Getting permission from university to tap trees

[fisheatingbagel]

Another update in my quest for more trees. The university contacted me this time, and proposed tapping the trees on the main campus, rather than the (more convenient to me) extension campus. They see this as beneficial for promoting their sustainability program, as well as "tapping" into more local resources. They have around 120 viable trees, but widely scattered around the 300 acre campus. We have yet to agree on percentage of syrup they would want as part of the deal. The logistics are such that this will only work if they do the bulk of sap collection using their resources - students. For this to happen, it would be useful to incorporate aspects of the operation into classwork, as "lab work", etc.

Has anyone done something similar to this before? The possibilities are fairly broad, but I'm trying to come up with more specific things they could actually do as part of their classwork.

[DrTimPerkins]

They could easily measure daily volume and daily sugar content and try to relate these to size and health of the tree. If they wanted to get more creative, they could also measure conductivity and pH of the sap as well. If they had more than just sugar maple, they could compare the differences in sap sugar content between the different species.

Perhaps they could compare different types of spouts? Maybe they could tap some trees, but leave some trees untapped and measure the dbh each year (maybe put in a small tack so they measure it at the same height each year) to see if tapping affects the growth of the trees.

They could measure the sap sugar and pH over a few days under different storage conditions to see what happened if it isn't collected quickly. Measure sap sugar when some freezes, and then melt the ice to see if sugar is left in the ice. If they have the capacity to do microbiological culturing, they could see what types of things grow in maple sap.

Lots of possibilities.