Forest management plan

[Donn Hewes]

Attached is a copy of a draft forest management plan. Realize that this was written by someone (me) who has never even seen one before much less written one. My motives are first to let others help me better define my goals. Second, we purchased this farm from a couple that still live here. As terms of our agreement they have some input in terms of new construction and commercial logging. This would allow me to explain my intentions.

One obvious short coming is there is no estimate of standing board feet or cords of fire wood. Any suggestions are welcome. I hope to take some pictures to go with it. After the holidays I plan to meet with the folks from the conservation district that help land owners make management plans.

[Does’ Leap]

Donn, as an aside, there is TSI money available through the Natural Resources Conservation Service under their EQIP program. We have also received cost sharing EQIP money for fencing, watering systems, septic for our cheese operation, stream crossings, and more. It is worth checking out regarding your forest plan – might help fund some equipment for your new logging endeavor.

George

[Carl Russell]

Donn, this looks like a good start. I like how you describe the land. I think it is more important to measure stand density than standing volume. It helps keep the focus on how well trees are growing, rather than how much timber there is to cut.

I’ll attach the plan for our farm. It includes a lot of “forestry” terminology, and methods, but these are not beyond you, you may just need to bone up on a few new concepts.
Below are some good books that I recommend to landowners I work with (because I focus more on landowner forestry education than acting as a hired manager). They are written for the lay-person and landowner, promoting the information necessary for someone to take responsibility for stewarding their own forestland.

Common Sense Forestry by Hans Morsbach. Chelsea Green Publishing Co., POB 428, WR Jct., VT 05001 800-639-4099

Low Impact Forestry by Mitch Lansky. I don’t have the book in front of me so I can’t tell you who publishes it

Woodland Ecology;Environmental Forestry for the Small Owner by Leon S. Minckler.Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY 13210. If this book is out of print, I’ll lend it to you, it’s good.

A Natural History of TREES of Eastern and Central North America by Donald Culross Peattie.Houghton Mifflin Co. 2 Park St., Boston MA 02108.
This book is not a forestry book per se, but an especially wonderful book of description of all of the trees natural to our forests. I love not only the style of prose, but that these species are introduced in a way that allows you to understand them for the contributions they make to the forest and to humans.

Also, I don’t have an electronic copy of my map, but that is an important component of any plan.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Here is the map. It is printed on 11×14 paper, so you can’t get title/legend details or north arrow, but they are also important for clear interpretation.

Carl

[Donn Hewes]

Thanks Carl, My Favorite part of what I am doing these days is the fact that it involves so much learning. The books look great. Talk to you soon, Donn

[LStone]

This is going to be a great thread Donn. I am going through exactly the same stage of the process as you are now. I will post more on this thread of what I am doing and how I am going about it later when I get to my other machine. Carl those books look like great references and you can bet your last dollar they go on my Christmas list.

Thank you,

Larry

[Gabe Ayers]

Leon Minckler retired at Va. Tech. He was my forestry mentor, in my mind anyway.

Once many years ago he told me after hearing my little presentation about horse logging, that he would support it – with all his heart ~ but if he ever caught me high grading, that he was going to get me with a high hazard or a falling limb, for taking the best. The implication being that he was going to remain in the forest in a spiritual sense as a ghost/spirit in the woods. We have had several drinks by that time of the evening at a party in his honor.

He loved the woods.

I think he said something like: “If Forester’s would take their job seriously they could be some of the most influential players on the survival of the the planet…. that was about 40 years ago – or something to that effect, I am paraphrasing from an old memory, but the point is that the forest is a critical part of our ecosystem and that it’s life support value alone should guarantee and earn the best care.

Now the challenge is to make the work pay for the services of the folks that actually do it. Do it, meaning provide the best care of the forest.

You definitely have to have a forest management plan to apply for the Federal programs, but I think you can write it yourself. It is a neat to work with the woods outside the Department of Forestry. Call you NRCS guy and asked about getting enrolled on the programs that he thinks can help you achieve you goals as stated in your forest management plan.

This may vary from state to state.

We share no finer teachers than the forest and an animal ~ horse/mule/oxen.

Still in the snow here…with a dam freezing rain ice storm forecast for Christmas eve night….

