old growth vs. second growth forest?

In relation to the "wilderness" thread, the terms "second growth" and "old growth" seem odd.

"Second growth" implies that the forest was always there and then got chopped down, then has grown a second time. Isn't it really about the one-millionth growth? Hasn't the forest been leveled a million times by fire and by the global cooling/melting cycles?

How old is old? When will sections of forest that have been allowed to regrow be considered old growth?

When I hike in places like The Bowl of Wonalancet, the only difference I notice is lots of large fallen trees on the ground a lack of cut stumps. What else should I be noticing?

Thanks for any info.

Happy Trails

FG .... you've asked a very big question and I've only got 15 mins or so to respond so I'll be quick. There isn't really cut and dried answer to old vs 2nd growth. Terms are not precise and people in the field disagree what's what. If you read some pictures and narrative in Bove's books on logging railroads Bove gives a taste of what the forest was like before the loggers came in. In bottomlands like on Saco and Swift River Basins White Pine was pretty dominant species featuring monster trees probably 150 to 170' tall. As you graded into the uplands Spruce took over and bgecame the dominant species. Spruces in much larger size than we see now. The so-called old-growth we read about in guide books like the bowl is pretty sorry example as it is high elevation on steep terrain heavily susceptible to wind damage. I hear the bowl was pretty good until hurricane of 38 came through. What's left is pockets that have to be searched for. I think when spruces were truly dominant, it must have been pretty open woods for walking.

Please visit the Eastern Native Tree Society web site. Go to link for Trip Reports where you will see trip reports by members broken down by state. New Hampshire doesn't really have much in way of old growth forest sites. ENTS discusses one site in Claremont on private land that is supposed to be pretty good. Oddly some of the best sites in northeast are in western Mass. I've visited some of them and they are remarkable and special places. I've observed White Pines in bottomlands of Pemigiwaset shooting up above the hardwood forest canopy standing good 20-30 feet taller than the hardwoods that surround them returning to dominance. Undisturbed they can put on 12-18" per year so it won't be more than a few decades before these bottomlands start looking pretty interesting. Bove's book on Henry's RR's has nice map showing dates when various regions of the Pemi were logged and tries to pinpoint when various fires like the great Owlshead fire occurred. Bovbe's book shows one black & white photo of massive column of smoke rising aver the Pemi rising higher than the surrounding ridges. Gotta go.

Eastern Native Tr5ee Society

First / Old Growth

The terms are indeed odd, but perhaps an improvement over "virgin forest". All forests, in this area at least, are new since the most recent ice age. First refers to the origin of the forest growth, i.e. nature, as opposed to a second or subsequent origin - a result of human disturbance.

Some clues to first growth from Dr. Kudish, The Catskill Forest, A History, page 82. In addition to no cut stumps, there should be no log or bark roads, no human built foundations, quarries, nor quarry roads. No charred tress nor charcoal in the soil unless it is known that these resulted from a naturally started fire, e.g. lightning. There should also be no abundant stands of trees of shade intolerant to mid-tolerant trees that are known to follow after human disturbances: white ash, basswood, aspens, hickories, butternut, American chestnut, black birch, gray birch, oaks, pines. Scattered individuals of these trees are possible in first growth.

A good knowledge of the recorded fire and human history of an area is essential.

Check out the Big Pines off Livermore Road in WV

For an inspiring glimpse at what the "old growth" forests must have looked like, take a short 10-minute divergence off the Livermore Road in Waterville Valley. The Big Pines Trail leads along a short, rough path to a small grove of absolutely monstrous old white pines that somehow escaped the clear-cut logging that swept through the area 110 years ago.

I have never seen the giant redwoods, and I am sure these are mere pups compared to them, but for an East Coast boy, these trees are something else all together. I would guess they're well over 15 feet in circumference at the base, and are vastly tall. Nice place to munch some trail mix and contemplate the mysteries of time and nature.

DrewKnight said:

The Big Pines Trail leads along a short, rough path to a small grove of absolutely monstrous old white pines that somehow escaped the clear-cut logging that swept through the area 110 years ago.

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Big trees.

