Treesearch

To maximize chances of successful regeneration, carefully consider the following regeneration principles. Harvesting alone does not guarantee that the desired species will be established. The conditions required for the initial establishment and early growth of the desired species largely determine what regeneration method you should use and any supplemental treatments needed to enhance regeneration success. The species must be suited to the site. You should evaluate the regeneration potential of the desired species.

Silvicultural treatments can be used to minimize gypsy moth impacts on hardwood stands. There are two major strategies of these treatments: (1) to decrease susceptibility to defoliation by gypsy moth and (2) to strengthen the stand against mortality and encourage growth after defoliation.

Wild grapevines are a problem for forest managers in many areas of the central hardwood forests. The vines grow on a wide range of soil and site conditions but usually are more concentrated on good sites (northern red oak site index 70 and above), on the faster growing more valuable timber. Presently there is more interest and concern in controlling grapevine for the cove hardwood type than the oak-hickory, oak-pine, or bottomland hardwood types.

Only stump sprouts originating in clearcuts or extremely heavily thinned stands have significant potential for developing into good trees. Stump sprouts can account for as many as half the stems after a clearcut of central hardwoods.

Given our present knowledge, and under current costs and returns, there appears to be little reason to fertilize natural stands of central hardwoods. Yet, some of the numerous fertilizer tests conducted with hardwoods over the past 50 years have shown very positive--but short-lived-growth responses. One "operational" (nonexperimental) use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers on new black cherry stands has been successful on about 10,000 acres in northwestern Pennsylvania, on the fringe of the central hardwoods. Current costs of about 135 dollars per acre are justified by rapid height...

Controlling individual unwanted trees in forest stands is a readily accepted method for improving the value of future harvests. The practice is especially important in mixed hardwood forests where species differ considerably in value and within species individual trees differ in quality. Individual stem control is a mechanical or chemical weeding operation that eliminates undesired trees competing for site resources. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. The risk of bodily injury is an inherent safety problem with mechanical methods. Injury to desirable plants is a potential...

Maintaining uneven-aged stands involves cutting trees from a range of diameter classes in such a way that the residual stand has a balanced, steeply descending diameter distribution curve (fig. 1). The objective is to distribute trees by diameter classes so that over time the stand contains trees of different ages and sizes.

Pruning, properly done, is one of the best ways to assure high quality wood. Although the overall volume of hardwood has been increasing during the last several years, the volume of high quality hardwood continues to be in short supply. So high quality logs will continue to be worth more at market time. Potentially, pruning can be an important silvicultural treatment for central hardwoods. The primary questions are which species should be pruned and what is proper pruning?

Thinning produces bigger and better trees faster. Thinning removes poor quality trees and concentrates growth on the best. Total wood production increases because trees that would otherwise die from competition are harvested. Rotation ages for sawtimber can be shortened as much as 20 years. Or, we can grow bigger, more valuable trees using the same rotation age as an unthinned stand.

The main reasons for precommercial cultural practices in sapling stands (trees less than 5 inches d.b.h.) are to increase growth of residual trees, increase stand value, and improve or maintain species composition. On good sites (northern red oak site index 70 and above), treating sapling stands may be justified by increased diameter growth of high value species. On fair to poor hardwood sites (northern red oak site 60 and below) cultural practices are seldom advised unless desirable pines are present.