Date of Award

Winter 1982

Abstract

Forests occupy over eighty percent of the land surface of New England and thus warrant consideration as potential sites for the recycling of nutrients discarded in sewage addition to its abundance, the other attributes that make them effluent and sludge. In forest ecosystem has attractive for waste nutrient recycling. The diversity in phenology of the many herb, shrub and tree species found in most forest types extends the growing season and the period of nutrient uptake when compared to agricultural and other crops. In addition, the extensive root systems in most forest ecosystems help assure occupancy of most soil horizons and maximum opportunity for nutrient uptake.

In the past decade, the feasibility of using forests for recycling nutrients in sewage effluent and sludge has been receiving increasing research (Sapper, 1968). The Wolfeboro study expands on this research base by evaluating the tree response to sewage effluent treatment in a mixed hardwood-eastern white pine-eastern hemlock forest located

in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Tree response will be expressed on a per hectare basis in terms of increase or decrease in basal area, biomass, number of stems, average stand height, mean stand diameter, and dendrometer tree volume between an area sprayed with sewage effluent and an equivalent control area. It is the author's objective to relate the effects of spraying sewage effluent into the forest at the Wolfeboro Water and Sewage Treatment Plant Facility to that, of a typical forest fertilization technique. In addition, there will be a discussion of the possibility that this utilization of the "living forest filter" to dispose of sewage effluent might also be accomplishing, simultaneously, a fertilization application.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

First Advisor

Harold W. Hocker

Second Advisor

Nobel K. Peterson

Third Advisor

Richard R. Weyrick

College or School

COLSA

Department or Program

Natural and Environmental Resources

Degree Name

Master of Science

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