Buck Mountain Unit 1

Tethered logging study. We will be installing research corridors to collect soil samples to monitor machine impacts on forest soils. Preliminary work will include hiking steep slopes, flagging corridor lines, installing tree tags and spray painting reference trees. Once the study corridors are established and agreed upon by the contractors, soil samples will be collected to a depth of 30 cm using a box core sampler. Samples will be subdivided into 7.5 cm subsamples for analysis. Twenty samples will be taken from each of 6 corridors prior to harvest, immediately following harvest. Post harvest samples will be collected yearly for the next several years. Ground lidar will be collected using a backpack lidar system prior to harvest and shortly after to detect soil compaction and displacement as well as to assess the volume of timber removed from the harvest. Follow up ground lidar may be done annually with soil sample collection.