~

[LStone]

Donn,
I read your plan and I understand what you are trying to do and how you are going to get there. As I posted the other day I am going through the same thing at my place. I am trying for the “green” certification of the American Tree Farm System. On there Website they have a template sample.
http://www.treefarmsystem.org/ATFSManagementPlanTemplateandPreamble.pdf
I had a plan started in the same format as you do and broke it apart to fit in this and I found it to to be more helpful for me to understand the whole intent of the document but I don’t think it is necessary. I have spoken with a lot of people and it seems to prevail that a valid plan is what it is and it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. It is expected that from time to time that goals and objectives may change and the plan may need tweeking to accomodate those changes. Methods and treatments may also change from time to time as well. So this plan should be a living changing document and really is never finished.

I am attaching my inccomplete rough draft also since you shared yours with us. Good luck and Merry Christmas to all.

[LStone]

I met with the county forester yesterday. He was a lot of help to me pointing further down the road toward my end goal which is green certification in the American Tree Farm System. In my opinion I am not close yet though. It appears I have to do more ( a lot more) work on the documentation of my woodlot or a tract map. I have to pay more attention to accurizing the acerage and descriptions of my tracts. I think I can handle the wording to meet these requirements. But I was just wondering, I have a survey map with topographic and boundaries, internal landmarks and soil types. I also have an overhead view of the lot using google earth website but that is not accurate to any scale. nor do I have anyway to accuratley draw the tract boundaries that I am making after the fact. I think what he is looking for is a continuos kind of overlay plan all on the same scale. Is there any kind of user friendly shareware out there or maybe other good websites that you forresters may be familiar with to illustrate these types of requirements and tie them all together? It seems like this is the part of the management plan where paying a forrestor to do it would be worth the investment. Since I am familiar with going back to the drawing board a second or third time to get things right I am going to try again. but maybe to complete it I’ll need nelp in getting that piece done.

Thank you,

LStone

[Tim Harrigan]

You need Geographic Informantion system software. I have one that I use often for other purposes but it was not free and I do not know if there is any free stuff out there or not.

[Carl Russell]

In Vermont there is a Mapping Program (agency) that has the entire state on Orthophotos. These are areal photos that have been digitized to correct the differences in landscape so that they can be used as two dimensional maps. Every town in the state has tax maps, with parcels drawn to scale to overlay these Orthophotos. NH has property tax, right? I am surprised the County Forester didn’t tell you where to find these resources. If you google Orthophotographs NH you should get a bead on them. This will get you hard copy….but as Tim said the GIS software is expensive, and there may be a forester in your local that has it.

Anyway, I use the Orthophotos for VT in combination with the town tax maps to get boundary location. I use tracing paper to get stand delineation.

Carl

[Scott G]

At work I use ArcMap. Unfortunately it is a very expensive and large GIS program that is more in line with agencies & consultants.

What I have used at home is Topo which is fairly inexpensive but doesn’t give you an aerial just a quad map.

Google Earth, however, is a wonderful thing. You could, for instance, bring up your property, copy the aerial and use either Google tools or import the image into something simple like MS Paint and manually outline your mgmnt units, trail corridors, forest cover types, etc..

Snowin’ & -15 once again…

[Tim Harrigan]

Check out the Web Soil Survey
http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm

This is a free site maintained by the USDA NRCS. You can get detailed soils information with some really good aerial images. You outline the parcel of interest and get good acreage estimates and you can indicate the map scale you are interested in. You can also request information about land productivity including forest resources. The maps are referenced in UTM coordinates. Really some pretty good stuff if you take the time to learn how to exploit the full capabilities of the site.

The quality of the aerial images vary with location, I just checked a random forest location near Middlebury VT and it was not that great. We have great images for Michigan, mostly farm country here. Good stuff though if you have clear aerials.

[LStone]

Awesome help. Great Ideas and I will check them out. I do have a surveyed plot plan with soil types. I have been on the Google Earth site but I am just learning how to use it to leverage its capabilities. I wasn’t able to manipulate it to my satisfaction. It seems as if it shold be able to do what is needed but I just haven’t picked up on how to do it yet. Maybe I can do this afterall.

LStone

[Gabe Ayers]

We had a meeting with our NRCS folks yesterday for the homeplace here and some farmland that we rent. The aerial photos were amazing. We could count how many horses and cattle were in the pastures……vehicles in the parking lot and all sorts of information, soil types, topo,

If you have a good NRCS person it can be very supportive of fencing, water systems and planning for the farm and forest.

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