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The forest is more complex than it initially appears from air photos. Within the forest there <br /> is much topographic relief consisting of old oxbows and sediment deposits from flood <br /> events. In 1989 Muick conducted a vegetation analysis of the forest and stratified it into <br /> two sections to facilitate sampling: the eastern forest and the western forest. The eastern <br /> section includes the relatively undisturbed forest east of the fairways and the western forest <br /> contains the fairways. The forest was first evaluated from air photos and then ground <br /> checked twice, first with a general reconnaissance and the second time using circular, non- <br /> randomly located plots. During the first field visit, the vegetation mosaic, <br /> microtopography, and overall heterogeneity of the forest was documented. Plots were <br /> established to evaluate the forest and thereby to quantify the structure of the forest and to <br /> aid in interpretation of the aerial photography. <br /> Plot locations were roughly mapped before going into the field in order to capture the <br /> spatial diversity of the forest. Data from ten circular plots,each having an area of one- <br /> hundred square meters, were collected. An average of a half hour was spent collecting data <br /> on each plot. The sampling the oxbows and meanders where cottonwood and buttonbush <br /> are located was avoided in order to focus efforts on the dominant canopy species. <br /> The aerial photo interpretation was a visual analysis based on a series of air photos <br /> obtained from the San Joaquin County Department of Public Works and two recent photos <br /> from Kjeldsen-Sinnock. The dates of the photos are: June 1940, August 1952, June 1963, <br /> November 1975, January 1983, February 1986, and October 1987. In the following four <br /> sections we describe and compare the two forest sections and discuss the air photos <br /> information. <br /> Buckeye Ranch Resource Plan (November, 1993) <br /> 42 <br />