Treesearch

Forestry and deer affect each other's welfare. Forestry and other land-use practices, particularly farming, affect deer chiefly by modifying the supplies of available food and protective cover. On the other side, an overabundance of deer can overbrowse and eliminate the most palatable and nutritious food species. If these are trees that could be valuable for timber, the amount and value of future timber crops can be greatly reduced. If this happens, forestry may become impractical; and then an important natural resource may be sacrificed to deer (Latham 1950).

Seeding of grass and other herbaceous cover is a recognized method of reducing soil washing on old logging roads, trails, decks, and other disturbed areas. It is done to protect the quality of water supplies and, in the case of roads that are to be used again, to preserve them for use during the next logging operation. The successful use of chaff (from local harvest operations) to do this on the Fernow Experimental Forest near Parsons, W. Va. has been reported.

I am going to tell you about our snow and frost work on the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Hubbard Brook is one of several experimental areas scattered throughout the country on which personnel of the United States Forest Service are seeking to learn how different kinds of forests and methods of managing them affect streamflow behavior. Formerly known as "Forest Influences Research," this work is now officially called "Watershed-Management Research" in the Forest Service.

The northern hardwood forest comprises about 9 million acres in the Lake States region. Most of this timber is in Upper Michigan and Wisconsin, with lesser amounts in Minnesota, It consists primarily of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.), yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis Britt,), basswood (Tilia americana L.), and often eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carr.). Although yellow birch is of considerable economic value in this forest type, it is secondary in importance to sugar maple. Only a small part of the area is in old-growth forest, and at the present rate of cutting these...

A study of crown characteristics of several hundred open-grown oak, hickory, and Norway spruce trees in Iowa revealed a high correlation between stem diameter and crown area. Consideration of this relationship led to the idea that perhaps here was a realistic way to measure and evaluate stand density or stocking. If, given unlimited growing space, trees of a certain species and diameter developed crowns of almost identical size, why couldn't the extent to which this development is limited in a forest stand be used as an index of stand density?

A stump tally is one method of determining the volume of timber previously removed from an area in a logging operation. To estimate volume of standing timber from stumps, foresters must first know the relationship between stump diameters and tree diameters at breast height (d.b.h.).

Though the "cord" is used as a standard unit of measure for stacked wood, there is much confusion as to what a cord is and how it can be properly converted to other units of measure. The amount of solid wood in a pile varies greatly depending on the size, straightness, and evenness of the material in the pile, and also on the closeness of stacking.

Owners of eastern white pine stands suffer financially in several ways from attacks by the white-pine weevil (Pissodes strobi). Crooks, forks, and other weevil-caused tree-bole deformities increase bucking, logging, and sawing costs, and they reduce recoverable volumes. The injuries also reduce the average value of the lumber recovered. It is only with this reduction in the value of lumber produced that this report deals.

Should loblolly pine seed trees be left to grow for many years, or should they be harvested as soon as adequate amounts of reproduction have started? What should be done with the trees too small for sawlogs: should they be cut for pulpwood, or will they develop into high-quality stems? From a study started in 1951 and previously described (4) we now have indicative answers to these questions for old-field loblolly stands on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

In 1951 a 30-acre mature stand of loblolly pine on Maryland's Eastern Shore was cut, leaving 10 pine seed trees per acre; and three different methods of seedbed preparation were tried on experimental plots within the stand. Besides a control plot, which was only logged, the plot treatments included: (a) pulling a stump with a small bulldozer before cutting, followed by a late-summer fire after cutting; (b) pulling a Ranger Pal plow with the same bulldozer before cutting; and (c) using a late-summer fire after cutting. Since tractor treatments (a and b above) were restricted to creating...