-dave-

I grew up canoeing and camping in northeastern Minnesota. Congress eventually designated a big chunk of it the Boundary Waters Canoe Area "Wilderness." For the first thirty years of my life, I thought that's what a "wilderness" forest looked like.

Then I moved to AK, then to WA, and eventually back to MN. The first trip back to the BWCAW, the scales fell from my eyes. The lasting legacy from that now grown-over logging was plain to see, with these eyes that had seen old growth out west.

Now it's like defining obscenity -- I know what old growth looks like, and I can usually recognize everything else when I see it.

DrewKnight said:

I have never seen the giant redwoods, and I am sure these are mere pups compared to them, but for an East Coast boy, these trees are something else all together. I would guess they're well over 15 feet in circumference at the base, and are vastly tall.

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The giant redwoods are on a different scale--the General Sherman (sequoia) has a height of 275 ft and a basal diameter of 36 ft. A fallen branch had a diameter of 6 ft and a length of at least 140 ft.
http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/handbook_of_yosemite_national_park/sequoia.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/J002415/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron

I think we can call them old growth...


But the Big Pines aren't bad either, particularly in contrast to their surrounding trees.

Doug

During our trail work on Osseo Trail we came acrossthe remnants of a very old yellow birch still standing. The tree is long dead but its bark is so scaly as happens to yellows. Outside of the fact the loggers would not have been looking for this type of wood necessarily we wonder why it was left over.
When I was a young kid our neighbor took us bushwacking up Abenaki Brook in the Southern Presi's to see some forest that had not been stripped by logging. I will never forget its appearance.

Another area of old growth forest is the Hermitage. This National Landmark is a 35 acre parcel of what is believed to be the oldest stand of white pines in Maine. Its an amazing place, adjacent to Gulf Hagas, which is an equally amazing place. Just makes you think about what an awe inspiring sight the North Maine Woods must have been 150 years ago.

DougPaul said:

The giant redwoods are on a different scale--the General Sherman (sequoia) has a height of 275 ft and a basal diameter of 36 ft. A fallen branch had a diameter of 6 ft and a length of at least 140 ft.

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note also that just 'cause a tree isn't large doesn't mean it's not really old. Besides the bristlecone pines out west, there are cedars in the Great Lakes area which have been estimated at approx 1000 years old (http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/julaug03/ancientcedars.html). Here in NH we have the oldest deciduous trees in eastern North America, which are black gum trees, some in Rockingham County are estimated at 700 years old, though they may be "only" 3 feet in diameter. I've found a few in my town that are fairly large (18-24") and that may be 250-350 years old.

White pines grow pretty fast....

I know a few ecologists and have been told that "old growth" is only partially related to the trees' characteristics; the other part being an increased level of biodiversity, e.g. thicker soil / moss / more herbaceous species, all of which are impacted with timber harvesting.

I think that this qualifies as old growth http://sonic.net/bristlecone/

White Pines returning to dominance

Example of what I mean about White Pines returning to dominance is these white pines poking up above the hardwood canopy along the Lincoln Brook Trail.


Similar situation is occuring on rich stream terrace accross from Cardigan Lodge. Pictures taken from Cardigan Lodge 3rd floor windows.



They're coming back!!!

Disease

probably killed as much eastern "old growth" as logging, but it was sad when my wife and i came into this beautiful area in the remote reaches of central West Virginia years ago and found these HUGE old stumps - yards across in diameter - the result of logging many, many years ago. Yes, there once were very large trees in the east - on a scale that dwarfs what is around now...

To summarize some points already made, and a few more.

The opposite of second (or subsequent) growth is not old growth. It is first growth (no human disturbance).

All first growth areas are considered old growth.

All old growth is not first growth.

forestgnome said:

How old is old? When will sections of forest that have been allowed to regrow be considered old growth?

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Dr. Michael Kudish tends to use 200 years as a threshold for a second growth area to become old growth again -- provided the area has been undisturbed during that period.

Not everything in old growth or first growth areas is old. Young trees are constantly growing. There may be no old trees in an old growth area, e.g. a first growth area that suffers frequent natural disturbances, or where natural causes limit the life span of trees.

Old growth is not the same as large trees. The bristlecone pines and cedars have already been mentioned. In the northeastern US there are many old growth areas near tree line and on summits below tree line. Dwarf trees are common in these old growth areas. Tree size and/or age is limited by the wind, ice, snow, and other natural disturbances.

