 Alright, so today's workshop is a result of a very congenial relationship that we've built up over several years, and is one aspect of the continuing stewardship of the headwater sanctuary, even though today we're not actually going to be entering into the headwaters to do our training. So we do have an aspiration that out of this training will come an interest in people doing more measuring. I don't have a list of trees already made up, so please speak up about places you love and trees you love that are in those places, and we can start from the places that really motivate us, and then when we get a good at it, or at least a little experience, we can announce this and let me tell you, once you do that, you are flooded with people who have the biggest tree you've ever seen in the world. So we may have to set up some kind of criteria, I'm going to hand this over to these folks right now, but I do want to put a brag announcement. I'm going to just talk a little bit. So the secret identity for the three of us up here is this book, which is the Famous Trees of Texas, which is a product revision, a new edition, for the centennial of the Texas Forest Service a couple of years ago, and Gretchen had the main workload of doing the updates and the edits and everything else, and then she called Mark one day and said that they needed some pictures of one tree in San Antonio and frankly, could they find somebody to take the pictures? So the bookmark here is a picture that I had the pleasure of taking, Mark and the Burnto, which is an old golf course, Bacca Valley, on the south side of town. It is a beautiful, very calcule, 22 feet hints or comforts. So since then I had the pleasure of doing several other trees, some of which are on private land and you'll never know where they are, because even though they go and measure them, they're not going to tell you where they are. Others of which are there on public land. So I find tree measuring a whole lot of fun, especially in great company. So I hope you find this kind of activity just as satisfying as I have, and it's the kind of thing that you can walk away from and come back a few years later and learn again and see which new tools have been invented to help make it even simpler. So I'm going to hand it over to Pam, our host. A couple of you already know about the headwaters that bear with me. One of whom is in the back, a new member of our board, Michael Goldstein. But first of all, I'd like to welcome you to Headwaters and Incarnate World. You are actually not in Headwaters, as Lisa mentioned. You are in the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate World property. In brief, in 1897, they bought over 300 acres from Colonel Brackenridge, and that ended up delivering to us the University of Incarnate World, the Incarnate World High School, the Village of Incarnate World, the property you see, the smaller property you see here, and then 12 years ago, 53 acres of undeveloped land. The last undeveloped land of that original parcel were set aside as a nature sanctuary now called Headwaters Incarnate World. And our mission is ecological restoration of that property, education, and that's why you're here, and a public service providing that open space in the heart of San Antonio for folks to have access to nature, nature that is not a park. And you know that there's a distinction between a park and a nature sanctuary. So we welcome you here today. All of our events are, for the most part, are free and are funded by donations. So here's my pitch. We appreciate your donations in person or online or participation in fundraising events of any kind because that's what helps us plan going forward. And we're very excited to have this team here. We hope we will be able to do future workshops of this nature with this team. And I'm going to turn it over to them for their own introductions and welcome you all to Headwaters. Thank you for being here. All right. Welcome, everybody. You've found us in this cold, on forecast of rainy day. I think you all probably did the same thing the other day. It looked to be drier. So the beauty of today in the magic is getting a measure and learning how to systematically measure these big trees. So San Antonio turned 300 years old this year, tricentennial. And probably there are some trees within a couple hundred yards that were probably alive when that happened. Very, very old trees, very beautiful trees. So we've got a fun day for you to learn those skills, measure, but talking to Lisa, what we'd like to do eventually is that during this tricentennial year to get a document of these big, large trees of the species that we recommend or native to San Antonio. So around 30 trees, find the biggest ones, have us go out there and measure it, create the document for posterity's sake. So to help us with that, somebody to have a tremendous amount of respect for, Gresham Riley. She's going to help us and guide us and give us the skills because she's been doing this, she's been the custodian of that big tree of registry for a long time. She's trained at the national level and she's here and I'm going to assist her as she needs it, but she's going to be the star of the day. So thank you, Gresham. Well, I do want to... I'm going to take this now. And I might change the lighting a little bit. I do want to tell you guys that you are getting your instruction today from somebody who's on the national cadre for the American Forest Victory Program. So really, this doesn't happen across the country very often and you guys are really one of the smaller groups that were able to do this. So I think it's great. There have been some changes in the program over the years and most