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Oak Regeneration

Started by Frickman, February 16, 2005, 07:08:23 PM

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Frickman

We are currently harvesting a tract next door to one we did about ten years ago, and I took a walk the other day to see how it was doing. There were two harvest prescriptions on this tract, a clear cut regenerative harvest of mature and over-mature timber, and a select cut which left a nice stand of pole timber. The problem of over browsing by a large deer population in Pennsylvania was known at the time by folks who actually spend time in the woods, so I talked the landowner into letting us leave the tops to help protect the new growth. He is a forward thinking individual, so he went along with the plan. It was difficult for him, as he has many relatives who wanted to cut up the tops for firewood so they wouldn't be "wasted." When we were finished with the harvest, the remaining tops stood between four and six feet high, and in the clearcut area it was imposible to walk through them.

Now ten years later there is alot of nice young oak saplings everywhere they were protected from deer. There is mostly oak, cherry, and poplar growing up through the old tops, and soft maple and black birch everywhere else. Here in Pennsylvania soft maple and birch are lower value species that are rapidly increasing in volume.

The moral of this story is sometimes good forestry might not be appealing to the untrained eye. On other posts here on the forum folks talk about lopping tops or removing firewood or small sawlogs from them to help "cleanup" a job. I've done the same on some jobs. In this case that would have severely affected the regeneration of this woodlot. Every job is different and landowners can have various goals, and sometimes you accomplish these goals by "making a mess."
If you're not broke down once in a while, you're not working hard enough

I'm not a hillbilly. I'm an "Appalachian American"

Retired  Conventional hand-felling logging operation with cable skidder and forwarder, Frick 01 handset sawmill

Pretend farmer when I have the time

devo

Nice job! I like hearing stories about jobs that went right. I'm curious though - What was the regen like in areas with less tops left for protection, compared to the protected areas? Just curious.
Crazy enough to try it! (once)

Frickman

Devo,

The areas not protected are regenerating just as vigorously, but just in soft maple and black birch. When I say area I don't mean on a tract-wide, acreage basis. I mean there is oak regenerating within the downed top and just ten feet away is soft maple where there was no protective cover. Go another twenty feet to another top and you'll find more oak.

Soft maple, or red maple, is a medium value species in our area as timber, when it is good. In our more rugged mountain areas early-spring cold snaps tend to freeze the sap, causing the bark to split lengthwise, which opens the interior to rot. When you find a good patch of soft maple in a protected area you can make pretty good money on it though. It is almost worthless as a wildlife tree, especially compared to oak.
If you're not broke down once in a while, you're not working hard enough

I'm not a hillbilly. I'm an "Appalachian American"

Retired  Conventional hand-felling logging operation with cable skidder and forwarder, Frick 01 handset sawmill

Pretend farmer when I have the time

devo

That pretty much answers my question. I was curious how well the tops protected the new oak trees. Sounds like deer are deer everywhere when it comes to the good trees, if they can reach it - they'll eat it.

Your soft maple market sounds about the same as mine here, the only difference is the only soft maple I find is always wormy - automaticly cuts the price in half or more. My mill had a glut of it a while ago and didn't want to pay what I wanted, so I'm sitting on about 15 Mbf of it. :-\
Crazy enough to try it! (once)

OneWithWood

My consulting forester and my district forester both suggested we leave the tops in the clear cut areas for the same reason.  I wanted the firewood but decided to do as they suggested.  I can see the sense of it and there is plenty of firewood where the harvest was more select and in the TSI areas.
One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

Black_Bear

Apparently the slash, or lack thereof in the case of the red maple, created favorable conditions for germination and establishment of the oak (which species?). 

Is it possible that because the tops were not removed the amount of mineral soil exposed was reduced? It seems as though RM would germinate more readily where the mineral soil was exposed and the oak would germinate more readily where the soil was not exposed, but the acorn was slightly buried and in contact with mineral soil.

Also, and I mean no disrespect, what exactly is a select cut? Do you mean a thinning of some sort?

Besides this method of harvesting, what is everyone in PA doing to reduce the susceptibility that young trees have towards browsing deer?