Old growth areas tend to reach a natural equilibrium of tree species. This is sometimes called the climax vegetation -- The species will vary based on elevation, latitude, climate, soil, etc. A return to climax vegetation might also be a reasonable criteria for considering that a second growth area has returned to old growth. The climax vegetation does change over time as the planet goes through warming / cooling trends and climate changes. At one time there was no red spruce in the northeastern US. The red spruce spread very slowly into the northeast from the southern Appalachians in the last 2000 to 3000 years. At the same time balsam fir has experienced a slow decline in the northeast. In time the balsams may be replaced entirely by hardwoods. Northern hardwoods were introduced in the northeast at the start of the Hypsithermal Interval (8500 years ago). During the warmest period of the Hypsithermal Interval (6000 years ago) southern hardwoods (oaks, chestnut, walnuts, hickories) were introduced. It is estimated that the earth was then 2-3 degrees C warmer than it is today. Not bad for natural global warming. The hemlock population crashed following the end of the Hypsithermal Interval (5000 years ago), and returned about the same time the red spruce arrived.

Big/Old Trees, easy walks

Bradford Pines, just off rt 103 in Bradford, NH. There's a parking lot and sign. 5 min walk. Big trees, almost western in size.
Black Gum trees in the Nature Conservancy's Manchester Cedar Swamp Preserve, amazingly just off I-93 in Hooksett. Old trees, probably growing when Luther and Calvin were writing. Fascinating trail through cedar swamp and rhodedendrons.

Although "Old growth" is commonly used to mean "big trees", some old trees can actually be fairly small. For example, the 8" diameter spruce on Mt. Passaconaway can be over a hundred years old. (I've checked ring-counts on some blow-downs.) Things grow pretty slowly with that exposure and elevation.

I personally like the term "climax forest", meaning that some trees have reached their natural age limit, and as they die, they make way for younger trees and new growth. A climax forest has attained a natural equilibrium. It may contain really large tress - or not. But it does provide an ecosystem that is different from a younger forest.

Unfortuntaly, much of the logging around the 1900's was so heavy that a considerable amount of topsoil was lost from the WMNF. Some of the soil had been deposited by the last ice age, while the remiander has slowly accumulated since the ice retreated. The trouble is that re-establishing the pre-1900 soil conditions can take many thousands of years - much longer than the life span of a single old-growth tree. In fact, it took many generations of old trees to build up the soil. And without that historic soil accumulation, it's hard to know what the forests of New England were really like before European settlement.

Apparently, the Wonalancet River (draining the Bowl) has been recognized as one of the very few mountain streams in he WMNF that retains its original character. Unlike the denuded slopes elsewhere in the WMNF, whatever cutting occured in this watershed was on a much smaller scaler, and the continuous forest cover prevented the river channel from being scoured-out, as happened to most streams in the WMNF. This difference is easily visible by the extensive gravel banks and outwash along many other streams, as compared to the well-vegetated banks and frequent pools of the Wonalancet River. As a result, the Bowl is valued as much for what it can tell us about natural soil conditions, as for the individual trees that may be there today.

If we have any specialists in these fields, hopefully they can expand on my lay-person's comments and offer any corrections.

Whoa!!! Thanks for all the excellent responses and photos! I've got a lot of reading to do. I'll start following those links. Ah, the beauty of VFTT!

Happy Trails

btw...Big Pines Trail is my next rainy day hike

"Biggest" pine circumference estimate

DougPaul said:

But the Big Pines aren't bad either, particularly in contrast to their surrounding trees...

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Took a walk to Big Pines with a buddy and our two sons on Saturday morning. The biggest of the Big Pines is almost exactly two tall adult males, plus one tall 10-year old boy, plus one medium five-year old boy's arm-span in circumference. I would say that that is about 18 feet, give or take a nursery-schooler's reach.

There are also some very large pines along the Rail n River trail, at the Russell Colbath house, on the Kanc. It's worth a 1/2 hour stop.

I know where the Hemenway State Forest is, along Rt 113, and I think there is a "Big Pines Natural Area"? How would I find the Hemenway Pine?

Thanks