Timber tree trial on Rewanui
Last updated November 2009
Last updated November 2009
From the beginning Foundation members have been keen to foster the development of NZ native trees for timber and sought the best way of doing this. At the Tane Tree Trust seminar in November 2005 it was proposed that TTT assist in the establishment of a trial of different species of natives and this has resulted in a collaborative trial being set up on the Mangapakeha block at the Eastern end of Rewanui. The terrain is hilly with areas of scattered Manuka and Kanuka that should provide good protection for young trees. Several soil types and aspects give added scope to the trial. In 2008 some plots of exotic timber trees were added to the trial
Discussion on trial layout at a typical site. Participants from the left are Stu Orme forest manager , Hilton Dickens farm forester, Peter Berg and David Bergmen from Tane Tree Trust.
Most of the trees were planted in August 2006, the exception being Rewarewa which were considered too small to plant at that time. All trees in the trial will be measured and assessed each year. All data in the trial is stored as plain text files with the fields separated by tabs.
Because the data is in plain text files your browser may display the contents rather than download to file. Right click on the page displayed and choose "Save to File" or "Export to Excel" to get the data on your computer.
The data is stored in columns separated by a tab character, the columns in the Blocks file are Block ID,Tree species,GPS easterly and northerly co-ordinates, and comments. The columns in the observations file are tree ID, block ID, observation date,height,diameter at base, diameter at chest height,vigour, and comments.
View of the trial terrain
Each block of trees has been assigned an alphabetical letter and each tree within the block a number so all trees are uniquely identified. Tree IDs are permanently written on aluminium tags attached to a stake next to each tree.