Just curious,
BB   


farmerdoug

Frickman,

What are he deer densities in the areas the you ar working.  Here we are looking at 40-50 per square mile here because of a large powerplant with no hunting.  It makes raising our crops tough.  Otherwise they run 20-25 in the general area.
Doug
Truck Farmer/Greenhouse grower
2001 LT40HDD42 Super with Command Control and AccuSet, 42 hp Kubota diesel
Fargo, MI

Frickman

Black Bear,

The oak regenerates equally well under the brush or out in the open. In our area there is usually about 6" of leaf litter and organic matter everywhere in the woods, and the only place you'll find bare mineral soil is where its been scraped off by machine or sometimes deer. What happens is deer come by and eat the buds off the sapling over it's first winter, deforming or killing it. If it is protected in brush and tops the deer will pass it by, as they have to spend too much energy getting to it. 

Fencing is an option, though an expensive one. If you fence the deer out for about seven years the saplings will have a chance to grow above the browse level. It is a hard sell though, as most landowners do not plan on owning the property until the new forest is mature.

Select cutting is an all-encompasing term that refers to any harvest method that is not a clearcut. If you leave one stem per acre it is not a clearcut, it is a select cut. If you run a search of the forum you will find alot of information about select cutting. While select cutting can be abused when it is used only for high-grading a woodlot, it can improve a woodlot too. When we mark and harvest timber we look at the big picture long-term and usually end up low-grading a stand. Basically select cutting means someone selected the trees to harvest, it has nothing to do with management objectives.

farmerdoug,

I have no idea what our deer densities are, only it is too much. You can't believe the published statistics because they are put out by the state game commission and are influenced politically. I live in an area of mixed farms and woodlots and see deer almost daily. Twenty years ago just some tracks in the snow were big news around the neighborhood, so our deer population is definitely higher.
If you're not broke down once in a while, you're not working hard enough

I'm not a hillbilly. I'm an "Appalachian American"

Retired  Conventional hand-felling logging operation with cable skidder and forwarder, Frick 01 handset sawmill

Pretend farmer when I have the time

Ron Wenrich

If you talk to hunters, they would tell you that Frickman is pulling your leg.  Every hunter knows there are no deer in PA.  I've seen them write a number of letters to the local newspaper and these guys swear up and down that deer populations have decreased dramatically in the past few years.  They all know because they have hunted the exact same area for the past 20-30 years.   ;)

On the opposite extreme, the environmentalists are calling for more hunting to keep down the deer population so the forests can regenerate.

All the slash really does is to keep the deer away from young seedlings.  They can't get to them, and they prefer oak over the soft maple and the birch.  Scarafication isn't much of a factor, but advanced regeneration is.  Not enough is usually done to insure advanced regeneration.  Just cut and hope for the best.

A select cut is what most people think of as a thinning.  Select cutting can be good or bad, depending how it is handled.  If you cut the best and leave the rest, its a high grade.  If you take out the junk, then its timber stand improvement.

But, regeneration isn't really a factor in a select cut.  You're not looking to start a new forest, you are looking to improve your remaining stand.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

farmerdoug

Frickman,

I agree with you on published deer density.  They say we do not have a high deer density here but at 40-50 per square mile in the winter you have little food in the farm fields so the woods density is more like 150-200 per square mile.  So you can see the damage the deer do to everything in the woods.  Regen in old fields and cut woods is mostly ash, soft maple, and elm.  Ash has a borer problem as you probably have heard.  Elm has the Dutch elm disease.  Soft maple has little value even as pulp as it is to far to haul to the mill.  

Ron,
The hunters say the same thing here but when I can look out and see 30 deer feeding in the field right now I think they should just hunt more.  I hunt and they leave a 9-10AM and come back at 3-4PM so I see many deer midday.  They also complain that there is no bucks which I agree with, but they will shoot anyhing with horns but no does.
Doug
Truck Farmer/Greenhouse grower
2001 LT40HDD42 Super with Command Control and AccuSet, 42 hp Kubota diesel
Fargo, MI

Black_Bear

It sounds like all went as planned in the harvest 10 years ago. I have read about the fencing option and I was wondering how many people are doing it. If you can save the black cherry and oak seedlings and saplings it seems as though the return would be worthwhile. It may be a few decades before you realize the return, but it seems like good sustainable forestry.

I'm still wondering if the term "select cut" is a silvicultural term?

Thanks for the input.

BB

Ron Wenrich

I think the silvicultural term would be an intermediate thinning.  The other kinds of cuts would be a clear cut, seed tree cut, and a shelterwood cut.  The last 2 are methods for regeneration.  These are all used in even-aged management systems.

The only fencing I have seen has been on national forest land and some state lands.  Mostly in the good cherry areas.

