RAINFOR GEM Intensive Plots Manual (pdf) - University of Oxford

Example 2: Here is a drawing of trees #595 and #596 in SAFE Fragment B South Plot. First question: Howmany tags should this tree be given? At 1.6 m height it has three stems >10 cm diameter each, at 1.3 m only twoand lower down only one. Also, does the buttress change anything? It’s presence pushes the POM up to 1.7 mfor the leftmost stem, but does this apply also to the other two stems? Answer: two tags because you look athow the tree is divided at 1.3 m (even if the POM is different from 1.3 m): on the left (tree #596) we kept thetags at 1.6 m and tagged the larger of the two stems. Second question: should the leftmost stem be measured at1.7 m height (50 cm above the buttress)? No: because the POM should remain below major branching points(actually, instead of putting the POM at 1.5 m we avoided a small irregularity and put the POM at 1.3 m).Should the rightmost stem (tree #595) be measured at 1.7 m height (50 cm above the highest buttress, even if onthe other side of the tree)? Well, to do this would have been a strictly correct interpretation of the protocols, butin this particular instance the buttress arguably doesn’t affect stem #595 and we found the stem to be acceptablyround at 1.4 m height so we put the POM there.24