recently in the last couple of years, you're going to get what those are. If you have been involved in measuring big trees for a while, you'll think, uh-oh, something's different. If you haven't been involved in measuring big trees, then hopefully you'll leave being able to at least wow your friends and family because you can estimate height now very easily or actually you will be when you're done here. So we'll go ahead and get started. And a couple things I think it's important to know to understand, especially if you're thinking about doing a local registry of some kind or another is how they all play together. So the Texas Big Tree Registry, at some point in time I'll have the web URL. It's changed a little bit and I don't remember off the top of my head, but it'll be up here. The Texas Big Tree Registry is the statewide champion tree program. Every state in the country has one. It is a list of the largest individual specimens for each species in Texas. And I'm going to have to break down and do the glasses business. I can't see without them and I can't see with them. So it's really a challenge for me. So this is the state version of the national program. American Forests has been doing a national registry for decades. And we have been participating in it since the 60s. Some early champions of champion trees were Joseph Stearns. So he wrote an article in 1940 for American Forests. He's really one of the big champions and got the program going. Also, Maryland State Forester really helped get this national program going. And it really is one of those national programs that help bring attention to these really great, fabulous trees across the country. So as I mentioned, it was established in 1940, the national program. And it started with just 100 trees. People in 1940, in the decades following that, they were looking at what they thought were just the largest of the large trees. Now we look for the largest specimen of all tree species, all native and naturalized tree species. Let's see what we get here. In Texas, we've got 320 of those. Sometimes the largest specimen of a very small tree, like a Hawthorne, parsley Hawthorne, might not be a very big tree. And you could walk by it in the woods and not be impressed. So there have been some local champions of trees as well, or state champions of trees, that have gone out and combed the woods and found those big trees that you and I might just walk right by because we didn't recognize them as being the largest of that particular species. There are 83 trees in the state that are national champions. So we've got 83 national champions. We've got 320 species in Texas. And 83 of those species are national champions. They're the largest across the country. Yeah, so this is our new URL. We just put this online about six months ago, five or six months ago, and it allows real-time data. So as soon as I get a new champion, enter that into the database, it's showing right here. So we really keep it up to date. It has maps for all publicly accessible trees. So you can go find them. It's got photos of all trees. We've got photos for. There are some that were discovered decades ago that there was a couple of really great naturalists that wandered the states in search of big trees and they found them, but they didn't always take snap photos. And we believe them because after all, you've heard of them. Some of them, Benny Simpson. You guys are familiar with him. He had nominated probably for a long time. He had the most champions nominated over any other people, persons in Texas. James Lyles, who was the superintendent at Big Bend, he now, I think he has the longest-running list of current national champions. He no longer lives here in Texas, but anyway, what's the purpose of the Big Tree Registry? Why do we do it? It's cool to see really big trees, but there's other reasons that we do it. And one of the reasons that Texas Forest Service is engaged in this program is because we want to bring recognition to the value that these trees provide to all Texans, to you and if it's your own that stands in your yard, to your neighbors, to the community, to the state itself. And we want to preserve them if at all possible. There is no special designation that comes with being a champion as far as from a legal standpoint. It's not going to save the tree if Texas dot needs to go through it, although it has, but not because it has that designation, but because people like you go out there and say, look, I think you can reroute this road or I think you can build a subdivision around this tree because it's really important to us. And look, see, it's really important to lots of people. So we do like to see any time we hear about trees being saved because of the value that they offer. I think that's a great story to tell. And a tree that is the largest known specimen of its species, that is something worthwhile, worthwhile keeping, something worth bragging about. So what trees are eligible for listing and they must meet the definition of a tree? This is a woody plant. There's a number of different definitions for trees out there, but this is the one that's recognized by American forests. It's a woody plant having one erect perennial stem or trunk and that's kind of important. We'll have to remember that as we talk about measuring rules. That's at least three inches in diameter at breast height. And it is more or less formed with a crown and a foliage, meaning it's not a shrub and it has to retain a height of at least 13 feet. So there are some things that cross, you know, the red on the border of do we really think that's a tree or a shrub and some people will argue one way or another, but what it really comes