can define it, we can’t really measure or manage it.

Sorry about the ramble – some of this was stored away in the dusty areas of my mind.

[Andy Carson]

@near horse 38190 wrote:

Andy – I understand your frustration with not being able to measure or quantify the benefits of draft logging v conventional but I don’t think it’s in ability to measure that’s the fly in the ointment. It’s inability to know (or agree?) what things we desire as outcomes so we can then determine how to measure/collect data etc…. the question we’re confronted with is: How do we define forest resource? Until we can define it, we can’t really measure or manage it.

Well said, Geoff, this is the question indeed… Does anyone have a good answer to this? I don’t…

[near horse]

@Countymouse 38191 wrote:

Well said, Geoff, this is the question indeed… Does anyone have a good answer to this? I don’t…

I think that is the crux of Carl’s point. We need to redefine what constitutes a forest resource. The old definition was too narrow and short-sighted. Unfortunately, just like our energy situation, when many of us have invested in the current system, change will be difficult.

[Baystatetom]

I was in the woods all day today with a paint gun deciding which trees stay and which will be harvested. I had plenty of time to mull things over in my mind and consider this topic. I think I now have a much better understanding of what Carl is calling economy of scale. As I think pro and con I always come back to finance. The only reason to have modern forestry practices and modern high production machinery is finance. We all have to make money. I can’t just change my way of doing things overnight, I would go broke for certain. Like I have always said, I do the best possible job within the circumstances that I have to work with. To make a living and sleep at night knowing I did a good job I have to find the middle ground. Draft animal folks have to find clients that let that middle ground be farther to one side then right in the middle.
~Tom

[Carl Russell]

@Baystatetom 38200 wrote:

……Like I have always said, I do the best possible job within the circumstances that I have to work with. …….~Tom

I know that you do Tom. While I do pass judgement on some of the assumptions in the philosophy that underlays our industry, I don’t take umbrage with the folks who are doing what they can to practice the best forestry they can.

There are realities that govern how we live in the culture we participate in. While I can set ideals, and obviously do, and I am fully aware of their lofty nature which gives me inspiration to raise my sight above the horizon, I work every day on what is right in front of me, and sometimes that is not so pure as my intentions.

I am just throwing out the arguments that I use to support the choices I have made, in case they make sense to others as they consider how to apply animal power to forestry.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@near horse 38192 wrote:

I think that is the crux of Carl’s point. We need to redefine what constitutes a forest resource. The old definition was too narrow and short-sighted. Unfortunately, just like our energy situation, when many of us have invested in the current system, change will be difficult.

Yes…..

In the video clip I posted I highlight a Lady Slipper plant next to my skid trail. This is a “marker” for the infinite minute details that indicate place holders in the forest ecosystem. If we were to seriously try to redefine the “forest resource”, and we accepted that it is the “communities” that populate the place where trees grow (the forest ecosystem), then we would have a huge rabbit hole to tunnel down into.

I understand that is one reason why our current definition is narrowed to trees. Not only are they the economically important component, they are a distinct, measurable, component, which is a prerequisite for scientific analysis. However, I am not sure, and I have questioned this for many years, that we actually have enough time to wait for scientific methods to quantify the complicated nature of an ecosystem.

That is why I argue that a qualitative approach may make more sense. Qualitative evaluation can bring a vast array of “values” together, and at the same time make room for values assigned to unknowns, in a way that science cannot. Breaking an ecosystem apart into measurables denies the existence of interrelationships that support the shared existence of each of those measurable components, which is actually what an ecosystem is.

That is why this is not an easy endeavor. Any success at changing cultural norms, or even success at the personal level of trying to apply draft animals to forestry, is probably going to have to rely on comparable evaluation, personal experience shared with landowners and other loggers and foresters.

Tag……. your it. Pass it on. 😉

Carl

[Rick Alger]

Interesting discussion. It seems to me the crux is how to get paid for providing public goods such as ecological integrity, clean water, sequestered carbon, landscape aesthetics etc. The current marketplace is not going to do it. Maybe BIG GUBMENT should.

[Carl Russell]

@Rick Alger 38213 wrote:

Interesting discussion. It seems to me the crux is how to get paid for providing public goods such as ecological integrity, clean water, sequestered carbon, landscape aesthetics etc. The current marketplace is not going to do it. Maybe BIG GUBMENT should.

Stop paying the going stumpage rate, sell a realistic approach to providing those services, and charge what you deserve…..

Carl

[Rick Alger]

A willing seller needs a willing buyer.

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