Forest forensics: a field guide to reading the forested landscape

Description

Preface -- Introduction -- Key to reading the forested landscape -- Using the key -- Agriculture -- Old growth and wind -- Logging and fire -- Plates -- Evidence -- Evidence of agriculture: crop fields and hay fields ; pasture ; abandonment aging primer -- Evidence of old growth and wind: tree-aging primer -- Evidence of logging and fire: other evidence of fire primer ; stump decay primer -- Quick-reference charts -- Glossary.;This is a field guide that residents and visitors, landowners and foresters, students and hikers, and anyone who walks in the woods of the Northeast can use to discern the history of virtually any piece of land. What is the evidence: Are trees old or young? Are they standing or have they fallen? Did they snap mid-trunk or tip up with their roots? What is the human footprint on the land - stone walls, open fields - and how has it influenced the landscape? If you ever come across a place so unique, so damaged, or so lovely that it made you wonder how it arrived at that state and what it looked like a hundred years ago, you've finally go the key to deciphering that mystery in Forest Forensics.