The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park

Redstart is proud to provide forestry services to Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. The Mt. Tom forest is oldest continuously managed forest in North America, and Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller is the only National Park that has timber management as part of its mandate. The Park offers a unique opportunity to interpret the history of conservation and forestry for the American public.

(Photo By Nora Mitchell)

In 2006, Redstart planned and implemented a system of permanent inventory monitoring plots for the Mount Tom forest. The primary objective of this system is to develop scientifically sound information to support management decisions at the stand level, the primary management unit in silviculture. Data collected included variables at the tree level that are important for silviculture (e.g. quality of growing stock, volume of growing stock) so that calculations can be made at the stand level for variables such as stocking, species composition, trees/area, and merchantable volume/area. Additional data were collected include coarse woody debris, invasive plants, signs of deer browse, snags, tree canopy health, and signs of insect and disease damage. Analyzing these data will allow the Park to continue a long tradition of scientifically-based forestry in making management decisions.

Figure 3. Spatial allocation of new silvicultural inventory plot locations (yellow) in relation to existing UVM plots (red). (Keeton 2004)