Dear deadwoodologists

I'm sometimes asked by colleagues what exactly I mean by coarse woody debris,
especially by people looking to pick holes in estimates of CWD volumes. I have
to explain that what I mean by CWD may not correspond with what others mean, and
hence our figures are not always entirely comparable. With all the upsurge of
interest in dead wood (e.g. for carbon accounting and for biodiversity), isn't
it about time we standardised on our definitions? I appreciate that we all put
the data to different uses, but are our uses so different that we can't
standardise?

Maybe this is old news, and standards may have been developed and adopted. But
if so, what are they, and where are they laid down? Two key discrepancies come
to mind: whether or not CWD includes standing dead wood; and what is the minimum
diameter below which CWD becomes fine woody debris? Some people use 7.5 cm,
others 10 cm, others 15 cm; others use inches which almost (but don't quite)
correspond to these cm definitions. Likewise ha or acres. Personally, I have
tended to exclude standing dead wood and have specified a minimum diameter of
7.5 cm. However, the lower the minimum diameter, the more work involved in
working out volumes per unit area, and the law of diminishing returns applies
since smaller diameter material generally contributes little to overall volumes.

If readers feel that we still lack standards and that it would be worth
developing some, I'd be pleased to see some discussion through this list. If
support was strong enough, we could perhaps consider setting up a web-page that
allows people to vote on alternatives, and could invite members of related lists
(e.g. forestry, carbon accounting, bryology, entomology, mycology) to vote too.

Any comments?

Simon Grove


`'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,

Dr Simon J Grove, Biology and Conservation Branch,
Division of Forest Research and Development
Forestry Tasmania, GPO Box 207, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia.
Tel. 61 3 6233 8141. Fax 61 3 6233 8292.
Email: simon.grove@....
Web address: http://forestrytas.com.au/



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