Snags

The first table below shows all the snags found on our site. Snags are standing dead trees which are a huge part of the diverse habitat at Niquette Bay. Animals depend on snags for shelter and food and some species can not survive in an area without them. The second table is a reference for the code used to represent a snag's level of decay.

Managment

The current management of Niquette Bay State Park is a good direction. Their website states, "Management strategies at Niquette Bay work to support the vision of the park as an oasis for appreciating nature". My recommendation to them would be to start with small scale learning tools. For example, creating a brochure with a map and information about various features of Niquette Bay State Park. The brochure could describe the vegetation, forest cover types, bedrock geology, and special features. It would also include a section explaining the connectivity of these Niquette Bay processes in terms that non forestry people could inderstand. This could be a relatively low cost item to produce because as a class we have obtained the information necessary for a Niquette Bay Learning brochure.

Site 2 Base Map

Our basic site map: detailing slope, defining characteristics, and unique places in Site 2 of Niquette Bay State Park.

Site 2: 100 years from now

Today, Site two is dominated by tall hardwoods to the west and supports white pine to the east in stand 3. The site shows signs of change, however, and over the next 100 years the structure and composition of the forest will transform. Seedlings in the understory indicate strong red oak and sugar maple regeneration across the site. This is most apparent in stand 3, which has hardwood regeneration everywhere and no sign of white pine seedlings. By the year 2111 it is likely that oak, maple and shagbark hickory will have spread across the entire site. This will happen as small-scale disturbances create openings in the canopy and saplings are able to grow. This will also diversify the vertical structure of the forest creating multiple age classes of trees.

Site 2: 400 years ago

Four-hundred years ago, the first settlers would have just been reaching New England. Site 2 was most likely an old-growth northern hardwood forest with complex structure. Since our site is not easily accessible for logging and is a poor site for agriculture we think it's likely that the site stayed fairly consistent with an old-growth forest up until the mid 1800s, when technology allowed for increased use of less desirable, sub-par land for agricultural use.

Unique Characteristics of Site 2 (T. Cohen, E. Healy)

During our four weeks exploring and mapping our plot, we found a few features that were pretty unique; the most memorable being our cave. The cave was approximately 9' wide, 20' long, and 7' deep, with a narrow opening to the surface. There was also a butternut (Juglands cinerea) tree, which are endangered and quickly disappearing from the Vermont landscape. Finally, we had a vernal pool right in the southwest corner of the site...home to many mosquitos. Check out our Google map for pictures! (Link)

Methods ( by T. Cohen, E. Healy)

Over the course of four weeks we analyzed Site 2 and characterized it using the following methods:

Week 1
Our first visit was meant to familiarize our group with the site. We marked our site and paced out a 1 hectare plot, using a compass and calculated pace. As a group we decided to orient ourselves directly North from the original corner (by the vernal pool), then West, South, and finally East to establish the boundary of the hectare. We also used a GPS device to record our exact boundary coordinates for use on Google maps. After our corners had been marked, we explored our site and took pictures.

Week 2
For the second week we drew simple site maps in our field notebooks and dug a soil pit. While exploring our site we made note of vegetation, bedrock outcroppings/ledges, overall slope and other unique aspects of our site. Our soil pit was located in an area in the site that we felt was characteristic of the entire site. We dug until we hit bedrock, then placed markers in the pit to indicate the different layers and measured each layer. (See "Soil Pit" post for more information).

Week 3
During week three we divided our site into three different stands based on forest cover type. For the three stands, we designed two five-meter radius plots to more accurately estimate the composition of herbaceous and woody plants within the stand. We used a DBH tape and a clinometer to determine height and DBH of the trees within each plot. We decided to use a random sampling technique in determining the locations of the six plots.

Week 4

For the final week, we transected our plot three times, recording all visible snags as well as downed woody debris directly on the transect lines. We also noted presence of high and low exposed perches, and well as level of decay, height and diameter of the snags for a wildlife habitat assessment.

Merchantable Timber Volumes

The following chart (figure 2) shows the estimated volume per hectare in board feet of the tree species found in Site #2. These values were calculated using DBH (diameter at breast height) and length of merchantable timber data which were found during our inventory of the site (click here and here for inventory data). Our inventory included six five-meter radius plots distributed throughout the site. Some error in these values could be caused by our selection of each plot location. The plots were not random or placed at equal distances along a transect but were chosen to represent the largest ecological gradient possible for the site. This could cause volume estimates to be incorrect since certain species could be more or less dense than the fixed radius plots suggest.

Figure 2

Herbaceous and Woody Plants

The herbaceous layer of our site was primarily comprised of maple leaf viburnum, partridgeberry, goldenrod, and multiple fern species including maiden hair fern. The most common tree species found on the site were white oak, sugar maple, shagbark hickory, beech and ironwood. Figure 1 shows the density in stems per hectare of the most common tree species found in the site. These values were found using six five-meter radius plots throughout the one hectare site. The location of each plot was selected to represent the largest ecological gradient for site #2. Refer to the hand drawn Niquette Bay State Park: Site #2 map below for the location of each five-meter radius plot.

Density of Tree Species Found on Site 2

Woody Debris

In each of our three stands we measured area per meter squared of downed woody debris using the line intercept method. We transected the site (100m lines) and recorded the diameter of any woody debris greater than or equal to 10cm. We used the equation, V=1.2223*Σd^2/100, to determine the volume of woody debris per meter squared of each stand.
The results are as follows:
Stand 1- 333.77 m^3/ha
Stand 2- 33.05 m^3/ha
Stand 3- 101.22 m^3/ha

The Largest Tree

Our largest tree was a 33.5" DBH Northern Red Oak (Quercus rubra), in stand 2 of the site.

NEWILD

We input our site characteristics into the NEWILD program, that generated a list of possible animal species that could live on our site. The species do not necessarily occur on the site, the program only reflects the species that could occur given the specific site conditions.

Natural Community and Cover Types

We classified the natural community type for our site as a Dry Oak-Hickory-Maple-Hophornbeam forest. This community type dominates the western side of our hectare and is represented by stands one and two. Stand three starts to transition to a Temperate Hemlock Forest.

Stand one has a distinct Red Oak-White Oak cover type. As you move into stand number two the ground levels out and the dominant cover type changes to Sugar Maple-Beech. The over story of stand three is a White Pine-Hemlock cover type. The map bellow show's the cover types and plot locations for our inventory of the site.

Soil Pit

Our site is along the east side of the Ledges Trail, by the Bay View Overlook. The topography is relatively flat, but there are many rocky outcrops throughout the site. So, when we dug our soil pit, we only managed to dig down 14cm before we hit bedrock. The O/A horizon comprised the first 4 cm, while our B horizon of silty clay loam made up the remaining 10cm. The soil test gave us a fairly neutral pH, around 7 or 8. Our bedrock/surficial geology was unresponsive to the HCl test, so we concluded there is no calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the rocks surrounding our pit.