If you've read Tom Wessels' books, "Reading the Forested Landscape" and "Forest Forensics", you know how skilled he is at interpreting the past land use history clues abounding in central New England's changing forests. Learning to apply the knowledge you gained from those books can be time consuming, however, and you probably find yourself returning to the books often.
In this 3-part film, you'll go into the woods with Tom as he covers many of the topics in detail, providing another opportunity for you to enhance your own "forest forensics" skills.
Some of the topics covered in the three parts: New England's stone walls; pillows and cradles; merino sheep craze ("sheep fever"); forests arising on abandoned agricultural land (past hay field vs crop field vs pasture); signs of past wind, logging and fire damage; reading tree stumps; white pine weevils and multi-trunked pines .
PART ONE (35:28 minutes)
PART TWO (19:49 minutes)
PART THREE (24:37 minutes)
I met him some years back after speaking at a seminar. Very nice and knowledgeable guy.
ReplyDeleteChestnut trees in Tennessee that were 13' in diameter? That's pretty amazing!
ReplyDeleteThis content... is FANTASTIC!!!!!
ReplyDeleteMOAR!
Fascinating.
ReplyDeleteFantastic! I just watched part one. I have 31 acres just East of the pioneer valley, a mile or so of stone walls and I’m surrounded by conservation land. Always wondered what it was, now I have many clues to answer that question. There is a large stone dump of fist sized rocks quite a way back, now I know why they’re there.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!
I started watching the first one to see if it was something I would be interested in. I was immediately hooked. I then binge watched all three.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the links.