Treesearch

The fact that trees grow makes the extraction of logs and bolts from a forest different from the extraction of ore from a mine. Every mine has a limit, and sooner or later it must be abandoned, either because the vein has run out or because the mine has become too costly to operate. But a properly managed forest - one where cutting maintains production - never becomes exhausted by harvesting operations alone.

In forest genetics work, an important method for evaluating selected trees is clonal testing.

A sawmill in the Northeast commonly receives a number of small low-quality logs. They may be among logs purchased from independent loggers, or timber-sale specifications may require that the sawmill take them. Some mill operators confronted with logs of this kind consider handling them as part of the cost of obtaining their log supply. Others may feel that, since the logs are at the mill and paid for, they should be sawed for whatever lumber they will produce.

Maintenance standards for roads within the national forests in the East have, until recently, included annual mowing of the shoulders. One or occasionally two passes with a mower carrying a 5-foot cutter bar were made on each side of the road. Costs for this kind of operation were about $16 per road mile per year.

When stands of Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana ill.) are cut according to usual practices, and no specific action is taken to control subsequent regeneration, the pine often fails to reproduce. A common cause for failure is an unfavorable seedbed condition: logging leaves much of the seedbed undisturbed, and some areas that are disturbed are covered with slash.

Ten years ago, management was started on two 30-acre demonstration woodlots on the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, West Virginia. These were designated as Farm Woodlots, on the assumption that there was something significantly different between management incentives and opportunities for small holdings owned by farmers and for those owned by non-farmers.

How shall I cut to get reproduction? What kind of reproduction will I get if I cut the way I am planning to? All foresters have asked themselves these questions. To help supply some answers to these questions for the northern Appalachian hardwood area, the authors have summarized and analyzed before- and after-cutting reproduction data collected over a period of 10 years on the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, West Virginia.

Of all the trees in our forests, the beech somehow always stands out. Its clean, smooth, sculptured blending of bole and branch gives it a form that is unique. Also unique is its smooth gray bark, which does not become furrowed with old age as that of other trees, but remains smooth from ground to crown.

The cutting practices commonly recommended for spruce-fir stands in the Northeast involve uneven-aged management. The success of this type of management is predicated upon stand structures that have a range of size classes from seedlings to mature trees in intimate mixture. This kind of stand structure requires a continuous supply of reproduction of desirable species. And this reproduction must be established under an overstory.

When forest watershed management research was begun at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1955, we felt certain that at least one aspect of hydrology would not require study-interception. Interception has been studied for a long time, in fact, as early as 1889 (Horton, 1919). It has been well known that a certain amount of rainfall or snow clings to leaves and branches and never reaches the ground.