Rotatin a´la Sweden.

[Swede]

Ron Wenrich:
 How long of a rotation do you have?
 Sure would be nice to hear how things are done in Sweden.  

It´s very different how we do in Sweden but this is what we are expected to do at a clear-cut area.

Usaly plow  with 2-3 M between strings or where it´s possible..
Plant or sow or leave enough trees for that job.
Plantation is 1,3 -3M high:Clear up from deciduous trees and bushes.
Plantation 20-25 years:Clear up/1:st thin out.
Before the plataion is 45 years: 2 more thin out.

Most people don´t make more than they have to. There is laws about planting and sowing. Clearing up and thinning out gives more sweat than SEK. so.......But there are big variances.

Looking at the trucks passing here I think there isn´t many trees who are more than 70 Y.O. Saw mills around here can´t cut logs over Ø 470-600mm (1"=24,4mm) in big end. I can! ;D

Deciduous forest we almost don´t have. In the 50:s to 70:s it was weed and cut to firewood. The grown we have goes to pulp mills.
We are some idiots in this country thinking that there are other wood than  coniferous that has any value (if grand pa didnt plant it). We even think that acidification comes from too much coniferous forest and isn´t only a (by the air) imported problem.
And a lot of spruce dies because the acidification.


http://www.trainformation.se/pub/english/swedishwood.asp

Swede.

PS. 100 years ago people said. "Ms.Birch is  mother to Spruce" Where did we drop it?

[Ianab]

Hi Swede
You rotation sounds a little like the NZ methods, although possible a bit more intensive here.
Main species grown here is radiata pine and normal cycle would be to plant seedlings at a fairly close spacing (approx 2m?). Weeds growing around the seedling may be sprayed before or after planting to reduce smothering and competition. After approx 5 years the trees are hopefully 4m tall and can be lift pruned (remove all lower branches). They will be pruned again at approx 5 and 9 years (depends on how fast they are growing). By this time there should be 6m of pruned trunk to grow a good clear sawlog. The trees are thinned out during the pruning to leave the desired final spacing, allowing for broken, bent and any rubbish trees to be cut left to rot.
Harvesting would normally be done between 25 and 30 years and trees should have a dbh of 24"-36" and each tree should produce a mostly clear  pruned sawlog, an unpruned sawlog and a pulp grade log from the top.

ian

[slowzuki]

Swede, it sounds exactly what they are trying to encourage in New Brunswick.  I posted earlier about a study done by a finnish company saying we aren't intensive enough in our thinning and replanting.

The only replanting done is softwoods, not much hardwood left in the province, used to be lot of it in the 1800's.

Ken

[Ron Wenrich]

There are very limited markets for softwoods in my area.  You don't see plantations anymore.  The last ones were planted back in the 30s and 50s when farmers put their marginal lands into forests.  Not many of them followed through, which explains why they left farming.

Our primary method of regeneration is relying on natural regeneration.  We do no pruning, since hardwoods are pretty good natrual pruners.  

Unfortunately, thinnings generally come from sawtimber cuts.  Too often junk is left behind to become the next forest.  We're going to have some real challenges in about 20 years.

I remember talking with a German forester.  They were using a 2 forest system where the overstory was primarily beech and white oak.  The understory was ironwood and was being grown for fuelwood.  Ironwood was on a 20 year rotation and they used stump sprouts as generation.

The overstory was managed for veneer, and they were using a 36" dbh as their goal.  Think Dauerwald.  

[slowzuki]

Wow! That is such a difference form here.  Hardwoods are almost considered junk in the forest.  There are a few hardwood pulp mills, they dump sawlogs and veneer logs right in with the rest into the chippers to make pulp.

I have 30 acres of land that has been cut several times since NA was settled.  There is one oak tree about 2" dia,  there is maybe an acre or two of white birch, sugar maple and poplar.  There are maybe 5 ash trees and a couple of dozen small elms (2 or 3").

Elsewhere in the area where woods have matured, there are great big maples, oaks and ash.  Supposedly when first settled you could drive a carriage anywhere through the woods here the trees were so big and well spaced.

[SwampDonkey]

@ slowzuki   ;D

It has been government policy to manage for softwoods in New Brunswick. Not that we can't or shouldn't manage hardwood more intensively. Its just easier to manage softwood. Wildlife such as rodents, deer and moose would be very harsh on hardwood plantations, they sure are on hardwood thinnings. Hardwood and poplar also sucker alot making it hard to control stem density. Pruning of young hardwood usually leads to galls and large scare tissue making the stem susceptible to disease. Pruning should be delayed to pole-size. Also, hardwoods will produce alot of epicormic branching if pruned or spaced to open, reducing quality again. I've experienced alot of hardwood thinnings and have concluded that thinning should be deleyed for several years until the average height nears 6 m (typically 15-18 years in our region). Spacing should not be below 3000 st/hectare the first pass, then another thinning (possibly semi-commercial at age 40-60) should space the trees to 1000 st/ha (possibly a hardwood crown release instead) and then at age 80 - 100 group selection, strip cuts or mini clearcuts can be used to promote regen and leave 16 m2/hectare. The higher the risk of ice storms the higher the basal area to be left (up to 24 m2/ha on high risk areas). Hardwood is 60 % of our covertype in NB. To grow a piece of veneer your looking at close to 100 years in our region, beyond our life spans. We can grow studwood from managed spruce by 50-60 years (depending on species), and managed fir by 40 years in northern NB (30 year old fir can be under 4 meters if suppressed and unmanaged).

In the NB lowlands, red maple, ash and birches were the dominate hardwood species in hardwood stands. Its not until you reach the Chaleaur Uplands from about Nackawic to Campelton where hardwoods such as sugar maple, beech, ash and yellow birch dominate the hardwood ridges. There is also more cedar in this region. One reason being, the calcareous soils they require for optimal growth in our region. Its also better farmland in this region (1/5 of Canada's potato production is grown here).

Traditionlly, most hardwood was cut for fuelwood in the Maritimes. Most of the commercial market before-hand was for rail way ties, veneer, mouldings, furniture and pallet wood. This left alot of unused volume. Then in the 1960's St Anne Pulp and Paper built a hardwood pulpwood mill which utilitized all hardwood species and poplars. This was a god's send for private producers and crown hardwood since it opened up a viable hardwood market for lesser quality wood. The mill takes alot of poor wood that would not be used otherwise. Before St Anne the existing mills only wanted the best hardwood for their products, which caused alot of high grading on woodlots and crownland hardwood ridges. Those silvicultural treatments I mentioned above would not be possible without the market at St Anne (Also GP, LP and Huber in Maine) for the products they produce. Most of the poplar in the past was used for veneer products. When the veneer market started taking off in our region it took about 10 years to get producers to sort their sawlogs and veneer from the wood pile. People were hard to convince that it was worth their while to do so, so most of the hardwood was till ending up in the grinder. The prices came a bit better by the end of the 90's which turned the tide. Anyone sending veneer and sawlogs to the pulpmill is doing it out of ignorance now-a-days.

Most hardwood stands in this region have 70 % to 90 % pulpwood volumes, since hardwood is at its most northly limit here and winters with ice storms are very harsh. This leaves a tremendous scare on the hardwood landscape. This makes managing it very long term and risky, which requires alot of dedication.

Just offering a little clarification  ;)

take care