FOREST HEALTH LAB REPORT 1

Forest Health Lab Report

Ivan Mendoza

The Greene School

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Introduction

The purpose of the lab is to find out whether or not the TGS campus is healthy or not. To

see whether or not a part of a forest is healthy, you have to check out the woody debris, ground

cover, and examine the trees. The reasoning for woody debris was to see if the amount dead trees

and woody debris that remains in woodlands are being used as a recycling nutrient resource in

the wood and providing food and habitat for a wide range of organisms that hopefully improving

the biodiversity. For the ground cover, it is to see what is covering the ground. Dead branches,

leaves, and wood logs on the ground was signs of the life in any forest. Lastly, tree surveys is to

look at the different species of trees on the plots we did and count which trees are healthy,

unhealthy, or dead.

In this lab, we are examining woody debris, ground cover, and surveying the trees to see

if our school’s campus is healthy or not. What we had to do is go into the woods near the pond at

TGS and look at what is on the ground, what trees are alive or dead, and the woody debris on

two plots we were assigned to. With this information, we should be able to find out that the plots

are healthy and diverse. Throughout the 100 meters, we split it into four transects to find out how

many trees are healthy, what is covering the ground, and what makes the soils by slowing

downslope movement of organic matter and mineral soil. If we look at the plots to see if the the

plots are healthy, then we should see a good amount of life and biodiversity of trees and ground

covers.
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Forest Lab Report

Materials and Method

Materials

● 100 meter measuring tape.

● Prism.

● Baltimore stick.

Method

At first, we were assigned a certain spot on campus out in the woods. In this part of the

woods, we used a compass to make sure that both the teams two different parts of the woods. For

our team, we was given South East from where we was in the woods. From there, we used the

measuring tape to go out 100-meters to make sure we could split into 4 transects. From there, we

used the wedge prism to determine which trees are in or out from where we were examining. The

wedge prism is a prism with a shallow angle between its input and output surfaces. This angle is

usually 3 degrees or less. Refraction at the surfaces causes the prism to deflect light by a fixed

angle. (Wikipedia 1).

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Results

Woody Debris: SDW CWD FWD

Transect 1 8 Low Med.

Transect 2 5 Med. Low

Transect 3 9 Low Low

Transect 4 2 Med. Low

Ground Cover Percents

Dead Leaves 50 - 75 percent

Princess Pine 10 - 25 percent

Rocks 10 - 25 percent

Dead Branches 25 - 50 percent

American Beach 0 - 10 percent

Princess Pine 10 - 25 percent

Dead Leaves 50 - 75 percent

Baby White Pine 25 - 50 percent

Tree Survey:

Plot 2

Tree Number Tree Species DBH Notes

1 White Pine 10" Healthy

2 Black Oak 15" Healthy

3 Red Maple 18" Healthy

4 American Beech 18" Damaged

5 Red Maple 13" Healthy

6 White Pine 74" Old; Healthy

7 Black Oak 16" Healthy

Plot 1

Tree Number Tree Species DBH Notes

1 American Beech 12" Healthy

2 White Pine 15" Healthy

3 American Beech 10" Healthy

4 Red Maple 17" Healthy

5 White Pine 20" Healthy

6 American Beech 13" Healthy

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Discussion

While carrying on this experiment, our main focus of it was to find out the three things

we needed to determine whether the TGS forestry is healthy. First we did a tree survey, in which

it should of told us the diversity of trees on the schools property. It also helped us determine if

the trees in each of our transects are healthy and alive or unhealthy and dead. Then we did a

survey on the ground cover, which was basically just searching what was on the ground on each

transect we did. An example would be that we were looking for any moss, ferns, or any dead

leaves, in which there was a lot of it, and then figure how much of it was covering the ground.

Lastly, we collected data on the woody debris in this area. What we had to do was look to see if

any trees were in our standing dead wood area, ect. With this, we used the the forestry prism to

determine which trees were within the distance of our transects and see whether or not they are

in or out. By doing this data collection, we used it to calculate and to see if our campus is healthy

or not. We did this by making data tables to be able to see our overall data findings in a more

organized way with a true scientific reasoning with our data.

Conclusion

In the beginning of this lab report, I believed that if we look at the plots to see if the the

plots are healthy, then we should see a good amount of life and biodiversity of trees and ground
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covers. Being finished with this experiment, we have now came down to the conclusion that the

TGS campus is healthy. With the proof that the this section of the woods has many healthy

diversified trees, ground cover with a good amount of leaves and dead branches, and woody

debris that trees were in our standing dead wood area and living, this shows us that the campus is

healthy. This part of the woods has little to no woody debris meaning that it is healthy because it

is not over crowded with trees, and that it has life growing out of it. The dead leaves and

branches were found decomposing, which means that it is naturally nurturing itself by giving

itself nutrients to live. With this information, it shows that our campus is healthy with a good

amount of life and biodiversity of trees and ground cover.

References

Coarse woody debris. (2018, July 03). Retrieved November 29, 2018, from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coarse_woody_debris#Sources
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Wedge prism. (2018, August 27). Retrieved November 30, 2018, from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_prism