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Native Tree SocietyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Native Tree Society (NTS) (formerly the Eastern Native Tree Society, ENTS) is not-for-profit Internet

interest group formally established in 1996 to celebrate trees in the arts, science, mythology, medicine, and

related areas. Present NTS membership is around 250.

Contents

[hide] 

  1 Tree measurement 

  2 Founders and officers 

  3 Activities 

  4 Accomplishments 

o  4.1 Tsuga Search Project 

  5 See also 

  6 References 

  7 External links 

Tree measurement[edit] 

See also: Tree measurement  

 An important mission of NTS is to develop advanced field techniques for measuring trees and maintaining a

database of outstanding trees and sites within the eastern forest type. NTS is considered[by whom?]

 to be the

premier tree measuring organization in the eastern United States and holds annual workshops on tree

measuring. The workshops concentrate on methods for measuring tree height, girth, crown spread, trunk and

limb volume. At workshops, different height methods are demonstrated and compared. The workshops are held

periodically in Mohawk Trail State Forest, Massachusetts and Cook Forest State Park, Pennsylvania. 

 A small elite group of NTS members headed by Will Blozan climb important trees to measure their heights by

the method of dropping a tape from the top of the tree down to the base to get a highly accurate measurement.

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Trigonometry based methods are then compared with the results of tape drops. The vast majority of trees are

measured using a combination of lasers, hypsometers, and trigonometry. Accuracies for tree heights measured

through trigonometry are generally within ±1.0 feet. However, accuracies to within ±0.5 foot are regularly

obtained when statistics are applied, and can be within ±0.25 foot. It is this high level of accuracy that

distinguishes NTS tree measuring methods from other approaches. Bragg et al. (2011) report on the

methodology:

"The sine method provides direct (not extrapolated) measurements of observed points on the tree, thereby

generating tree height as the elevation difference between two horizontal planes. This geometric translation of

a three-dimensional object thereby eliminates the need to conduct ad hoc  adjustments for tree lean, offset

crown high points, and ground slope in the field...its accuracy, reliability, and repeatability suggest that it can be

considered a standard for any science-based studies of forest conditions that include height as a parameter."[1]

 

Founders and officers[edit] 

The cofounders of NTS include Robert T. Leverett, Will Blozan, Dr. David Stahle, the late Dr. Michael Perlman,

and Dr. Matthew Therrell. Edward Frank maintains the website and the BBS discussion list of NTS. Information

available at those pages is available for use in scientific research with permission from one of the officers. The

present officers of NTS are Will Blozan, President; Dr. Lee Frelich, Vice President; and Robert Leverett,

Executive Director. Dr. Don C. Bragg is the editor of the Bulletin of the Eastern Native Tree Society .[2]

 Edward

Frank is the editor of the eNTS Magazine, a monthly summary of the posts made to the NTS BBS.[3]

 

The organization changed its name to the Native Tree Society in July 2011 to reflect a broader membership

across the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the world. The name Eastern Native Tree Society wasretained for the original chapter of the organization encompassing eastern North America.

[4] 

 Activities[edit] 

The organization presently devotes much of its time to scientific research associated with determining the

maximum sizes and ages to which trees, by species, grow in the eastern United States, locally, regionally, and

range wide. NTS also makes itself available to other organizations in resolving disputes over tree dimensions,

particularly tree heights.

NTS is involved with the identification and documentation for historical purposes of  old growth forest sites.

Detailed site descriptions are maintained at the NTS website. NTS routinely uses an important, numerically

based, type of comparative site documentation. The documentation is formally called Rucker Analysis. One of

more indices are computed for each site. Collectively, these indices reveal girth and height patterns for the

included species.

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Key NTS members are noted old growth forest researchers. NTS members help identify potential new old

growth sites. Managing for old growth characteristics is a research interest of NTS.

 Accomplishments[edit] 

Some noteworthy accomplishments of NTS include the engineering of tree height measurement techniques

that utilize sine-based mathematics. This approach eliminates the often sizable errors associated with the

popular percent slope method or tangent-based mathematics. NTS has also engineered field-based volume

measurement techniques for modeling the trunks of trees. By dividing the trunk into sections and applying

geometric solids, principally conoid, paraboloid, and neiloid forms, trunk volume can be measured to within

±5.0% of the water displacement volume. These are called form factors. Cross-sectional areas are usually

treated as circular or elliptical. The zone where a tree trunk divides into two or more trunks is handled through a

special technique that takes into account shapes that cannot otherwise easily be modeled.

NTS is in the process of establishing the discipline of dendromorphometry, a term coined by Professor Gary

Beluzo of Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, Massachusetts. Dendromorphometry is defined as the art and

science of measuring trees in the field and incorporates an assessement of measurement error for each

measurement technique.[5]

 

Tsuga Search Project[edit] 

One of the most notable projects of NTS is the Tsuga Search Project, accomplished jointly with the Great

Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP). In Tsuga Search, NTS locates, climbs, and models the largest

eastern hemlocks in the GSMNP. Hemlocks as large as 1,600 cubic feet (45 m³) of trunk volume and 173.1 feet

(52.8 m) in height have been confirmed through the Tsuga Search Project. Details of all NTS projects are

maintained at the NTS website.

 All NTS tree measurement data are generated by NTS members who are certified in NTS measurement

techniques. NTS does not accept measurement data from other sources. NTS data are frequently cited within

tree species descriptions in Wikipedia in an effort to correct the historical record.