down to is, is this a normal way of growth for it and then we'll take it. Albert Little made that definition and Mark has this actual 1979 checklist of trees that is the original list of species eligible to be called trees and recognized by American forests. Two thousand botanists like to change names and change all sorts of things for us and so in 2009 the species list was updated a little bit to reflect what some people had changed. Now these are native and naturalized trees only and most of you I'm sure, I know you are way ahead of the majority of our audience and you know exactly what that means, but native of course is what was here before we were keeping track of what was around and naturalizes what I like to say is it's behaving respectively and not out competing its neighbors. So it's kind of a nice way to say it. Oh, and I just gave you that. Okay. We have recognized that you know, sometimes it's fun to look at some other species as well. So we have what we call an ornamental list and that includes some things like fruit trees and I actually don't want to, there's a number of different things that are on the ornamental list, we don't pursue that, we don't kick it up the food chain to the national list per se, but sometimes it's really fun to have, you know if you've ever seen an astronomical peach tree that has a, you know, a circumference that's this big, that's pretty impressive and so it's great to have it on the list. So how do trees make it on the list? Well they've got to be nominated. There are forms that you guys will have more than you ever want today, but two sides to it, it's got to be filled out in entirety before we even consider looking at it. Once we get the form and accompanying photos, then we're going to compare it to a circumference threshold. So each species on the list has a circumference threshold. That keeps us from looking at all trees that people think are big, because I don't know about you, but sometimes I look at the postdocs, I'm at the college station, I've got postdocs and I think I've got some really big postdocs and they don't even come close to the champion postdocs. Live Oaks are a great example. We have, everything is gone digital, but we happen to maintain an archive of all hard copies for the big tree registry, because it's been around a lot longer than digital files have been. And we have about four files this thick on Live Oaks, because everybody thinks they've got the biggest Live Oaks ever seen in their yard or down the road or something like that, and it's really very, very small compared to the champions. Very, very small compared to the one that's out over here in the courtyard that I got to see this morning that's beautiful, which wouldn't even compete for the champion. So there are, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, there are a lot of regional, several regional lists out there. The most active ones are one in Dallas and one in Houston. And in both of those areas, it is regional, it's not city. So the Dallas list is, they call it, it's kind of Texas tree trails, but that's really confusing with another one of our programs, but they maintain the entire metro area and they'll go out even a little bit farther than that. We get a lot of our champions from their list. So their curator, when they've got champions, they'll be looking at the Texas Big Tree Registry and when there's one that they have, that happens to get up pretty done close to what the champion is, they'll submit it to me and say, hey, you know, I'd like to nominate this for the Texas Registry and we keep, I'd like to keep five or ten of each species as possible on the list because you have a year like this last year, or the last five years, or maybe let's all go all the way back to 2011. Since then we've lost many, many champions and not just the number one, but the number two and sometimes even the number three. So it really helps to have five, six, seven trees of each species on the list so that you can immediately crown a new champion. The Dallas Fort Worth program, they keep quite a few. The Houston area, this is mostly Harris County Registry, they put out a publication every couple of years. That's the cover of it. It's really a really nice publication. It has photos of all of their champions and their measurements and the Houston Area Urban Forestry Council sponsors that as well as Trees for Houston. We get a lot of our champions from there as well because there are a lot of people that are looking and measuring and finding. This is our website. As you can see, we've got 83 national champions and 273 state champions. Now, who can remember how many species, native and naturalized species we've got? 320. What's the problem? There's no entries. There's no entries. We have so many. We just do the math. There's more than 45 that are without a tree at all on the list because we have co-champions, which I'll get to in a minute. So some species actually have two. They're counted in this number as two. So they're probably out there 50 to 55 species that you could find the champion for and have your name listed as the nominator. Now, I do the same thing that the regional registries do. So every year, National Forest says to me, hey, it's getting time. I need your nominations. And I'll comb through and I'll see what I've got that might be competitive at the national level. I like to call them pretenders, pretenders for the crown. But one of the reasons, there's a couple of ways to get kicked off the list on the national level. One is if there's a larger one found. Another way is if no one's looked at the champion and re-measured it in five years. So I'm looking, not just at sizes, I'm looking at