Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 09/08/1994

Home

INTRODUCTION An urban forestry program can provide services such as recommendation of planting materials for homeowners, commercial areas, and city parks; answering calls from homeowners about various t~ee and shrub problems; working with developers and builders ~to minimize construction damage to trees. The effectiveness of these services can be improved with the knowledge of the overall cover type of the city. This report provides this information. The City of Ramsey encompasses 28.82 square miles or 18,449.11 acres according to the 1979 report. Total wooded acres is 4726.56 acres or 2~5.61 percent of the city. This report examines areas covered with trees, including rural and residential. This report assumes that the forest cover in each type is normally distributed. Aerial photos were used for the initial delineation of the city. Nine types~ were identified: vacant, water, primarily Red Oaks, primarily ~ur Oaks,. mixed tree species, scrub oaks, not oaks, bottomlandrspecies, .... and Spruce/Pine. Using this information the number and percent of acres of each type was calculated (excluding vacant and iwater,) see Table I. Aerial photos provide valuable information which we further used to conduct a ground check. Using stratified random sampling increased accuracy (+/- 10% at 80% confidence level) since there is knowledge about the ~opulation. In sampling, we set up strata according to the major forest types, made separate sample estimates for each type,then cbmbined the type data to give an estimate for the entire population.i '~' The boundaries and total acreage of each type are known. Using ~roportiona~ allocation the number of samples taken for each type is made equal to the proportion of all units in the population which fall in that type. The total number of plots taken were 30. The data from these points were extrapolated to estimate the tree population and characteristics for the cover types indicated. Each cover type was proportionally inventoried for regeneration, see Table VI. Two of the cover types, scrub oak and not oak, were inventoried~for regeneration. The area encompassed by these types are young dhus an area of regeneration is not possible at this time. The table lists the primary tree species and the total number of stems counted. In addition to the primary tree species, understory species were recorded but~'were not tallied. Kunde Co., Inc. - Consulting Foresters 2