Last Friday and this Monday, the crew split up. Andrew and I went off to work for Travis on one of his projects. We had the task to buffer water in recently harvested clearcuts.
We looked over hill shade maps of units and found draws where natural springs and flowing water could be moving through the forests. We hiked through nine units and marked on our maps where the moving and standing water were at.
This is important to do so that when it comes time to spray the unit with a helicopter, the herbicides don’t end up in the water moving down to creeks and streams. This is a part of site prepping units before replanting it with seedlings.
One of the units we went to was SUPER steep and gets its name, Un-Lucki Ice, because trees were damaged in an ice storm and had to be harvested.
Going down means eventually hiking back up, but it was a lot of fun getting to see another side of forestry.
– Griffin Puls