dates. So if something hasn't been measured in a while, I'll hurry up and nominate one of ours. And then that's really a way we get a fair number of champions. But unfortunately, it's also the way we sometimes lose champions because some of our trees are really hard to get to. In fact, we've just lost our state champion, Aspen, which we'll never compete for national. And it's a long, hard hike in Big Bend in the Chisos. And the number two, which is I'm crowded, but I'm going to have to go see it, it's in the Guadalupe. And I just was talking with our forester out there and he said, oh, I tell him, I'm like, I'm all excited. He's like, oh, he goes, I haven't done that hike in years. And the last time I did it, it took me over 11 hours just to get there. And that was not even turned around. He said, but he did it from the back side, the New Mexico side. So anyway, hard to get there every five years when the truth is I'm talking like I do this all the time and the big tree program is really only about 10% of my job. So really tough to get out there and do the fun hikes every five years. But I like to do it anyway. So how is a champion determined? I said it's got to be the largest, but how do we know it's the largest? And the way that the powers to be back in the 40s when they developed this program determined that they develop an index that could be compared across not just trees, individual trees, but species so that you're ending up with essentially the same criteria and the value. So circumference in inches. We're looking at that. We talk all the time in forestry and in agriculture about diameter at breast hike. But in big trees, we're looking at circumference. We're looking at height in feet. That's pretty self-explanatory. And then we're looking at the average crown spread in feet. I'll show you how that's done in just a little while. So the index is by dropping the units and then you take that circumference value which let's say it's 100 and you add it to the height. Let's say it's 100 and then you add one quarter of the average crown spread. So let's say the average crown spread is 100. It was 100 this way and 100 that way. Nice, it's 100. And one quarter of that is 25. So you would then add that to the height and the circumference measurement or index would be 225. The good thing is I've got a database that does the math for me and all we need to ever do is take the measurements. So trees within... I mentioned that it's something called co-champs. So trees within five point index are considered co-champs. Now why do you think we might allow that to be the case? Anybody have a good idea? Well, that formula is arbitrary. Well, the formula is an arbitrary but there is something kind of arbitrary behind it. Tree growth varies from year to year. Tree growth varies from year to year? Yours? Exactly. If I'm doing it in spring versus fall there might be a foot difference in height. You know, that could really... I mean one point, you want to lose your champion status for one point. It might be that you take it on a really humid day. You know, the measurements taken when it's humid, everything's just a little bit more expanded than it is on a dry day. So our measurements are... even though we try to get them as accurate as we possibly can, they can vary a little bit. And so we don't want to have it be exactly within one point of determining the champion and kick the king off the throne if indeed it's just a variance from year to year. Alright, so if you're a tree owner or you're a nominator, what do you get? Well, you get a certificate. That's one thing. You get a recognition ceremony if you want it. So a lot of times there are some public places that like that. Most homeowners don't. Press release. A lot of times this happens actually quite frequently. The champion fax on Yatkes is out front, one of the co-champion fax on Yatkes, and yes, it's considered a tree, is out front of the Chewies in Van Horn. So if you ever take I-10 and you want to go and stop, and they claim the original Chewies, and there's fax on Yuck out front, that's one of the co-champions, and they wanted to have a press release. Well, great PR for business, right? What you get is this satisfaction of owning it. You get bragging rights, that's what we say. That's the main thing that both owners and nominators get. You want this chair? No. This floor is good. Okay. So the site that I told you about, if you have a chance after we're done today, I encourage you to go and look at it, because it's got some really nice little features on it. It's got a search function. It's got the maps I told you about. It's got photos. It's got the official list. So you can one there. If you want to know if the tree that's in your yard or in your neighbor's yard or down the way, if that compares at all, you can just, actually, it's even mobile friendly, so you can just hop on and say, oh, let me see. So before we get into, oh, I don't have speakers, but you might actually appreciate the sound of that. Before we get into how to measure, I want to look at how big is big. So here are some champions. This is the former state champion, state co-champion Bald Cypress. That's big. Former state champion Bald Cypress. This tree is also a famous tree. It's in our book here. It's a grape tree. One of the things that is really unique about it is back here is the river. I think it's the frio. Yeah. So if you know how Bald Cypress grows, you can take a look at that and you can recognize that there is a lot of fill at the base of that tree. So this is likely, you took the diameter of this tree, took the circumference at the four and a half foot level. That's likely to be many, many feet above