Timber trespass can be a serious problem, but once a tree falls on a neighboring property, it is a little late to discuss property boundaries. 

Fortunately, property owners, timber companies and government agencies now have available new tools to make marking woodlot boundaries faster, simpler and less costly.  

The newest GPS receivers coupled with the latest geographic information system (GIS) software and topographic and orthophotographic map overlays are giving foresters a new and more efficient way to mark forest and woodlot boundaries and better manage the entire spectrum of forest resources.

Many foresters in North America and Europe are embracing the new technology.  They report finding these GPS/GIS management tools to be accurate, easy-to-use and, above all, rugged. 

Take Tom Caperton and his son, Stephen. They flag and paint timber parcel boundaries for DeNoon Lumber Company, an Ohio-based lumber and timber company.  As early adopters of the new technology, the Capertons have been using a Magellan MobileMapper CE GPS receiver GIS unit for the past three and a half years.  After DeNoon buys the timber on a parcel, Caperton is responsible for flagging and painting the harvest boundaries to ensure DeNoon's harvesting crews do not encroach upon adjacent properties. “The timber harvest crews are then instructed to leave a small buffer zone between the flagged boundaries and the harvest line,” he says.

All of Caperton’s work is done in real time.  “We never go back to the office to post-process data,” he says.  “We must flag and paint while we’re on the parcel.”

Caperton carries an external antenna in his backpack as well as the MobileMapper Beacon, which improves real-time positioning accuracy by providing DGPS corrections to the MobileMapper.  But because most of the areas he works in are not serviced by beacons and often he is down in deep ravines, a beacon signal is not always available.  

However with a backpack external antenna, Caperton says he gets meter to sub-meter accuracy and uses WAAS corrections.

 

DeNoon operates between 10 and 15 timber harvesting crews working 150 to 200 parcels annually in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.  Using a MobileMapper CE with TDS SOLO Field GIS mapping software, Caperton is continually on the move from parcel to parcel throughout the region.  His schedule is so hectic “sometimes logging crews are waiting for us on site when we arrive,” he says.

With Caperton’s non-stop work schedule, he estimates he’s in the field marking woodlot boundaries with his Magellan MobileMapper CE, GPS/GIS receiver about 30 hours each and every week during the past three and a half years. “We put a lot of wear on it. We work in a lot of rough places,” says Caperton.  “I’ve never had the MobileMapper CE fail me, never a reboot, never a hang-up, never a repair; we’ve never done anything to it in almost four years of virtually continuous service.”  

“The accuracy of MobileMapper CE and its successor the MobileMapper CX has shown itself to be particularly good even under tree canopies where one would normally expect to lose lock at least some of the time,” says Jacek Pietruczanis, Magellan product marketing manager, GIS solutions. “The MobileMapper CX is so productive under foliage thanks to its ability to set the SNR (signal to noise ratio) mask in the receiver. The forester can adjust this level to obtain position data even in very dense foliage. For example, setting the SNR number to the lowest possible level means the MobileMapper CX will only reject very ‘noisy’ signals.  This setting should be used only when a position is absolutely required even with the possibility of some error.”