Interpretive Analysis and Methods Used

Interpretive:

Our plot in Niquette Bay state park was number 13 which is located directly off the Burns trail. Site 13 is roughly 1 hectare in size and consists of a moderately dense hilly forested area on the western side of the plot tapering down to a stream bed on the east side. Coming in off of the Burns trail you enter the western corner of our plot.

This area is at the top of the east facing hillside where all you can see is snags and downed wood across the forest floor and stream moving down the hill. This area comprises about 60% of our site and is dominated by white pine, birch and maple. This part of the site shows evidence of a blow down as there is an extensive amount of both snags and dead woody debris across the landscape that make it a little challenging to navigate.

Two smaller streams, one from the north corner and one from the northwest, converge at the bottom of the hilly area to form a marshy area dominated by ferns and other riparian species. This riparian zone extends the whole length of the plot from near the north corner where the two streams meet, to the south east where the stream flows out.

The eastern corner of our plot is on the other side of the riparian zone halfway up a west facing hillside that runs along the length of the stream. Although this hillside predominantly had the same species that we found everywhere else in our plot there were some large white ash that we only found there.

Finally our southern corner is marked by a very large white pine that sits on the side of the hill and measures 53inches in diameter and is roughly 85 feet tall. The large amount of downed wood and both low and high snags in our site in combination with the fertile riparian area where the streams converge lead us to believe that this is very good habitat for small forest animals like fishers as well as a variety of different bird species such as the barred owl and the scarlet tanager.

Methods:

In order to collect the necessary information to perform our assessment of our plot there were several methods that we had to use. First we had to analyze the substrate of our site by testing the ph of our soil and evaluate the soil layer horizons based on our auger holes. Next we did an inventory of the vegetation on our site noting the different species found. We then did a natural community analysis which consisted of creating plots and determining which species of trees were located there. Additionally we measured the DBH of the trees in our plot as well as height of those trees. The final appraisal that we did was to record the number of high and low snags on our site as well as recording the amount and diameter of down wood across out site noting the level of decay.