What's possible in 2019
Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:50 am
Ents,
As the soul surviving active member of the people who established NTS, and its predecessor ENTS, I suppose it falls to me to deliver some kind of New Years message. I'll do my best. Here goes. But first, I should mention that our other arm, WNTS has two active establishing members, Bertolette and Michael Taylor.
Our overall mission stays the same, i.e. to celebrate trees and forests through art, music, poetry, medicine, food, science, sport, mythology, etc. We occasionally touch the surface of forest management issues and forest protection, but have agreed over the years that other organizations are positioned better to handle that mission.
If my count is accurate, 115 members have been active since Jul 1st, 2018 in the BBS. Sixty-four of those have been active since Dec 1st, 2018. It is pretty clear that the active group among us continuously stays below 100 and I doubt that is going to change in 2019. I cringe at the idea of drifting toward social media formats with their endless stream of trivia and vacuous posts.
As for my role in 2019, I hope to find a way to promote our tree measurements skills as relevant to the formal scientific community. That may be taking shape around the issue of how much carbon is taken up in the trunks and limbs of trees and how the process proceeds over time. This is becoming an immensely important issue to avant grade carbon scientists today, and we in NTS have the skills to measure tree growth and how it proceeds over time. Basically, carbon scientists are rediscovering trees as the cheapest solution to absorbing more CO2 by allowing forests too mature instead of rotating them every 25 to 50 years. But there is how individual trees behave and then there is aggregate stand behavior. Measuring both is much more complicated than simply concentrating on a few individually outstanding trees.
The more we can track tree and stand growth and correlate it to age, the more useful our role will be to science. One might argue that tracking stand growth is the province of forestry and that is true, but here in the Northeast, the traditional methods used have not accurately predicted the growth of the white pine stands that I spend so much time in. Working with a DCR forest biometrician in 2019, we hope to tighten the predictive process. I'll be working with some good people who truly do want to get it right.
In terms of NTS, we can talk about how best to proceed, but as a minimum, those with the measuring skills need to keep track of and record annual growth with increasing accuracy for lots of trees. This leads to more measuring, more instrument calibration, more methodology, etc. Maybe I'm talking us out of the role, but those of you who are game may just elp us establish the most important mission NTS has ever had.
Happy New Year Everyone
Bob
As the soul surviving active member of the people who established NTS, and its predecessor ENTS, I suppose it falls to me to deliver some kind of New Years message. I'll do my best. Here goes. But first, I should mention that our other arm, WNTS has two active establishing members, Bertolette and Michael Taylor.
Our overall mission stays the same, i.e. to celebrate trees and forests through art, music, poetry, medicine, food, science, sport, mythology, etc. We occasionally touch the surface of forest management issues and forest protection, but have agreed over the years that other organizations are positioned better to handle that mission.
If my count is accurate, 115 members have been active since Jul 1st, 2018 in the BBS. Sixty-four of those have been active since Dec 1st, 2018. It is pretty clear that the active group among us continuously stays below 100 and I doubt that is going to change in 2019. I cringe at the idea of drifting toward social media formats with their endless stream of trivia and vacuous posts.
As for my role in 2019, I hope to find a way to promote our tree measurements skills as relevant to the formal scientific community. That may be taking shape around the issue of how much carbon is taken up in the trunks and limbs of trees and how the process proceeds over time. This is becoming an immensely important issue to avant grade carbon scientists today, and we in NTS have the skills to measure tree growth and how it proceeds over time. Basically, carbon scientists are rediscovering trees as the cheapest solution to absorbing more CO2 by allowing forests too mature instead of rotating them every 25 to 50 years. But there is how individual trees behave and then there is aggregate stand behavior. Measuring both is much more complicated than simply concentrating on a few individually outstanding trees.
The more we can track tree and stand growth and correlate it to age, the more useful our role will be to science. One might argue that tracking stand growth is the province of forestry and that is true, but here in the Northeast, the traditional methods used have not accurately predicted the growth of the white pine stands that I spend so much time in. Working with a DCR forest biometrician in 2019, we hope to tighten the predictive process. I'll be working with some good people who truly do want to get it right.
In terms of NTS, we can talk about how best to proceed, but as a minimum, those with the measuring skills need to keep track of and record annual growth with increasing accuracy for lots of trees. This leads to more measuring, more instrument calibration, more methodology, etc. Maybe I'm talking us out of the role, but those of you who are game may just elp us establish the most important mission NTS has ever had.
Happy New Year Everyone
Bob