Talk:Tree height measurement

Historical tree heights

The article mentions "There are historical accounts of extremely tall and large trees." In the northeastern United States, for example, there are frequent stories published in newspapers and magazines dating from the 1800s telling of extremely tall white pines (Pinus strobus).[12] One extraordinary account in the Weekly Transcript, North Adams, Mass., Thursday, July 12, 1849 reads: “A Large Tree. --- Mr. D. E. Hawks, of Charlemont, cut a Pine tree a short time since, of the following dimensions. It was 7 feet through 10 feet from the stump, and 5 feet through 50 feet from the stump. Twenty-two logs were taken from the tree, the average length of which were 12 feet. Fourteen feet of the tree were spoiled in falling. The extreme length of the tree from the stump to the top twigs was 300 feet! ---- Greenfield Gazette.” In 1995 Robert Leverett and Will Blozan measured the Boogerman Pine, a white pine in Great Smokey Mountains National Park, at a height of 207 feet in 1995 using ground based cross triangulation methods.[13] This the highest accurate measurement obtained for any tree in the eastern United States within modern times. The top of the tree was lost in Hurricane Opal in 1995 and it currently stands at just under 190 feet in height.[14] It is possible that some white pines in the past reached heights of well over 200 feet given the much larger area of primary forest prior to the timber boom in the 1800s, however, based on what grows today, it is highly unlikely they ever reached the heights in some of these historical accounts. These reported heights are likely just a mixture of personal and commercial bravado by the lumbermen of the time."

So no white pine tree in the east was accurately measured until 1995 when two tree enthusiasts used ground based triangulation methods on a standing tree, and the reports of over 200 foot tall pines cut down routinely and reported in the press for the previous 150 years are "likely just a mixture of personal and commercial bravado by the lumbermen of the time." I fail to find this convincing. I am not saying one should believe newspaper reports without looking for primary documentation, but as Dr. Al C Carder and several other tree historians have shown, many times the reports can be tracked to primary sources such as mill records and logging camp proprietors who had written records on how many logs some big trees contained. In the 1850's and into the early 1900's there was a tremendous amount of waste in the logging operations, especially in the Pacific NW. But there were still general rules of the trade in place, common sense stuff. A bucker and sawyer cut logs into lengths generally divisible by 4 or 6, using a straight stick of some 4 or 6 feet high, (or an early measuring tape which became more common post 1920's) he would cut the logs into lengths such as 12 feet, 16, or 20 feet and out in the Pacific Northwest 40 foot cuts were common. In cutting per each log if he was a good bucker he left 4 to 9 inches of fudge room for each log, so that an exact length could be cut at the mill without going too short. Because you generally had a team of men to handle a large pine or fir tree, there were often at least 2 or 3 measurements done of the tree. 1. Before it fell, a fall zone needed to be established so as not to spoil the wood of the entire tree, knowing the approximate height of the tree was important for safety and $$. 2. The men often walked along the trunk the distance of the prostrate tree pacing it off in their own stride to find how much merchantable wood could be cut from the shaft 2. The bucker would have cut the tree into known lengths using his straight stick, preferably leaving a few extra inches on each major cut, so that the entire height of the tree could have easily been arrived at. Even if the tree had fallen in a deep ravine making measurements tricky, the men often walked along the trunk of the tree as a bridge which was more level than the surrounding terrain. In short, I have more confidence in numbers of log lengths and tree heights made by lumbermen who were experienced in the art of physically and directly measuring and cutting down trees than I have in the handful of hobbyists who measure the remnant few giant pine trees indirectly using lasers and range finders and often these hobbyists do not even release to the public where the trees are located, thus requiring a dose of faith in even these very modern measurements. I believe cutting down a tree and measuring it is the most definite record of size one can have a high level of confidence in. AN example of common logging standards in place in the Pafcific NW in 1918: http://books.google.com/books?id=3bIUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=logging+douglas+fir&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jIKQUrG9N4THiwLUrYC4CA&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBA#v=thumbnail&q=bucking&f=false

If the lumbermen were sober, hard working, and experienced, they cut down untold numbers of trees and were very experienced at measuring their height and market volume.

--67.5.252.120 (talk) 02:19, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I see you have never seen a fallen tall tree. As a rule, the top explodes and it is a challenging puzzle to reconstruct the original trunk. Further, a citation from Hartesveldt: "The Giant Sequoia of the Sierra Nevada":

"The trees' heights were understandably more difficult to measure than their diameters. Triangulation was crude at best and might better be called guesswork. Fallen trees should have been another story, but were not. It is beyond comprehension that fallen specimens could be so inaccurately measured; many works reported the "Father of the Forest" in the Calaveras Grove to be 450 ft long as it lay on the ground—140 ft longer than the tallest specimens measured by modern surveying instruments. There are several early reports that the tallest sequoias approached 600 ft, and one Londoner even predicted that specimen trees, if undisturbed, would eventually reach 50 ft in diameter and 1000 ft in height (Anon. 1876)."

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/science/hartesveldt/chap1.htm

3/4 of the original giant sequoia forest remains, so it is very unlikely they were remarkably taller in the past. Krasanen (talk) 10:05, 13 March 2017 (UTC)