what it would be if there wasn't all this fill. So this tree really, if we were really wanting to compare apples to apples, comparing this tree to other Bald Cypress that had their base exposed, this tree would undoubtedly outrank them all. Because as you know, a tree is wider at the base and as it grows it narrows so higher up until it starts flinching, higher up is always going to be narrower. Cool tree. This is the state champion Bald Cypress. Now they grow big out there because it's also on the frio. Wow. And you know what, you guys? This is out of focus. Let me see. So Gretchen, five hundred and sixty four points. Ah, I can't. So circumference is three hundred and something? Big. I don't remember the particulars on this exactly, but it would have to be, yes. Wow. So I know the 240 is the circumference threshold. That's really tough for my mouth to say. That's twenty feet. So 240 inches is also the threshold for live oaks. Meaning don't even bring me those that are just sort of big. Okay. State champion Bald Cypress, it's actually the same tree from a different angle. This is the national champion, most of them are Bald Cypress. Down in, um, Piedoggle County. Former national champion, Texas live oak. This is also in our famous trees book. Some of these trees are big, partly because they've been around a long time, and because they've been around a long time, they witness some really interesting historical events. There is someone some of you guys might know. It's another mark. Yes. That's Mark Duff who used to be out of our San Antonio. He's retired, yeah. This is a national champion, Texas live oak. Now, former state champion live oak. This is the Goose Island oak. This is an old photo. So this is one of the, this is a 1960s photo taken back when we first were sort of starting the program. And I put it in there. Here's the tree. It's not exactly today, but this was taken in 2013. State champion pecan. This is actually the national champion pecan. It was a national champion pecan for decades, decades. Since 1974, I think it was. And, um, this is part of the reason I got on the national measuring cadre. It was because they kicked it off the list. Because of something I'm going to talk to you about here in a little bit, they claimed that it was two trees. Well, um, sometimes I can buy that. But when I start looking at the place of forking, and actually as you, if you look around the side of this tree, it's, it's wide there too. It's not just narrow. Anyway, we got it back on as the national champion pecan. This tree is the national champion Texas persimmon. It has been. It is the longest running national champion. It's been a national champion since the late 60s. Former national champion Rio Grande Cottonwood. This tree was lost in 2011 on the Rockhouse Fire. It's still out there. There is, you have to look a little hard. If you're coming going south from Fort Davis, there is a charred fork several hundred yards out to pasture. But this, that was a loss to that community quite a bit. So any questions before we get on how to measure? And you have plenty of time to ask me questions. So measuring rules. Circumference. Yes. With the cypress tree and the knees being covered or the root system being covered. Is that dangerous for the tree to cover it like that? And would there be more pressure for them not to do that? So it has it was not ever covered by man. So that was covered over time. Just with flooding. So not a problem. Obviously. You're great. Thanks for assuming it has more than one. We're going to talk to you about that one. So lots of problems with that one. So, circumference. Very nice if you're measuring a telephone pole. It's really easy to do it. So in general, you want to take the narrowest point between four and a half feet above the ground and the ground. So the reason we take the narrowest is because this is the big tree program and the tendency to enlarge everything is very great. We want to round up. We round down. Always. We're looking for the smallest in that we can possibly do and still have it be the largest. So I know that sounds contradictory, but we're looking for the narrowest point because otherwise you would choose that burl that's sticking out and add a couple inches. Or you would say, by golly we are doing it at four and a half feet. I don't care what's going on there even if it's starting to fork there. So it is the narrowest point. But it's got to be below any fork. So if you have a fork that comes out at one feet above the ground but nice horizontal limb no doubt in your mind it's just a fork. You've got to measure below that even if it's narrower above. So it's got to be below any forking. You're going to record it in inches. You're going to round it down. You've got to make sure that you're looking at two inches that you're using a circumference tape. Just a plain old tape. So we use this and just wrap it around telephone pole. We'll demo outside a little bit. Take the end. Read it. It doesn't matter here because you're just rounding it down. But sometimes some of these tape have one side that's in tents and another side that's in inches and if you do tents it's not the same. So even if you round it down you might end up being an inch higher than it would normally be if you're using the tents. So don't use the tents. Use the inches. The other thing that people have, I can't tell you how many times we get problems is somebody will use tape. They've got especially foresters. Let me tell you foresters are a big problem this way because they got to have it and make noise and all that stuff. So if you wrap it around and they'll read it and they'll go great. It's 59. Well that was that's diameter