PPP to Northeast Wilderness Trust

[dbhguru]

Hi Lady and Fellow Ents,

On April 18th, I'll be presenting a PowerPoint Presentation via Zoom for members of the Northeast Wilderness Trust on the topic as listed below.

Great Trees and Forests of the Northeast, Past and Present
with Bob Leverett & Monica Jakuc Leverett
April 18, 5:30-6:30 PM

I have plenty of photos of old-growth forests, big trees, scenics, etc., but thought I'd offer the opportunity for my lady and fellow Ents to participate with an image they especially like that conveys the magic of big trees and old forests for them somewhere in the Northeast. I'd be pleased to including images form as many of you as I can fit into this or a future presentation. I give them fairly frequently. I'd need a description of the photo that I would relate to the audience. Of course, you would be given full credit.

If you want to see the presentation, below is a link where you can sign up.

www.newildernesstrust.org/events

Best,
Bob

[amdcpus]

Thanks for the notice, I'll definitely tune in.

[MikeK]

I'll tune in as well, if I'm free during those hours.

I had trouble with that link above, here's another:

https://newildernesstrust.org/event/great-trees-and-forests-past-and-present/


Bob - I didn't realize you were an engineer! What discipline and where did you graduate from? My wife is also a college-educated musician but she decided that music instruction wasn't for her and got a more practical degree in English and communication, which she now teaches.

[dbhguru]

Mike,

I'm a graduate of Georgia Tech. I started in electrical engineering, but as a junior, I decided on a career in the U.S. Air Force after graduation. The Air Force was looking for industrial engineers. I switched majors. Once in the Air Force, I studied and set standards for the human resources needed to maintain the weapon systems we had in the Strategic Air Command (B-52 and B-58 bombers, KC-135s, EC-135s and ICBMs - Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman). Everything was measuring, measuring, measuring. After two years in far East and Southeast Asia, they assigned me to the Pentagon. While there, I updated the manual on work measurement (basically a whole new rewrite), and so the story goes.

After leaving the AF in 1975 and settling here in Massachusetts as the VP of a management consulting firm, in my off hours, I started searching for old growth remnants (always a naturalist-big tree nerd by heart). Finding patches of OG that were't supposed to be there, I built a reputation as a sleuth, but one who was far out of his field. Along the way, I saw a need to measure the mature trees in the old growth sites that I and associates were identifying to distinguish them from their counterparts in the surrounding younger forests. The State foresters weren't that interested in the OG remnants, which were not part of the woodlands they directly managed for forest products. The older forests were usually described as diseased and decadent and summarily dismissed, although they were recognized as having some historic value. Nonetheless, accurate quantitative descriptions of the OG were lacking.

I began by using the standard tape and clinometer, and thought I was measuring trees correctly, until a friend, using a surveyor's transit, re-measured a sugar maple in MTSF that I had measured. I was a good 20 feet too much. That opened my eyes. I put on my mathematician's cap to analyze the target as it actually existed, as opposed to applying the simplifying assumptions made with standard use of tape and clinometer. The rest is history.

Bob

[MikeK]

Thanks for the history, Bob!