Management Zone Criteria

[rgthurau]

Hi,
I'm working on a tree inventory at a university in the Midwest, and we're interested in creating "management zones" to monitor diversity, tree health, age, etc.

I've been searching the literature and: Are there any good guidelines out there for delineating management zones? Or any documents folks could suggest?

Thanks for your time.

Rich

[Jerry]

This is an interesting topic, Rich, and I don't offhand know of recent guidelines to point you to. The only treatment I can think of at the moment is in Miller's Urban Forestry 2nd ed 1997. He points to the utility of zones structured by land use categories (there reduced to just three: "residential, commercial, industrial"), which is what both STRATUM and UFORE consider by default as well.

Management is always tied to the structure and priorities of local practices, it seems to me, so that may explain the lack of universal guidelines. One community may see its primary operational structure as set by a large number of community neighborhoods, another by political wards, and a third by garbage routes.

In a practical sense, I would ask these questions:

• what do I want to accomplish with tree management?
• what are the limiting factors toward attaining that goal?
• how are the critical resources I need for that goal structured in my community?

Don't know if this will help...

[azelaya]

Here is another idea that you may want to consider. I have found that using "risk" as a criterion has helped me in determining management zones when working with inventories in park settings. This may be somewhat similar to a university campus especially if you have many land types or uses such as walkways, natural areas, patches of forest, buildings, student activity areas, parking lots, etc.

Naturally, your high-use areas will be your high-risk areas but you may also be able to monitor and compare tree health, growth, establishment, mortality and diversity as it relates to these zones. Check out the USFS publication "Community Tree Risk Management: Program Planning and Design" if you are interested in this approach. http://www.na.fs.fed.us/SPFO/pubs/uf/utrmm/chptr2.pdf

Here is another link to a study and analysis that Indiana University has available online which may help you decide how you want to determine management zones.
https://www.indiana.edu/~sustain/wp-con ... report.pdf

Good luck,
Al