Plants

Map credit Dylan Marcus

Our hectare plot at Niquette Bay State Park was divided into six different 5m-radius circular plots (78.5 square meteres each) that ran along three different transects that traveled North-South. See image at left for a detailed explanation of where each plot can be found.

Cover Type (quantity in parenthesis)

Plot 1:

SAF type 60 - Beech Sugar Maple

- Witch Hazel (5)

- Striped Maple (15)

- Sugar Maple (1) with DBH of 22", height of 13m

- Ironwood (1) with DBH of 6", height of 5m

- Green Ash (5)

- Maple Leaf Viburnum (1)

- American Beech (1)
• 1389.37 total board feet (1350.73 for Acer saccharum and 38.64 for Ostrya virginiana)

Plot 2:

SAF type 20 - White Pine, N. Red Oak, Red Maple

- Witch Hazel (2)

- Green Ash (1) - 18" DBH, 17m Height

- Sugar Maple (1)

Photo credit Allison Middleman

- [young] N. Red Oak (8)
• 1182. 43 total board feet for Fraxinus pennsylvanica

Plot 3:

SAF type 93? - Sugarberry, American Elm, Green Ash

- Witch Hazel (12)

- Green Ash (5)

- Shagbark Hickory (2)

Plot 4:

SAF type 55? - N. Red Oak

- Ironwood (4)

- 1 with DBH of 6.5", height of 4.4m

- Shagbark Hickory ( 30)

- Red Maple (2)

- 1 with DBH of 19", height of 11m
• 892.39 total board feet (39.9 for Ostrya virginiana and 852.48 for Acer rubrum)

Plot 5:

SAF type 108? - Red Maple

- Red Maple (3)

- 1 with DBH of 11", height of 12m

- 1 with DBH of 11", height of 17m

- Striped Maple (14)

- Shagbark Hickory (6)

- Ironwood (2)

- Witch Hazel (2)

- Maple Leaf Vibernum (5)

Photo credit Dylan Marcus

- N. Red Oak (1) with DBH of 11.5", height of 17.6m
• 1252.97 total board feet (753.30 for Acer rubrum and 499.68 for Quercus rubra)

Plot 6:

SAF type 20 - White Pine, N. Red Oak, Red Maple

- N. Red Oak (1) with DBH of 22", height of 11m

- Red Maple (2)

- 1 with DBH of 7.5", height of 9m

- Eastern White Pine (2)

- 1 with DBH of 30", height of 13m

- Maple Leaf Viburnum (3)

- Striped Maple (10)
• 3763.31 total board feet (1142.93 for Quercus rubra, 108.68 for Acer rubrum, and 2511.7 for Pinus strobus)

Woody Plant Species Composition (%) in Site #4; graph
credit Dylan Marcus and Allison Middleman

The total basal area for trees with diameter 6 inches and up is approximately 375.65 square ft per hectare. This number was derived from there being a total basal area of 17.693 square feet of tree in all of the plots, which made up 4.71% of the entire area of the hectare plot.
The total amount of board feet of the 11 trees we sampled comes out to 38,136.93 board feet. When we divide this by species, red maple clearly has the most volume in our site, as this graph of species and volume demonstrates.

The density of trees was derived from averaging the number of stems on each plot, each plot being 78.5 square meters as mentioned above, and then converting square meters to hectares. The final density for trees was 3,121 stems per hectare.

Graph credit Joseph Snowdon

Photo credit Joseph Snowdon

Our Biggest Tree!
The biggest tree on our plot was found right on the western border of our Site following the north-south line. It is an eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) with a DBH of 46in (116.84cm) and a height of approximately 121.36ft (37m). In order to obtain these measurements, we used a clinometer combined with the length of our pace to calculate its height and a simple DBH tape to measure its DBH. We did not get a picture of our big tree, but, luckily, it happens to be the same kind of tree and have approximately the same dimensions as Eli, the huge eastern cottonwood I found down on the shore of the Winooski River at Salmon Hole. So here is a picture of Eli, our NBSP tree's favorite relative.