Massachusetts Forest Reserves Long Term Ecological Program – Middlefield/Peru Forest Reserve
A report on the baseline characteristics of the Middlefield/Peru Forest Reserve and the proposed Intensive Monitoring Areas of the Middlefield/Peru Forest Reserve and the Peru State Forest.
middlefield-perufr.pdf
Adobe Acrobat document [2.1 MB]
Prepared for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
June 2009
Avril de la Cretaz
Matthew Kelty
Lena Fletcher
Department of Natural Resources Conservation
University of Massachusetts Amherst
PREFACE
State Forest land located in the towns of Middlefield and Peru is the site of one of eight large Forest Reserves in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Fig. 1). The Forest Reserves were established by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) to create areas where forest development is the product primarily of natural succession and natural disturbance. The Forest Reserve management goal is to increase the area of late seral forest and to protect and conserve species that depend on this habitat, while allowing the effects of natural disturbances to create variation in successional trends in some areas. Only passive management is used in the Forest Reserves, mainly focusing on restoring native habitat by removing invasive species. Sustainable forest management, including timber harvesting, will be implemented on state lands outside the reserve system (EOEEA 2009).
