Surveyors with Forestry degrees

I was hardly aware of Forestry at the age of 18.

My former co-worker over at Parks had a 2 year degree in Forestry (I think late 70s) but went into Surveying due to there being more jobs with better pay. He remembered a Logging Foreman one handing a 16lb hammer driving in stakes for the machine that hauls the logs up (can't think of the name of it right now). He said no one messed with that guy.

My associate and friend, followed the same path, associate degree from Penn State University and with a short stint in forestry work. Got a position with a surveying firm and worked his way to passing the test for license. No problem with tree identification when he is around!!

yeah Neal knew the Latin names of every tree we came across.

Sometimes he would ask me what tree I thought something was and I would say, "That looks like a Tree-us Biggus" or some smart alecky thing like that.

A "yarder", maybe?

yep that's it.

Yeah tree I.D. (dendrology) was a real bugger because of the exact spelling of the Latin names. I kan barlee spel englush wurds, let alon latin. We had about 100 trees to identify and spell correctly in both English and Latin. Same with range plant I.D. – about 200 grasses, weeds and bushes with Latin names like “Scrophulariales Verbascum thapsus” (flannel mullein). The guys who went into forestry work after school were amused by the fact that the inventory forms they used in the woods just required a short abbreviation for the plant’s latin names like “pinpon” (pinus ponderosa, ponderosa pine), “psemenm” (Pseudotsuga menziesii, Douglas fir). I've forgotten them all.

Surveyors with Forestry degrees,;

My dad got a degree in Forestry from Oregon State and got a job with a timber company in Cottage Grove, Ore. where I was born. I guess that job involved a certain amount of boundary and mapping work. He eventually was licensed as a surveyor in Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona (his home state). Plus, he was a US Mineral Surveyor to boot.

He knew a lot about trees, mostly the native evergreens and oaks, but knew more than most people about the non-native ornamental stuff. I suggested that he become an arborist after he retired from surveying; there's a lot of work around here for that, but he never did.

Had a PC working for me in 1985 that had a Zoology degree. He new the latin names of everything that crawled and slithered.

We were surveying around an old lake bed that had been drained (for development) and, having grown up only three or four miles from there, I told him to be on the watch for cottonmouths. As kids we used to take our air rifles there and plink the water moccasins til sundown.

Anyway, he confidently told me there were no water moccasins (Agkistrodon piscivorus) in Central Oklahoma and I was surely mistaken about what sort of snakes were indigenous there...

15 minutes later I hear them screaming and yelling across the slew. They came up with about a 4 or 5 foot long water mocassin on a range pole (with a nasty machete gash across its forehead). He was all big eyed and hyper-ventilating because "that snake was CHASIN' him!".

Of course... I told him it couldn't be a cottonmouth ....because there weren't any in Central Oklahoma...;-)

My mentor and friend, Clark also had a degree in forestry.

And yes, he was very helpful in tree identification. He also had some good tips on trimming, blazing and other types of tree maintenance.

My buddy, that I worked with in the field, Scott had a Geology Degree. He was good identifying stones and new his way around in the woods.

Doug

Steve

Jeff told me your Dad was an ace at estimating distances. He would say, "Can't you see that island is 459.65 feet away!" and Jeff said he would be amazingly close.

In over 30 years of teaching surveying, I've had two students that graduated with a major in Forestry.

In my limited view of the world it seems to me that the past 30 years have seen a decline of production from forest resources but that is turning around with more management and more managed new growth forests.

The past 30 years may not be a good indicator of the next 30 years.

I would think RPFs will see a rise in job opportunities.

BLS expects a 12% increase in job opportunities for Foresters and Conservation Scientists.

They expect 15% increase in jobs for Surveyors.

Dave

Not to brag on him too much, but he could also reduce slope distance to horizontal in his head. He knew how much per 100' each degree of vertical angle would shorten a pull. I guess after years of doing it, that stuff would stick in your head. We're so used to calculators, sometimes I find myself using one to multiply times 10.

Steve

Who can you brag on if not your Dad? I've seen a couple of his mineral surveys in Tuolumne County. As I recall, one was an small, private inholding inside Yosemite. That must have been fun to work on.

Don

Steve

I would love to set a Section Corner somewhere in the Sierra Nevada in memory of my Father, RCE10508. I don't know if it is legal to put his number on the monument along with mine.

I would favor the Sierra Nevada over anywhere else because he was an avid backpacker and back country trout fisherman.

Graduated from West Virginia University with a B.S. in Forest Resource Management.
Been surveying for 7 years, and am now studying to take the L.S. exam in Idaho and Washington.

I received my Bachelor of Science in Forest Resource Management from The University of Montana in 1984. Spent my first year at Indiana-Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana before exchanging and then transferring to the U of M in Missoula. I took Surveying 101 during my freshman year and never dreamed that surveying would become my calling. I spent a couple summers seasons on the Salmon NF in Cobalt, Idaho cruising, marking, running harvest boundaries and helping out an engineering crew with road surveys and slope profiles for harvesting methods.

There used to be a lot more surveying and remote sensing involved with a Forest Management degree; I know that has changed in Missoula. If a surveying degree were available locally, I would enjoy going back to school.

Kurt

I started out with an AAS degree as Forest Tech/Surveying. I think it was very beneficial in the long run. Go PSC!

Dave

> I would love to set a Section Corner somewhere in the Sierra Nevada in memory of my Father, RCE10508. I don't know if it is legal to put his number on the monument along with mine.
>
> I would favor the Sierra Nevada over anywhere else because he was an avid backpacker and back country trout fisherman.

You probably could with a special permission from the board. IIRC Bertensen makes special brasses for placing at the grave of a surveyor also and somewhere is a registry of Latitude and longitude for the ones set.