New Honor Society Inductees

Congratulations to Tyler Wakefield and Nate Rosenberg who have been inducted into the CEFTS Forest Technology Honor Society. Membership in the Honor Society is based on a student's academic achievement in forestry courses taken for the Associate degree.

Tyler and Nate were awarded their certificates during the graduation picnic at Mont Alto State Park. Because of the forecast thunderstorms we had pizza, instead of our usual cookout. Thankfully, we have the pavilion, and finished just before the rains hit!

Mid-Atlantic Qualifier

On the second, drier, day of the Woodsmen's Weekend at Mont Alto, the Mid-Atlantic Qualifier for the Stihl Timbersports Series was fought. This time both professional and collegiate athletes competed. It was a great time for the students to get pointers from the pros. The crowd really enjoyed the event.





The collegiate results were:

1.  Daniel Jones, Haywood CC.
2.  Tim Benedict, Penn State, University Park
3.  Seth Morris, Penn State Mont Alto.

Tyler Wakefield did a great job rounding out the field! It was great to see Mont Alto alum, and current pro, Tom Oliver competing.

Mid-Atlantic Woodsmen's Meet

It happened again! When Penn State Mont Alto lasted hosted the meet in 2005 it rained all day. This past Saturday (April 16), it rained even harder with stronger winds and thunder. Yet, the meet went off without a hitch, or injury! And everyone had a great time!

Congratulations to everyone who participated! The final standings were:

1. Haywood Community College
2. Penn State Mont Alto
3. Montgomery Community College
4. Allegheny College of Maryland
5. Pennsylvania College of Technology

Academic Festival Pictures

Kelly Ketterman demonstrated time laps photography of germinating plants.


Scott Grimm and Derek Furry established permanent sampling plots in the Waynesboro Watershed.


Zach Hetrick and Seth Morris mapped past patterns of land use in the Waynesboro Watershed with historic aerial photos.


Mitch Oswald studied soil conditions to see if Coast Redwoods from California could survive in southern PA.


Jenny Diehl shares insights on living sustainably in Jamaica.


Tyler Wakefield describes his work on saving the eastern hemlock.

Academic Festival Winners

Congratulations to the poster prize winners at the Academic Festival on April 13.

Posters

First Place

Tyler Wakefield

Hope for the Eastern Hemlock?

Second Place

Scott Grimm & Derek Furry

Establishing GIS-based permanent forest inventory plots on the Waynesboro Watershed

Third Place

Zachary Hetrick & Seth Morris

Comparing Past Land use to Current Forest Cover Types

Click here to see all the abstracts from the festival.

Felling a gum tree; Woodsmen practice

Felling a gum tree

Originally uploaded by Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Are these guys practicing for the Mid-Atlantic Woodsmen's Meet? This wood may be a little big.

Practicing for the Mid-Atlantic Woodsmen's Meet

Our team is practicing hard! We hope to see you there April 16 and 17 at Penn State Mont Alto.

10th Annual Mid-Atlantic Woodsmen's Meet

You're Invited!!
April 16 and 17 at Penn State Mont Alto 

Mid-Atlantic Woodsmen’s Meet
and
STIHL® TIMBERSPORTS® Collegiate and Professional Series Mid-Atlantic Qualifier
(Click here for details.)

ORDER OF EVENTS
April 16, 2011

• 7:00 Breakfast for competitors. Team station setup / archery practice
• 8:00 Dendrology and Archery
• 9:00  Welcome & Opening Ceremony
• 9:10  Team pulp toss, single buck, dot split, pulp toss, and belayed speed climb
• 9:10  Team log roll
• 9:30  Pole fell
• 10:30 Bolt split
• 11:00 Water boil
• 11:30  Horizontal speed chop (female)
• 12:00 Lunch
• 1:00 Axe throw, pole climb
• 2:00 Dot split finals
• 2:15 Cross cut saw events
• 3:00 Horizontal speed chop
• 3:30 Chain Saw
• 4:30 Woodsmen's grand finale relay
• 5:00 Competition field clean up
• 5:30 Banquet/awards ceremony for competitors

 

Penn State Mont Alto Foresters at the Allegheny SAF conference

The Allegheny Society of American Foresters winter meeting, organized by the Plateau Chapter, was held in Clarion, PA on Feb. 16-18. Six Penn State Mont Alto forestry students attended the conference.

Mont Alto was victorious at the quiz bowl, defeating Allegany College of Maryland and West Virginia University! Congratulations to team members Derek Furry, Shane Strommer, and Mike Trisket for their winning performance.

Among the great presentations at the conference were silvicultural remediation for degraded hardwood sites, managing for liability issues, improving foresters' involvement with the public, and examples of outdoor recreation.

The other Mont Alto participants were Andy Gundlach, Mitch Oswald, and Zach Hetrick, and faculty members Craig Houghton and Peter Linehan. It was great to visit with Mont Alto alumni now at University Park or working in the field. 

Thanks to all the SAF members who sponsored students and the Plateau Chapter for a great meeting! 

