We began our research of trees in the Huntington High forest by marking off a rectangle of 10 by 10 meters using twine and wood stakes. Within this rectangle, or transect, we used paint to number all trees large enough to hypothetically be used for lumber.
Using a Clinometer app on students' smartphones, we found the angle to the bottom and to the crotch of the tree 20 meters from the base in order to find the height of the tree. We also used a tape measure to find the circumference of each tree. With these numbers we calculated the size in cubic feet and board feet of the usable part of the tree.
We used a dichotomous key of North American tree species to figure out the types of trees being measured and found the value per board foot of those species, which we then calculated to get an estimated worth of each tree.
Afterward, we used ArcGIS to find the approximate area of the Huntington High forest and looked at tree value data from other classes. Using 4 transects from 4 class mods gave us an improved sample size and we used those numbers and the area of the forest to calculate the estimated (and most likely incorrect, due to measuring inaccuracies) value of the HHS forest.
