Stump sprouting of northern pin oak on nutrient-poor sandy soils in central Wisconsin

Abstract

Coppice with two to three reserve trees per acre is the generally accepted practice (GAP) for rotating oak stands on nutrient-poor, sandy sites (colloquially called "scrub oak sites") in Wisconsin. The future stocking of the stand is therefore dependent predominantly on stump sprouts with varying levels of contribution from advance regeneration. Two groups of sites (four cut in 1998 and four cut in 2006) were measured to examine the success of the stump sprouts. On the sites harvested in 2006, more than 85 percent of stumps had sprouted during the first year after harvest (Mujuri and Demchik 2009). By 2010, 74 percent of those sprouts were at least 6 ft tall. On the sites harvested in 1998, 90 percent of regeneration plots sampled had at least one desirable timber species with 85 percent of the plots containing at least one viable oak seedling/sapling and 41 percent of these plots containing an oak at least 10 ft tall. The average sprout height measured across all sites was 24 ft. Although there was some variability between sites, the GAP of coppice with reserve trees does seem to be effective at regenerating scrub oak sites.

Parent Publication

• Proceedings, 18th Central Hardwood Forest Conference

Citation

Schwartz, Kevin M.; Demchik, Michael C. 2013. Stump sprouting of northern pin oak on nutrient-poor sandy soils in central Wisconsin. In: Miller, Gary W.; Schuler, Thomas M.; Gottschalk, Kurt W.; Brooks, John R.; Grushecky, Shawn T.; Spong, Ben D.; Rentch, James S., eds. Proceedings, 18th Central Hardwood Forest Conference; 2012 March 26-28; Morgantown, WV; Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-117. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 447-455.