Alive Saplings Have 0 Stems

[blcampbell]

In updating the export queries for ALL Saplings (resolving issue #76), sapling records appeared with # stems = 0.

Searching further reveals that many of these sapling records have a sapling status of Alive (Alive Broken, Alive Leaning, Alive Standing).

Because it seems odd to have no DBH records (stems = 0) for saplings, the following checks were done:

• Tag Status _many of these are Inactive (In Field), however there are some whose tags are classified as Sapling or Tree (for TagStatus)
• Plant Species many species appear to be shrubs per the definition in SOP 8 (Table 15) others are woody species that either are or are not considered shrubs (Table 16)

The attached Excel file shows the sapling records where stems = 0 and sapling status is Alive. It includes a table crosswalk with limited conditional formatting when tags are RIO tags. ForestVeg_Saplings_with_0_Stems.xlsx The red tab displays the data plus the table 15/16 info based on the species.

Recommendations

• Update Tag_Status in tbl_Tags to -- Shrub when species fit in shrub category (species in SOP 8 Table 16 with measure seedlings = Y, monitoring category = sapling)
• Update Sapling_Status in tbl_Sapling_Data to -- Shrub vs. Sapling when species fit into shrub category

The recommendations should be carefully checked however to make sure there are not additional consequences of the tag/sapling status changes. For expediency this can be accomplished via script since cleaning these up before the annual data upload is preferable.

[johnpauls]

A quick looks shows that many of these are shrubs with an incorrect sapling status. But a few are clearly saplings (tree species) that we need to investigate.