A unit of Lasting Forests
evolving since March 30, 1999
 
  

A Total Forest Management Plan
and Wildland Management
Decision Support System

 
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Maryland Stand Protection Tactics

In order to make decisions of best or least bad stands to be protected, criteria are needed. The matches of the forest and practices within it with criteria are important. Each criterion has a different weight or level of importance. How well a stand or total forest probably meets all of the criteria for some purpose or select use is the measure of the goodness of the stand and forest. As an example of one such select use, the assumed and perceived criteria for an ancient forest or preservation stand (as needed to be specified in Maryland, but useful elsewhere) are:

  1. Reasonable stand width; "thick" or greater than 3-tree-heights wide excluding corridors; excluding runners or fingers of areas with trees
  2. Large (greater than 6.5 acres)
  3. Several forest types
  4. High basal area (an index to or an expression of wood volume in live trees per acre)
  5. More than 200 stems/acre
  6. More than 3 dead trees (snags) per acre
  7. Large volume of dead and down wood on the forest floor
  8. High proportion of edge stands adjacent to a non-owned forest stands (of any type)
  9. Greater than 50% canopy closure
  10. Wet area present (seep, spring, pond, lake, stream, etc.)
  11. Moderate vegetative cover
  12. Free of past events such as pollution, waste dumping, severe erosion, severe burns.

As evident, deciding conditions among 13 criteria with different weights of importance can be difficult. After data are entered, the system analyzes each of the above factors and assigns each stand a value based on its characteristics and the importance of each to the long-term well-being of citizens of the region and other citizens dependent on healthy farm and wildlands, coastlines, oceans, and living conditions throughout the world.

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision July 13, 2001.