A Brief History of Forestry.: In Europe, the United States and Other CountriesFernow, B. E. (Bernhard Eduard)
History
A Brief History of Forestry.: In Europe, the United States and Other Countries
Fernow, B. E. (Bernhard Eduard)
Forests and forestry -- History
For easier handling, the forest was divided into small compartments or
Jagen and a classification of four, still uneven, periodic age classes
(of different length for conifers and broadleaved forest), and three
site qualities were employed. The merchantable stock was ascertained by
a sample area method and the felling budget by dividing the oldest age
class by the number of years it must last until the next was ready.
Since no attempt was made to secure a proper age class gradation, the
method failed to improve conditions for the next rotation.
Some 500,000 acres were regulated according to this plan in Prussia,
probably very superficially.
In 1789, Bavaria also ordered a division into annual felling areas.
In all these methods of regulating the yield or budget, the area played
the main role, the volume being only a secondary consideration.
The first elaboration of a pure volume division was made by Beckman in
1759. He estimated stock on hand by trees and guessed more or less at
the increment, allowing 2.5, 2, and 1% for the different sites, and then
made a year to year calculation of stock for 125 years. How the felling
budget was finally determined is not known.
Two methods were simultaneously devised in Württemberg in 1783, which
form the transition to the so-called _allotment_ methods, making
periodic age classes of an equal number of years and allotting either
felling areas or volumes to each period of the rotation. Incapacity of
the officials prevented the application of the one method, while the
other, devised by Maurer, remained also only a proposition.
But, in 1788, Kregting in his Mathematical Contributions to Forestry
Science teaches a pure volume allotment method with ten year age classes
and nearly all the apparatus which was afterward developed by Hartig,
who in the next period dominated to such a large extent the development
of forestry in all its branches.
9. _Improvements in Methods of Mensuration._
In scientific direction, the mathematical disciplines were the first to
be developed; the natural sciences received attention much later.
A considerable amount of mathematical knowledge was required for this
work of forest organization. The mathematical apparatus of the foresters
even at the end of this period was rather slender, but its development
went hand in hand with the development of these methods of regulation;
and even elaborate mathematical formulæ for determining felling budgets
were not absent.
Until nearly the middle of the 18th century, surveys of exact nature
were almost unknown; only when the division into equal or proportionate
felling areas became the basis for determining the felling budgets, did
the necessity for such surveys present itself.
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