I have a hobby that I seldom have time for which is a fascination for old school compasses and surveying equipment. That led to a very small amount of knowledge of surveying itself. But when it comes to the old school math involved, my mind just blocks that out lol. I know virtually nothing of the new equipment since the advent of GPS etc. I suppose you use some sort of GPS with the staff or do you still go forester's compass?
Combination of the 2. I'm currently working inventory and analysis. We use fixed area plots, so we gps to plot center and use a compass/loggers tape to ensure we cruise trees that are historically "in" the plot.
Plots are historical and looking at data (DBH, Tree Grade, Heights, Disease over time). I put the Jacobs staff in the center of the plot and measure off of it. Any tree that is withing 28 ft of the center is considered "in" and is tallied/crusied.
In my previous job I was cruising for harvesting so I would use a prism to determine if trees were "In" or "out" of the plot. Those were a lot faster, prism showed the tree in, we cruised it. Though we did a lot more plots. Like 20 plots for 75 acres for example to get an idea of what the stand conditions were/ board feet, value ect.
The current job with the forest service is kind of a national cruise, we use historical fixed plots to determine, site index, land change, timber quality ect, but these plots represent a larger area, there might be 3 plots located in an grid thats several miles wide.
Sorry, for the long paragraph.