Testing GPS Precision

Students in the forest surveying class tested the precision of Garmin 60 GPS receivers today. Nine teams two students recorded 25 sets of coordinates at five different points. Two points were in forested areas and three were in the open. Each team copied their data to a spreadsheet. After the data for each point is combined we will do statistical analysis of the results. More to come.

The Life of Maurice Goddard

Forest technology students and faculty gathered in the Weistling Student Center yesterday evening to watch the Maurice Goddard documentary on WITF TV. The documentary gave a fascinating portrait of Goddard, who, in a long career at Penn State and for the Commonwealth of PA, was the acknowledged architect of much of the State's forest and parks conservation policy. He worked tirelessly to expand the number of state parks so that everyone in Pennsylvania would be within 25 miles of a state park. Instrumental in securing funding for conservation projects, he led efforts in flood prevention and control.

Goddard began his career as an instructor at Penn State Mont Alto after graduating from the University of Maine, in 1935. Eventually, he became the director of Mont Alto before leading the entire School of Forest Resources.

Goddard served as a staff officer in WWII and brought that sense of military discipline to the life of the forestry school. One interviewee, Jim Nelson, told the story of how Goddard made ties mandatory for meals. No tie and no food. Nelson told how the students, after a day of hard field work, would put on a clip-on bow tie before entering the dining hall. At the time meals were served in Weistling Hall, which is where we were watching the film.

The show was an inspirational reminder of the importance of public service for all foresters at any point in their career. Click here to see the trailer.

SAF Quiz Bowl in Albuquerque

The Penn State Mont Alto Forestry Club Quiz Bowl team reached the semi-final round in competition on October 27 in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the National Society of American Foresters convention! 32 teams competed; Mont Alto beat the U of Georgia, Shasta, and Michigan Tech, and lost to Green River CC, the eventual winner. Mike Trisket was excellent as captain, along with Tyler Wakefield, Mitch Oswald and Zach Hetrick.

Forestry at the Army Corps of Engineers

Penn State Mont Alto alum Will Harlon spoke to the freshman forest technician students on careers in the US Army Corps of Engineers. Will, who is a forester at the John H. Kerr Reservoir and Dam in the Wilmington District, described the history of the Corps and the natural resources parts of its current mission, which includes: flood damage prevention, hydropower generation, recreation, shoreline management, fish and wildlife management, southern pine bark beetle remediation, and timber management work on military bases.

Will gave the students information about career opportunities with the Corps and how best to prepare themselves for successful careers. Many thanks to Will and his family for visiting Mont Alto during their vacation!

Forest Tech Developments

Sponsored by Landmark Systems, the Forest Technology Users Conference conference on October 13 and 14, highlighted new developments in hardware and software for forest inventories and management. Following is a summary of the presentations.Craig Houghton and I (Peter Linehan) were looking for state of the art solutions that could be added to the Forest Technology program at Mont Alto.

Carl Hauser of the Indiana DNR described the management challenges for the state forests required for the preservation of the Indiana bat. Extreme care is nneded when planning timber harvesting to not disturb the bats' winter hibernaculums. A certain number of large hardwood trees have to be reserved from harvest as the female bats like to raise their young under the bard of shagbark hickory and similar trees. Indiana DNR has modified their forest inventory software (T-Cruise) to record the required information that is needed to make good management decisions.

Haglof of Sweden manufactures precision forest measuring instruments, such as calipers and clinometers. Patrick Lidstrom described some of their recent products. The main trend is to add on board computing and geolocating capabilities to their tools. This development can increase productivity and accuracy in inventory work. My favorite new tool was a one-armed optical caliper that uses light beams to find the edge of a tree.

Landmark System's Mike Berzinis described new spatial analysis tools they have developed to facilitate forestry analysis in ArcGIS. The toolbar, SilvaAssist, provides a handy grid layout tool, Excel reports, and other forest inventory tools.

Remsoft is a linear programming tool to model forest management options based on growth models, financial conditions and many other management constraints. The system works with a number of other mapping tools and management software. They have done a good job of moving modeling from the drudgery of setting up the mathematical model.

The State of Michigan has a nearly 4 million acre state forest system, which must be one of the largest in the county. Cory Luoto and Dan Heckman, of the Michigan DNRE, described the implementation of IFMAP (Integrated Forest Management Monitoring Assessment and Planning) system.  Using a centralized mapping and database system, IFMAP counts on field foresters to inventory and monitor the forests in their area, while allowing public transparency of all management actions. Moving from a paper-based system to a totally electronic system is still an ongoing process. More of the foresters are seeing the advantage of using GPS data loggers in their work.

Terry Porter, of ForestTech Resource Solutions, described tests of three models of mapping grade GPS receivers that he carried out at the University of Georgia's Whitehall Forest GPS Test Site (page has broken links). The test results showed the inherently variability that is routinely encountered with all GPS receivers, even when working within design specifications. Still, on the worst day a good GPS is far better than traditional methods of locating items in the forest.

The developer of the T-Cruise forest inventory system, Dr. Tom Matney of Mississippi State University, described a variety of software tools available for foresters to use in planning and carrying out forest inventories. Many of the options are free and available online. Click here for links to some of these resources.

