Forest Survey report for Speymouth Forest 1972
This Working Plan Survey Report was written up by Frank Thom (Forester) who was head of a Survey Team consisting of himself and foresters Fred Millwood and Henry Bowers. The aim was to provide an accurate forest map, measured tree species compartments and sub compartments by species, age and growth rate, details of their age and Yield Class along with descriptions of unplanted areas and extra or lost land.
Much time was spent realigning forest boundaries from the old Ordnance Survey Maps onto new editions with the help of aerial photographs and surveying in the field using Chain and Compass or the Artillery Director if metal was present such as in fences. Very often compartments were amalgamated and enlarged and the whole forest renumbered.
In this case the survey followed closely on from and amalgamation of four former forest units (Speymouth, Teindland, Lossie and Aultmore) and parts of one further unit (Rosarie). Frank states that in this case the existing Compartment Numbers were retained and prefixes were added to signify to which areas the numbers referred. There is mention here of some of the suite of Working Plan forms (WP0, WP6, WP10 and WP11) hundreds of which were all filled in to form a data base for the forest from which a Forest Working plan could be constructed. This was before the advent of computerised records but one innovation to alleviate the vast array of number and letter columns was the Compartment or Sub -compartment record card which had punched holes along the edges that could be clipped through at specific attributes such as Sitka spruce, Yield class 10 etc and sorted out with a long needle. In practise the needle was seldom used but the card was a valuable record which in later years provided the base information for the computerised Sub Compartment Data Base (SCDB) which now runs also on forest, district and nationwide basis to forecast annual or five year harvesting volumes.
The appendices list the substantial areas of forest in check (not growing or growing very slowly), the areas of land under other use such as left unplanted, unplantable, Forest Worker Holdings and Nurseries.
Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Northeast Scotland