because it's designed to give you a diameter reading even when you wrap it all the way around the tape. The tree because it's designed for one person so they can just get up to it, wrap it around get the reading and go on. So it's taking the whole thing and multiplied it by divided it by 3.14 and it's giving you the diameter on here. So that, one of you guys one of you teams might end up with this so be very very careful about that. Conference is that you want to do you want to make the measurement perpendicular to the stem of the tree. So not parallel to the ground ideally in a telephone pole it would be. But trees don't grow like that most of the time. So if a tree is growing make sure you're measuring the circumference of the stem itself and not any relationship to the ground other than that four and a half thing going on. Now what happens if let me see what we're going to do here is the narrowest looking spot you can see it's a really nicely tapered tree but right at four and a half foot there's this really big burl right at four and a half feet you want to measure right above and right below and then you take the smallest you also want to record where you measured it you want to do this for every measurement even if it's at four and a half feet there's a spot on the form where you circle that four and a half foot because you want to be able to duplicate this so you want someone else to be able to fall on your footsteps and get the same measurement so if you ended up measuring it at 18 inches above the ground you mark that there. Now if the tree forks below four and a half feet and sometimes above four and a half feet there are special rules that apply and let me see if I get to them before I get to them I want to talk to you a little bit about slope so a tree doesn't always grow in a nice flat pasture either and so this four and a half foot rule if you've got a slope on the ground do you measure four and a half feet from the upside or four and a half feet from the low side above you know on the high side four and a half feet from the low side and then you take the middle point and actually measure it right at the middle point so four and a half feet up here four and a half feet up here let's say there's a foot between the two then you would actually measure your circumference at that six inches and that's your four and a half foot line now remember you also need to find out and make sure that that's actually the narrowest spot that we've measured there and three or four times down the trunk just to ensure that you've actually picked the narrowest spot but you wouldn't have to go any higher than that alright let's talk about those forking rules the pith test so pith again and I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence here but I find it's better if we just pretend we don't speak the same language and the pith is what I call the pencil lead you know if you think of a trunk as being like a pencil and there's lead in the middle of it that's the pith so the pith test is specimen the pith intersection must be at or above ground so let's look at this tree which is by the way the former state champion libo virginiana there's one nice little pith that one okay that's that intersection is above ground that whole side above ground above ground he's standing here okay picture's kind of awful a little bit that above or below ground below because we never do see where it is it's somewhere down here below ground so this is considered another specimen this is actually two trees this is where you measure circumference actually there's really some really kind of cool tools out there one of them this one it's a red and purple and it's connected to things and you can use this from a distance without ever touching the tree you could go to four and a half feet above and measure the diameter use this to measure the diameter and come up with a four and a half foot measurement for this particular tree if we wanted to so you just discount the other big chunk of tree yep nothing gets counted not the height, not the crown, nothing that's another tree altogether might as well be a pecan somewhere else yep three different styles of trees you've all seen them we know the first one pretty easy four and a half foot not quite a telephone pole but that's our classic kid drawing of a tree nice and easy to measure we know what to do with that one this one pit in our section is above ground definitely forking we have to do below the fork the narrowest spot so it's that fairly straightforward once you start moving that take down you can figure that out pretty quickly this one over here the fifth intersection is below ground what are you going to do measure the largest now there are a few species that don't really grow like this and then we can use what's called the combined area method now actually crepe myrtle doesn't get to fall in this category because crepe myrtle will actually grow like a regular tree so we have we do crepe myrtle on a case by case basis because sometimes you'll have you know how they grow overnight it seems and they had all those trunks and they might grow together well that doesn't get to have the same weight we'll call it as a single trunk specimen like a nice notches might grow and be this big around really big but there are some species that will never grow like this unless forced by you and I to do that then and in that case we can use what we call the combined area method I don't think I have it I do have a spreadsheet for it I've got it again but that combined area method actually takes the area of each trunk you measure each trunk at the four and a half foot level or the narrow spot below there and then plug it into