Big thank you to Eric for a great presentation on reforestation on day 3. Much appreciated by everyone.

Day 4 was a trip out to the Five Rivers area in the Lobster Creek Valley where Mike Newton has a young 2nd thinning stand just recently harvested.

We started out day 4 with Jessica leading the group in some team building exercises including a group human knot untying drill

Afterwards we had a team field trial on tree height measurements and a field demonstration on the use of cruising prisms. Back to the classroom for snacks and a discussion on thinning management and variable plot sampling. We wanted to get right back to the field so it was off to the vans and a trip out west to the Five Rivers area where we got to Mike’s stand. Once situated we made our way to one of the remaining log decks for a quick briefing, another trail on tree heights and then the students were turned loose for a 20 minute observation walk. On returning we discussed their findings including the large amount of forked tops, several students quickly noted the evenness of planting and spacing, the amount of dead limbs still remaining, etc.

The stand is a 35 year-old planted Douglas-fir stand in it’s second thinning. Heights were a mind-boggling 115-120 feet with as much as 4′-5′ inter-node lengths. Very impressive growth.

Students then went out to cruise the stand using both a fixed plot that included stump measurements and variable plot for stand and tree volume estimates. Stump diameters were matched with DBH to use later to build a stump diameter to DBH relationship for reconstruction of the stand pre-thinning.

 Increment cores were taken to examine growth responses

Afterwards we met back at the log decks to examine the cut ends of the logs remaining. Logs showed a very clear response to opening up the stand in each thinning and students were able to examine the stand response pre-thinning as growth rings slowed and then accelerated following the post harvest.