Skip navigation.

The Official Website of the Department of Fish and Game (DFG)

 
Land and Water

Forest Inventory

The DFW Forestry Program began a comprehensive inventory of all upland forest areas in 2004 using funding provided by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs to meet a forest certification condition that requires updating of allowable harvest projections for DFW lands. Stratified random forest inventory plots were established on a 10 x 40 chain grid (one plot per 40 acres) across all DFW lands. Tree data is collected at all plots using Two Dogs™ forest inventory software in order to calculate timber and other wood products volumes, and to determine growth rates for trees on DFW lands. The combination of wood products volumes and growth rates will allow DFW to calculate allowable harvest levels using Woodstock™ software in 2007-2008.

In addition to tree data, DFW is collecting comprehensive information on shrub and herbaceous plants at a subset of inventory plots using a modified Natural Heritage Form3 sample to characterize structural habitat elements of plant and animal communities, obtain natural community descriptions, measure components of biological diversity, evaluate potential wildfire hazard, and characterize coarse woody debris. DFW will post vascular plant summaries from the Form3 database for individual properties in the near future.

The inventory of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants is intended to facilitate ecosystem management practices that conserve biodiversity. To date, DFW has completed about 1,200 forest inventory plots on 48,000 acres of WMA forestland.

Originally, DFW set out to inventory 62,960 acres of upland forest within the 86,000 total acres for which landcover mapping has been completed. Since that time, DFW has completed landcover mapping for an additional 10,500 acres of WMA lands, including 8,040 acres of upland forest. Accordingly, DFW now seeks to complete forest inventory on a total of 71,000 ac of upland forest. The 48,000 acres inventoried to date represents 76% of the original 62,960 acres allocated for inventory, and 68% of the revised 71,000 ac of upland forest allocated for inventory.

As part of its forest inventory, DFW continues to conduct site visits at potential vernal pools. Over the past four years, DFW Foresters and Contractors have visited 484 potential vernal pools (PVPs) mapped by NHESP on DFW lands. Of these 484 PVPs, 271 were found to be functional pools. In addition, during the course of this field work, 109 functional vernal pools were discovered and mapped that had not been part of the NHESP PVP datalayer. Overall, a total of 380 vernal pools have been documented through this effort.