On Monday several other members of the EE model research team and I met with foresters from Plum Creek and AFM to give them an overview of what we’ve been working on over the past year or so. Megan (Forestry Master’s student) and I gave them the lowdown on what we’ve been doing with regards fieldwork and analysis of the resulting data, Susan (Natural Resources Master’s student) spoke briefly about her work looking at factors influencing the prices of timber sales, and Mike (Forestry Prof.) was on hand to help paint the overall picture.

The foresters we spoke with were interested in our progress to date and asked for more details on tree species-specific patterns we find in our regeneration data so that they might work to continue the sustainability of their forest stands. Megan and are I are likely taking a trip to the study area again in late April to revisit a few sites from last spring and summer, so we’ll visit again then.

To get from one meeting to the other we drove through our study area. We wanted to see if we could find evidence of winter deer browse and generally get a feel for how the forests (and our study stands) look during the winter. We didn’t catch any deer in the act of browsing but, as the top picture below shows, we did see tracks and there were plenty of stunted maple saplings poking just above the snow nearby.