On a more positive note

Tom, Steve Silletts quest is something else all together.
Though not far fetched it speaks of preempting nature. Like predicting which limb in a tree will become dominate and which will become the deadwood. I've been in the redwoods long enough to know the difference either way, but I do not have a collage degree to back it like Sillett does.
 
yea and we know you need the degree to show you know it cuase all them years working don't add up to poop. Long as you got your certs though who knows what might jump through hoops for ya.
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heh tree work is starting to be like the army, only way to be brass is with the certs, yet all the brass come to the old MSGT. And ask whats this, or how do we get it done, how long you think it will take?
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Those old stumps are awesome...just think of all the hard and maybe tricky work that went into makin em..
 
I got a PM just hours ago informing me that this pristene area of the world is not the only place where these magestic trees grows .

Because of who it is won't respond by PM .However this is the only place on the globe these giants grow in natuaral selection .Which makes this coast line on the far western area of the US of A very special to some of us .

Lot's of history in that portion of the Cal . coast and a national treasure to many of us .
 
Hey, Ger.....I'm wondering what you think of my idea that giant sequoia grow as fast or faster in my area than in their native environment, which is at elevation in the Sierra.

I measured a sequoia(that may need to come out, due to it being planted too close to a mansion) that is just under 8 feet dbh, and 31 feet around at ground level, and 94 years old. It's prolly 130 feet tall.

You'll recall the tree in Volunteer Park where the speed climb was held during the 2002 ITCC. It is 150 feet tall, 34 feet in girth at ground level, and 90 foot crown spread. It could well have been planted around the turn of the century.....

there's large redwood here as well, but I'm sure they grown faster in their native area.
 
Blame Greg Liu and a coupla other fellas. Mark and the bulk of us derelicts were unfortunately long gone when the top of the tree was finished. It had pissed snow and driving rain the last day we were there, and we dismantled all the rigging.
 
Gerry, I was at Steve's talk as well. Having 33 years of experience in the PNW urban forest environment, I think I know what the outcome of his proposed study would be, if it included doug fir and western red cedar. Those trees that have branches break, tops break out, or be end weight reduced and carefully crown reduced, are, in almost all cases I've seen, in both living trees, and ones I've removed, are healthy, and less prone to damage than a naturally grown tree. They also appear more old growth like, even though most are under 150 years old, and moreso than an old tree with no major alterations to its normal growth pattern. Hemlock don't respond as well to change, being more prone to disease, and dieback.

I'm not sure it would be possible or wise to alter a forest, on such as scale, but, in the urban environment, it surely works, and is along the lines of Mattheck, Brudi, Neville Fay, and Gilman's work and findings.
 
I remember shuddering at the ISA conference in St. Louis when Dr. Sillett was proposing going up into the old and second growth forests and taking off large tops and laterals. Looked around and nobody even seemed to blink!

Personally I don't care if he has 10 degrees from the best universities on the planet. A human being with a life span of less than a hundred years walking into a forest of several thousand with a chainsaw just doesn't sit right. Doesn't take a degree to figure that out!

jp
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i shuddeered too at that thought. but I think he was talking about walking into forests that are the same age as us, not the old forests.
thousansd year old forests are basically gone aside for a few pockets. we did them in in less than 100 years.
 
Going into second growth forest and wacking the tops out of the trees just doesn't seem right to me. Yeah, doing so will create iterations (sucker tops and defects), but forcing old growth character into the tree? I don't think so.

I've topped redwoods years ago, for line clearance in canyon crossings and CC&R view easements. Today their still just second growth trees, but with defect tops now.

It kind of reeks of fracture pruning. Of which I don't agree with one bit. We've spent generations studying, watching and learning to preserve the natural form of trees and now a new school of thought is cropping up to imitate nature by purposely breaking and creating wounds in the trees.

The storms on the coast do enough natural damage to the trees to fulfill any need for variation and habitat. The forest doesn't need any human intervention there. But if a guy has a collage degree..... go figure.

In the 80's the gals and guys with degrees cleared all the streams on the coast of log jams and stumps thinking it was going to improve the streams for the fish to travel and spawn. What they did was remove all the habitat for the juveniles to use for cover from predators. It decimated the fish populations. We had to go back and fall trees into the streams and place stumps to recreate what they undone. The sad part is the locals knew it was a wrong move from the beginning but the biologists went ahead and did it anyway.

If the eggheads took a little advise from the locals once in a while things like that wouldn't happen.
 
There is WAY more that needs to be understood about succession than I could ever hope to understand from sitting through two of Sillett's talks and spending an evening out at dinner with him.

I can't understand the animosity towards education. Formal and informal learning are both valuable. Observing how nature works can teach us a lot.

There is much more going on up in the tree tops than just tree growth. As the bits and pieces of research come together we'll have a better idea of the grand mosaic up there.

Sillett's work has been published and is very interesting to read. I wish that I had his syllabus to share so that more tree people could understand what he and the other canopy researchers have found.

I don't know Steve very well but he has said, from the podium, both times that I've heard him talk that he is really encouraged by the reception he has gotten from the arbo community. It would surprise me if he would blow off any contact or input from any tree lovers who reached out to him.
 
You're a groupy, Tom.

Fracture pruning second growth redwoods is not going to make old growth trees out of them. I don't care who says it will.

Just an opinion from someone that has worked in redwoods for 42 years.
 
Groupy? Hmmm...

I take what you have to say with a lot of validity too Jerry. I've been a groupy of yours for a lot longer than Sillett :)

Sillett's work deserves more consideration. His idea of simulating old growth by removing tops and branch tips is only one small part of his work. Take some time and source out his other work before dismissing his ideas.
 
Don't get me wrong, I believe there is great value in formal education. Being in the academic world first hand though, it's easy to see there sometimes develops a disconnect between what people are reading, writing and studying and how applicable that knowledge is in the natural world. Sometimes it works, but sometimes the human mind is just too limited or narrow to see the big picture even with a degree :)

Plus the redwoods are just so darn beautiful because they exist outside the human realm, it'd be a shame I think to bring academia into this world to try and change it. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was concerned when Sillet brought up this new idea at the end of his talk.

But I will say in his defense, there is a lot of other work he has done that is pretty cool and worth checking out.

jp
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I wish I could have been there to hear Steve's presentation. I'm sure he has some valid points worth consideration. In time I'm sure. Since he's only a few hours drive from Ft. Bragg.
 
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