the calculation along with a measurement at the root caller basically right above the ground and the smallest of those two would be recorded so again we're looking for the smallest but there's a way to get these truly multi trunk species and allow them to be compared across with each other it doesn't a tree that just grew that way especially while it's a really great example especially around the Austin area, those fusiformis they start out like you know they're two feet apart from each other really growing in this nice little mott but over 100 to 200 years they're going to grow together and be many trees and one looks like one specimen to us well to the average person but all of us know when we look at them that indeed it is more than there alright so height height seems fairly straightforward you basically have two planes, one's the ground, one's the top the very top, the last live spot you could ever see up there, one leaf sticking up today gets to be the tallest spot so we want to measure between those two planes essentially taking a plum bob and dropping it from this very top spot down to the very bottom that's our desired measurement we use a lot of different things to do it, our force to state tool is a clinometer you guys will get to play with that if you haven't used one it's actually a little hard to get used to but the basic idea is that you just pull the tape out 100 feet and then you can read right there you can do it less than 100 feet the easiest possible way to do it and we'll give some demonstrations and show you how to do it is to measure out from the base of the tree 100 feet and then you can use whatever you're reading in your clinometer will actually be, you don't have to multiply it by 50% or whatever what it might actually be now the critical thing about height is that we don't always the high point isn't always right over the base of the tree so it's really important to know where where the actual top is so a lot of times yeah if you get too close you're thinking this is it but you're actually measuring right up here because it's measured using trigonometry we take as long to do height as any other measurement longer really you'll walk 360 degrees around the tree from as far away from the trees you can get to potentially identify where the top the leaf sticking up is because if this is nice because this is a nice flat ground as we talked about rarely is ground actually flat and so if the top of the tree let's see if I got something here where's the high point relative to the base alright what if it's over here and it's supposed to be here but you're actually measuring something that's kind of coming like this you're going to end up with it's not a right triangle anymore your handy dandy little I'll do the trigonometry for you tools don't work anymore because you're off and they can actually make a pretty big difference this is a a this shows what the error can be this is based upon your angle here but it can be 16 feet in error just depending upon the angle that you're measuring your measuring device on and how far away you're doing so utilize your buddy to stand where you once you've identified that spot as the highest spot you want to find the spot on the ground and it's really hard to do that by yourself so we always say take at least one person when you go measuring trees not only can they hold the other end of the tape for you or they can do all the measurements you just write it depends on how you want to do it but it's always better to have somebody with you and when you're doing height you almost can't do it because you've walked all the way around you've identified that spot as the highest and now you've got to try to find the spot on the ground and walking towards it and making sure you get to it now you've lost it amongst all the other foliage but if your buddy's doing that you can direct him and then you go around step forward a little bit and come back and you can do a little bit of that and then you can place your backpack there and say okay Mark come out and help me with this and let's take the measurement once we've identified the spot on the ground the other thing you've got to be careful of too is any slope so if where you met you're actually going to take if the slope is like this and the high point of the tree is here do you get to count all the way to there no because there's a couple feet at least that the tree didn't grow that way so you really have to take that into account and sometimes you might have to have your buddy stand there and you're going to do it out of his knees take your measurement from the knees to the top of the tree or something like that so maybe you don't have a handy-gandy little clinometer or Mark's thing which actually I've never used or in our case the laser which I strongly recommend if you're going to do this but of course it costs a little bit of money and these are only about I think 1500 or something like that so I don't know what yours costs 75 but you don't have to do that you can use a stick and you don't even have to use a stick that is as nice and defined as this it can be a stick off the ground and there's a couple of different ways to do it one of the ways that I think is the best is to hold it out I'm doing it this way straight out and stick yourself in the eye is essentially what it is and then keeping your hand absolutely straight you rotate it up now you cannot move this anymore this becomes the height of your tree you can move back you can move forward so the base of the tree and the top of the tree are lined up and stop okay I got it right here here's the base, there's a top I haven't moved my arm in any way then I just drop it and I