When I was in college, I did some work at the deer pens.  They were studying the effects of deer populations on regeneration.  Deer populations of 1/40 acres was not much of an impact.  With 1/10 acres, it was like a field.  That would be a density of about 65/sq mi. 
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Ron Scott

We did a lot of fencing of the black cherry areas on the Allegheny National Forest when I worked there during the late 1970's. 
~Ron

Black_Bear

Well said, Ron W.

That is the beauty of silvicultural practice, you are allowed to be creative. I have seen far too many "all-encompassing" prescriptions that performed the same treatment on the whole stand when the stand would actually have benefited from two or more separate prescriptions. The only question left is what was taken out of the thinned stand? Was it a dominant thinning that removed the mature and over-mature timber?

BB 

OneWithWood

The select harvests on my property varied with the variation of the stand.  In some areas the trees were selected to free up the better trees-low grade harvest.  In other areas the trees selected were the overmature trees and an occasional tree that was prime for harvest.  The clear cut areas were selected for oak regeneration potential.  My woods is a mixed age mixed species woods so no one practice covers it all.  I am probably done with the large commercial harvest for quite a while.  My plan from here on out is to gradually remove the lesser quality, diseased, and scarred stems utilizing my WM and kiln to glean some return from the wood.  In about 15 - 20 years I should be able to have a very nice select cut for veneer and still leave a very viable woods for posterity.
One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

Frickman

Ron W. has the same hunters on his end of the state that we do here. They've hunted the same place for twenty or fourty years, in the same way, and haven't adjusted to shifts in the deer populations and habitat. What was once a tract of young saplings and post timber has now grown into mature sawtimber, and they think they can stand in the same spot as they did when they shot their first buck in 1965. Also, the average age of hunters has gotten older with the general aging of the population, and these older hunters spend more time on a stand than walking through the woods. Many of them only go back in 100 yards from the road to hunt. Alot of the younger hunters know nothing about deer habits and behavior. I once had to explain to a young hunter that deer are nocturnal. I thought everyone knew that.

Black bear asked what had we removed from the thinned stand. It was a two-aged stand when we entered it, and mostly we removed mature trees and deformed and diseased pole timber. In our area years ago we had a big industry supplying the coal mines with posts and timbers. Some tracts were cut repeatadly for posts down to 4" or 5" dbh. Oak, hickory, and locust were the preferred species, poplar was not accepted. All the tulip poplar and crooked trees were left. These trees have matured, and we do alot of jobs where we remove them and release the residual timber, mostly pole sized mixed hardwoods. The pointy head professors at the forestry colleges insist that all the timber in PA is even-aged, but I can take them to alot of timber that is two-aged. What the old-timers did is what we now call a shelterwood cut, and I am removing the trees they had left. Most of the timber I had removed in this thinning was poplar and soft maple. Most of the residual pole timber is poplar, maple, oak, and cherry, and will be ready for another harvest in twenty or thirty years.

I too use the term intermediate thinning. Most of the landowners I deal with understand select cut or thinning better. It doesn't matter what is written on a piece of paper, it's what is done on the ground that counts.

Black Bear also talked about not using a single prescription for a whole tract. In the SFI training they talk about this, and show how each tract is made of different sites. You may have a low-lying creek bottom with hydric soil and sycamore turn into a well drained slope supporting red oak turn into a rocky ridge supporting just a bunch of scrub, all as you walked up the same hill. Each of these areas is a different site and will probably need a different harvest prescription.
If you're not broke down once in a while, you're not working hard enough

I'm not a hillbilly. I'm an "Appalachian American"

Retired  Conventional hand-felling logging operation with cable skidder and forwarder, Frick 01 handset sawmill

Pretend farmer when I have the time

Ron Wenrich

All of those 2 age forests that I've run across come from diameter limit cuts.  A shelterwood cut would be where you take most of the understory.  You might have been running into that if there was heavy cutting in mine props.  Back then, oak wasn't worth much, and was left in the woods.

I don't think the profs are saying that the state is even-aged.  I think they are pushing even-aged management.  Uneven-aged is hard to attain and have a healthy stand.  It also tends to the more tolerant species.  Right now we have an oak mentality.  It is OK, but you can't predict market desirability. 

To get to an uneven-aged stand, you need to do mini-clearcuts within the stand.  These need to be about 1/4-1/2 acre in size.  This will allow the more intolerant species to thrive.  Very few do this, but go for the heavy thinnings to achieve a 2 aged stand (read diameter limit cut).

Getting an inventory prior to cutting should be a high priority.  When you do the inventory, you can do the mapping.  Most guys sidestep this and just get heavy handed with a paint gun. 

