This page has been set up to share photos & video relating to the "Quality Assessment Systems" chapter of "Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook." Visit www.replant.ca/books to see books about tree planting.
Here is a quality assessor, examining trees with one of the crew leaders.
For government work in BC, the "FS 704" quality assessment system is the standard. The same system is also used by many licensees and mills throughout BC and Alberta.
The 704 guide offers lots of examples about different circumstances that may arise when assessing a specific situation within a plot.
Here's a checker, throwing a plot.
The easiest way to determine the area of a plot (50 square meters) is to loop one end of a 3.99m plot cord over the handle of a shovel (the shovel becomes the center of the plot) and spin the cord around in a circle. Everything that falls within that circle is considered to be located within the plot.
The "A" category of faults within the FS 704 system (five different faults in total) relate to the "Damage To Seedlings" category.
The "B" category of faults within the FS 704 system (eight different faults in total) relate to the "Planting Spot Selection" category.
The "C" category of faults within the FS 704 system (elevent different faults in total) relate to the "Planting Quality" category.
Data collection in the field. A lot of forestry work needs to be documented thoroughly.
The j-root is probably the very worst quality fault to deal with. If you have to go back and fix a section of trees, you can't just selectively fix the "bad" ones that you can see from a visual inspection. The j-root is an underground fault, so you have to dig up every single tree to fix the problem properly!
Click here to see a page listing books related to reforestation in Canada. If you received a photocopied version of this book from your planting company, or you're a trainer at a Canadian planting company, click on this link for more information.
