Transect 3

From left to right, Mr. Yu from the Guizhou Academy of Forestry, Dr. Mark Ashton, professor of Silviculture at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and our local Miao field assistant, size up the (extremely steep) location selected for transect 3. Dr. Ashton appears unfazed.  [NOTE: The Miao gentleman's t-shirt says Tennessee Titans; Dr. Ashton's t-shirt says dbh and has a white dotted line printed at breast height].

Biltmore Stick (From the Archive)

A Biltmore stick is a simple, inexpensive, and very useful tool for measuring tree heights and diameters. It does the job of a diameter tape and clinometer, at a fraction of the cost, and it can also be used to fight off snakes or clear brush during inventory operations. To function properly, the Biltmore Stick must be custom fitted to the user by first measuring his/her arm length. Based on this measurement, the appropriate height and diameter scales are inscribed on the stick. This is what is being done in the picture. The Biltmore sticks are being made by the participants in a workshop on "Sustainable Management of Oaxaca's Dry Forests" that Silvia Purata (see Alebrijes) and I gave in 2004.

Instructions for making your own Biltmore stick can be found here.

Species Determinations

The critical piece of a forest inventory is assigning the right names (both local and scientific) to the trees that you are counting and measuring. Call things by the wrong name and the data aren't worth much (a fact that is seldom appreciated, unfortunately).  During the recent fieldwork in Guizhou (see First Plot and Counting the Rings), Mr. Yang Chenghua from the Guizhou Forestry Academy (shown above looking through his Checklist of Plant Genera in China) was in charge of making sure that we called things by their right names.

Not only would he write the correct scientific names of all the trees in the field book after each transect:

But he also made Excel spreadsheets with the names of all the associated trees, shrubs, and herbs, that he recorded on each site:

A competent and hard-working botanist. A great guy. And a pleasure to work with. Xie xie, Mr. Yang. [NOTE: He carried that book with him everywhere - rain or shine]. 

First Plot

Field crew lays out the rope for the first plot in the household-use forest transect in Wudong. It is drizzling rain. From left to right: Mr. Yang Chinghua, botanist from the Ghizhou Forest Academy; Yin Jin and Zhiyao Lu, Master's students from Minzu University in Beijing; and Mr. Yu Yong Fu from the Leigongshan Nature Reserve. The transect was a bit steep and slippery in spots, but we counted 81 Cuninghamia lanceolata trees, a few Castanea sequinii stems, and some Prunus sp. The crew did a great job. [NOTE: Mark Ashton and I worked the left and right side of the line (respectively) measuring diameters].

Counting the Rings

Mark Ashton (left), Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture at Yale, and Yang Chenghua (right), botanist at the Guizhou Forestry Academy, count the rings on a large cross section of Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook to estimate its age and growth rate.  This valuable timber species, known locally as "shamu", is used by the Miao to build their houses (see Miao Still Life) and it is widely planted and managed in local forests. We spent the day in the drizzling rain running inventory transects in the forests outside of Wudong to quantify the density and size-class structure of Cunninghamia trees. [NOTE: We got soaked - but we finished 2,000 m² of transects. A good day].  

The Secret Life of Transects

This is what it looks like when you are 2.5 hours walk from a village in a mixed dipterocarp forest of Western Borneo and the transect runs through a recently cleared field, or ladang. The Dayak fellow with the basket on his back in the center of the photo (see Field Assistant) is about 20 m from where we started the plot, i.e. where the two Dayaks are waiting in the foreground - in the shade, and he is getting ready to set a plot stake. I stepped back to take the photo knowing that this plot wouldn't take very long.  Nothing to count or measure here.  Just so you know.

Field Crews

In the early 1990's, I was involved with some extensive forest inventories in the northern part of Sanggau in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.  The sample area was kind of remote and hard to get to, and once you arrived, it was best to just camp out and finish the work.  Which is what three crews of local Dayaks, two cooks,  and I did for eight days. It only rained once. [NOTE: I remember one exceptional day we ran two kilometers of line through mixed Dipterocarp forest on terrain as flat as a football field.  The area, apparently, had never been logged and we didn't record a single stump.]  

Wet Feet

During the forest inventory work at Kikori (see Living on a Log Raft and Chain of Custody), the tide would occasionally catch us in the middle of a transect and we had to count and measure trees in water up to our waist.  The villager on the left is estimating tree height with a clinometer, while his colleague on the right has measured back 20 meters from the sample tree with a fiberglas tape. Kind of fun, actually, although I always worried about snakes. [NOTE: The main problem was keeping my camera out of the water.  Most of the time, it and the clipboard with the tally sheets were balanced on top of my head].

Camera Shy

This little guy had good handwriting and was really careful recording the data from the forest inventory.  Very serious and focused...until he saw me with the movie camera.

Biltmore Stick

A Biltmore stick is a simple, inexpensive, and very useful tool for measuring tree heights and diameters. It does the job of a diameter tape and clinometer, at a fraction of the cost, and it can also be used to fight off snakes or clear brush during inventory operations. To function properly, the Biltmore Stick must be custom fitted to the user by first measuring his/her arm length. Based on this measurement, the appropriate height and diameter scales are inscribed on the stick. This is what is being done in the picture. The Biltmore sticks are being made by the participants in a workshop on "Sustainable Management of Oaxaca's Dry Forests" that Silvia Purata (see Alebrijes) and I gave in 2004.

Instructions for making your own Biltmore stick can be found here.