What is the mature or over-mature tree?  I've seen vigorous large trees and stunted small trees.  Do you cut the tree when it goes over a certain size or when it starts to decline?  Is it financial or physical?
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

johnjbc

I have been hunting in Pa for close to 50 years and I don't believe that there are more deer now than when I started hunting.  ::) ::)The only place this is true is in suburban areas where it is not possible to hunt for safety reasons. :P

Back in the sixties (near the middle of the last century Tom :D)  we had 1 doe day and not every year. Through the nineties there were 2 or 3 and for the last 2 years doe have been legal for the entire 2 week season with about a million doe permits issued.
Common sense will tell you that with that kind of pressure the deer population is going DOWN!  ::) 8)

After I bought my wood lot I joined WOSA (Wood Lot Owners Of the Southern Allegany's). The first conference, that I attended, Had Gary Alt as a speaker. If you are from Pa you know who he is. He went through his spiel about how deer were preventing regeneration, and told us that if we equalized the ratio of Doe to Bucks there would be more Fawns born. >:( >:(

The next speaker with a whole list of degrees after his name (who's name escapes me) apologized to Gary for having a different opinion, and then proceeded to go through the results of years of studying why large areas of the Laurel Highlands were not regenerating Oak. He had looked at everything you could think of. And It came down to acid rain. As the Ph went up the amount of Oak went down. Red Maple seems to be able to tolerate higher levels of acid so we see more of it.  :o :o

As for the fenced in plots where everything is growing higher inside. There is one up in Union county right across the road from the Methodist Forest Camp, Thousands of acres where hunting is prohibited. Just proves you can make a study come out any way if you want.   >:( >:(
LT40HDG24, Case VAC, Kubota L48, Case 580B, Cat 977H, Bobcat 773

Frickman

Ron W.

Maybe the professors at Penn State have their heads screwed on straight, but most that I meet know very little except for what's written in a textbook. Your old friend Jim Finley is one guy who does know what he's talking about. The two age forests I work in frequently are mostly poplar and cherry in the older age class and various mixed hardwoods in the younger age class. The old trees are typically 75 years or so old, and the younger ones 30 to 40. The old trees are widely scattered, sometimes only a few per acre. As a stated above, they were trees that did not meet the specs for the mines and were left standing. In the days of crosscuts and axes the men didn't expend any extra effort to cut a cull tree. There was not alot of concern about forest management back then, many loggers and property owners were just trying to get by day to day. After the first lumber boom ended about 1910 there was very little market for our timber until the early 1970's. The only markets we had were the mills and mines, so the timber was cut to furnish them.

So we have alot of these two age stands around here, and I go in and remove the older age trees. How do I determine what is mature or overmature? Mostly I look at the health and form of the tree, and the site it is growing on. Currently I am working a plateau on top of a hill that has about 18" to 24" soil cover over solid bedrock. When the poplar reach about 20" to 24" dbh they tend to windthrow, so we start removing them then. That same tree down in the hollow may grow to 30" or more dbh before it starts to deteriorate, so leave it grow to that size. Of course any damaged or diseased tree is a candidate for removal so long as there is something there to replace it.

I'm not a liscensed forester or anything, but in SFI they talked alot "crop trees." Pick out the trees you want in your final stand and work to promote their growth. We'd been doing that for years but never knew it was something special.

Finances have little to do with my decision, except for the obvious fact that a tree in declining health will be worth less and less. My goal is to grow big trees, whatever species the site supports. I don't walk into a stand with a paint gun and take what I want and leave everything else. I look at what I want this stand to look like in 20 or 50 years and work the harvest accordingly. I figure that getting the tree to 10" or 12" dbh is the hard part, after that it's all easy money. At that point I'm making the landowners 10% or more anually just on the growth, tax free until the timber is harvested. It's fairly difficult to get this kind of return year after year in the stock market, especially when the trees do all the work.

Sometimes this approach is difficult when dealing with private landowners. They are so used to "consulting foresters", loggers, and sawmillers thinking only short-term that they think I'm pulling a fast one on them when I want to leave a bunch of nice trees. Just this morning I purchased a small cherry woodlot. Every other prospective buyer talked up the landowner in how valuable all those 10" and 12" cherry trees were, and he better cut them now before they go bad. This fellow worked around logging years ago and saw the potential in the woodlot, so we got the contract. Everyone else wanted to clearcut everything to the ground.