Blue Ox is a new timber transportation monitoring and planning tool developed by Landmark Systems and Trimble. Rick Davis described the research that went into the development of the system by attaching GPS monitoring devices to logging trucks to find out how the trucks were really used. The system can help a forest products company save money by better deploying and using their truck fleet to get wood from the forest to the mill.

Brooks McKee of Trimble Forest Automation presented an overview of the SOLO Forest and SOLO 360 tools for GIS planning and analysis of forest inventory data. Designed to work on Trimble GPS tools and work with ArcGIS, the systems offer an interesting solution.

The conference concluded with a panel discussion with all the presenters answering questions. We certainly left the meeting with a lot of ideas for new technologies to add to the forestry courses at Mont Alto!

Many thanks to the conference sponsors. We are looking forward to future meetings. Also, the Clifty Inn in the Clifty Falls State Park in Madison, Indiana is a great place to hold a meeting. Click here for pictures outside the inn, around the park, and in Madison.

New Forest Technology Students at Penn State Mont Alto

Penn State Mont Alto forest technician students gathered for the a picnic at Mont Alto State Park yesterday afternoon. In spite of the heat it was a great time for freshman and sophomore students to meet and greet!

Below are most of the freshmen in front of the pavilion.






And here are more pictures from the gathering.

Fatal Accident at Central Park Puts Focus on Trees - NYTimes.com

Fatal Accident at Central Park Puts Focus on Trees - NYTimes.com

This article highlights the unseen dangers from park trees. Arborists can inspect trees, but it's impossible to see every possible hazard. For students studying urban tree care this article shows how important their work is!

New Topographic Map Formats

While looking for a map on the US Geological Survey site today I found a new format of topographic maps. Previously it was easy to download a scanned topographic map in pdf format. Today I noticed that for some regions there is a new kind of map called a US Topo. It has a true color aerial photo for a base with all the usual topographic map features on top.

For example, below is a part of the Iron Springs 7.5 minute map showing the Waynesboro Reservoir, which was made in 1995.

Following is the June 2010 version of the same area.

For some maps there is a Digital Maps beta version that doesn't yet have the contour lines. The new maps can be purchased in paper format. Even better is the pdf format. The data in the new maps can be separated in the reader, just like in a GIS. When you install the free TerraGo add-on in Adobe Reader you can make measurements of direction and distance directly on the map. Very Cool! It is all available at http://store.usgs.gov Topographic maps will never be the same again!

Visit to Redwood Country

P1080451

Originally uploaded by P_Linehan.

A group of Penn State Mont Alto forestry students and faculty recently visited the redwood forests in Humboldt County, California. Seen here during a tour of Humboldt University's Schatz Demonstration Tree Farm, led by manager Gordon Schatz, are students Mitch Oswald and Zach Hetrick, faculty Craig Houghton, Beth Brantley and  Peter Linehan, and students Tyler Wakefield, and Nate Rosenberg. The students have each participated in forestry research projects funded by Schatz research fund grants.

During the visit from June 11 to 15 the group visited the Avenue of the Giants in  Humboldt Redwood State Park with its groves of amazing trees.

The tour also included parts of Redwood State Park, the Arcata Community Forest, and the Humboldt Lagoons State Park, among other places. Everyone learned a great deal about the life cycle and ecology of the amazing redwoods!

Thanks to Schatz family for funding student travel for this trip. Also, many thanks to Gordon and Karen Schatz for their time and excellent company! To see more pictures click here. See a map of the visit here.

Graduation 2010

Graduation at Penn State Mont Alto was held on May 15. Below are the forest technology graduates. ( A few were missing).



It's always nice when forest technology alumni return to Mont Alto.  Flanked  by Dr. Brantley and Mr. Houghton; Andrew Baker, Chance Yeakly, and Tiffany Roddy from the class of 2008, received their B.S. in forestry diplomas at Mont Alto's graduation ceremony.

End of Selective Availability Anniversary

The June 2010 issue of  Forestry Source (subscription required) contains a short primer on GPS. Author Steve Wilent mentioned the tenth anniversary of the end of Selective Availability (SA) on May 1, 2000, following an executive order by President Clinton. Under the SA program deliberate error was introduced into the GPS signal so that the live signal would have an error of about 100 meters. This was done to protect national security during military operations. Only military GPS receivers had a chip to remove the error.

The policy was changed to promote the use of GPS in the general economy. The military agreed fully with the new policy. There were ways around SA, by using a supplemental FM correction signal broadcast locally by the US Coast Guard or by doing post-processing correction of field data in the office.

Now that the GPS signals has no more deliberately introduced error the use of GPS has grown dramatically  in all parts of the economy from cars to personal devices. The sport of geocaching would not be possible if SA were still in operation.

For foresters, the end of SA has meant that low cost, rugged, recreational grade GPS receivers can be used for most forestry operations. The accuracy of these receivers is more than enough for most forestry mapping  operations. The forest technology program at Penn State Mont Alto has been able to acquire sufficient receivers so that all the students can have one to use for field work. Collecting GPS data in the field and using it to create maps has now become a normal part of all fieldwork.

We should make the end of SA a national holiday!