measure the distance between here and the base of the tree and I have a really really good height measurement as good as a not very good forester does with a clinometer I can do it in this same way I got my buddy again and I've just done the same thing but I didn't have to worry so much about my eye and all that stuff and then I just line up the bottom with him with the tree I'm doing the tree and then I just say like this okay buddy, walk until you're in line with this he's at the base he walks over here and when she's at the end she stops and then you go measure between the base of the tree and her and you've got you've got a good measurement there I have a question does that work if you are in line or can you go up or down maybe? it works if you are if you have lined yourself up pretty well with the base of the tree so if you are looking if you're looking up on a cliff and you're trying to measure the tree that's not going to work very well but if it's more or less level with you you're going to get a pretty good estimate of that and on your cheat sheet that you're going to get there's a couple different ways to do the hide from here which you can wild your friends and family with that pretty quickly and one of the most important measurements is that people for some reason they get this wrong a lot they overestimate it I've had situations where in this particular tree this is one the forester who nominated this tree gave us a height of something like I think this was 97 and still around not around here but you'll know who he is I'll say anyway that's not a reasonable height in my opinion I measured it three times I measured it three times and look there's many ways to prove it here a fence is either 5 or 6 feet that's a really good one because it's close but I know a pickup and I know the fence related to the pickup that means it's probably 6 feet so I can just in my office measure how many fences there are to get up there and I think it's something like 77 feet so really easy to do back at the office and compare just another reason why we want it but so how did he make that mistake what was, can you tell was it was either close actually I think it might have been a problem with the conometer so there's two sides to the conometer and one's a person and there's two kinds of conometers and sometimes you really have to read your instruction manual that comes with it because sometimes it's a percentage and sometimes it's in chains and chains what's a chain? 66.6 feet so it's a logging term that's what I think he did well the other thing could be is it appears that where the truck is is it a lower elevation than the base of the tree right and he could have added that in too well he could have except he didn't do it from the photo he was down the ground doing it and he submitted the photo as just part of the nomination package and he had taken his measurement on the ground and said it's 97 I know it is because I'm right I'm good at everything and we ended up this actually this actually went on for several months because he was so convinced and finally we went up there it was in the Dallas area and we went up there and anyway needless to say we proved him wrong so crown spread this is the easiest of all measurements and it makes a little bit of sense alright it's really going to get a nice round thing so this is one situation where we're looking for the largest in many of the other measurements we're trying to take the narrowest do it very small but here we're actually looking to take two measurements and then we average it and we're going to find the widest possible one we can find first or in a situation we had earlier today a combination that works with the second measurement that is gives you the widest amount but then you're going to take two measurements you want them to be perpendicular to each other so in this case what we do is we use your body again it's really hard to do is to tell where the edge of that crown is so you think it's right here and you say okay mark stand right here and you're looking up there and then I am going to walk back away and look and see if he is indeed lined up underneath that drip line because a lot of times I do not know what it is about looking like this because you can think that way you end up being that way or that way, barely underneath it so once you've done that you just drop the tape and then you start going all the way along looking along this perpendicular along the line where might be the next widest spot that we're going to find I'll use flags a lot of times to mark a spot this is where I think it is and then we might make that measurement this is where we'll put the widest spot we'll put one flag at that end and the other one and then we can just pick up the tape and start running several different measurements down that line until we come up with the next widest now the good thing is it does not have to go through the trunk so it can be all the way down here it looks like maybe the trunk is there but maybe it isn't maybe the trunk is here and it's just really one branch over that way it does not have to go through the stem whatsoever it can go anywhere and again I have a calculator that does it the database does it so we don't have to bother to figure that out ourselves but you guys will want to know that as you set up your local registry you'll want to make sure you take the average and then you just you're going to remember that only one quarter of that figure actually goes into the index this particular tree has 160 inch circumference 72 foot height and average crown spread of 60 feet so here's our formula and it comes up with an index of 247 so that is it for staring at that