I've heard the thing about acid rain too, and it maybe true. Another thing that has something to do I think with oak regeneration is fire. Back during the depression the locals used to set fires just to get hired on crew to fight them. Everywhere the fires burnt a couple of times you see good oak regeneration. One hundred yards past the fire line it's not as good, there's more poplar and maple. A forester friend once told me that soft maple was only a very minor species in the state years ago, mostly living in swamps and other wet places. When Smoky Bear came along and we started suppressing all fires the soft maple took off, because there was no fire to keep it in check.

Ron mentioned that alot of people have and "oak mentality." I've noticed that too, especially among trained foresters. They seem to forget that oak was not always the dominant species. The area I live in was once dominated by softwoods like spruce and hemlock. They were cut and chestnut took over. When the blight took the chestnut conditions were right for oak/hickory, so they became the dominate species. Now they may be going by the wayside for another type of forest. One thing that is encouraging is cherry and poplar are doing well. I still try to grow oak when I can though.
If you're not broke down once in a while, you're not working hard enough

I'm not a hillbilly. I'm an "Appalachian American"

Retired  Conventional hand-felling logging operation with cable skidder and forwarder, Frick 01 handset sawmill

Pretend farmer when I have the time

SwampDonkey

These are some of the terms in the Glossary of my management plans and are adopted from a couple of Woodlot Associations, Universities and Government publications.

selection silvicultural system - A periodic partial-cutting, controlled by basal area, using vigour and risk characteristics to determine individual tree selection. An uneven-aged silvicultural system.

selective cutting - The cutting of individual selected trees. There are generally few if any control measures. Also known as high-grading. Not to be confused with the selection silvicultural system.

Single tree selection - The cutting method that describes the silvicultural system in which trees are removed individually, here and there, each year over an entire forest or stand. The resultant stand usually regenerates naturally and becomes all-aged.

Group selection - Modification of the selection system in which trees are removed in small groups rather than as individuals.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

SwampDonkey

Frickman reminded me of another term we use here.

Crop Tree Release

This is a crown release in hardwood in which the crop tree is selected and trees competing with this crop tree are removed. Usually the crown of the crop tree is released on at least 2 out of 4 sides. There is a minimum basal area of prefered crop trees that must be retained and released. This does not mean that all the culls are cut out. Some of those culls also serve as buffer trees to the crop trees against heavy wind, ice storms, wildlife trees and prelimiary harvest bumper trees. Generally, on sites in my area a minimum of 70 crop trees per acre is needed to consider the stand for a release. If the stand hasn't  this minimum , there isn't much potential. Some of these sites you can remove merchatable volume and others it's a subsidized activity. Can't really call it a regular thinning as it's not generally uniformly spaced.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Ron Wenrich

Frickman

Sounds like you have the same loggers and foresters working your side of the state as working ours.  Your marking practices are pretty much the way mine have been.   Most often, loggers would wonder why we didn't mark all the big oak.  Their idea of a good marking job is to take all the big stuff.

Fire does have its place in hardwood management.  But, I doubt if we'll ever see a time where it is actively persued.  Old ideas are very hard to change.

The problem with many foresters are they are very short sighted.  I remember when red oak was considered a junk species.  I also remember when tulip poplar was prized as high as maple and cherry.

Swamp

70 trees/acre or a BA of 70?  I like marking for crop trees, but the residuals I've always used is about 70 BA.  The number of trees change with diameter.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

SwampDonkey

Ron,

70 trees/acre pre-treatment and a minimum of 14 m^2/ha post- treatment (including buffer trees). I'm  talking about working in uniform even-aged stands for the most part that were pre-commercially thinned. Tree diameters are 3 to 6 inches (average 4). There is not alot of volume yet, but many stems. Depending on species, the spacing is variable. Yellow birch requires more crown space than sugar maple for instance. What I actually do is set up 1 acre sample plots and ribbon the potential crop trees. Time consuming, but worth it in the long run. We are lucky to find 30 % (that might even be a bit high) of sites with the potential we are targeting. Most hardwood sites are high graded so badly since the the 1980's. Once in awhile you find a 70's clearcut with potential and they generally contain some nice poplar to.

I found our best hardwood woodlots for commercial thinning were those used for firewood because they have alot of nice straight unsuppressed hardwood saplings and people tended to cut the junk out to create that condition. They develop as uneven-aged over a couple of family generations and this is more in line with the system your suggesting with various sized trees. My gut feeling is that clearcutting of hardwood should be forbidden unless the stand is poor with little or no potential to work with or its being developed.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

OneWithWood

Thanks, SD.  I will correct my terminology to single tree selection.  We certainly do not high grade any area.
One With Wood
LT40HDG25, Woodmizer DH4000 Kiln

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