How long after logging does the land look natural again?

[JOE.G]

Hi, I had about 30 Acers of my land Logged, Due to the weather this year ( Real Mild ground wasn't frozen for long ) I didn't get as much wood as I had wanted out but still got a some. The area I had logged had a lot of Hemlock on it ( I have Cherry,ash Maple and other hard woods in different areas ) and I have a mill that takes that kind of wood not far from me. Now I know that Hemlock has a ton of Branchs and what not and I also know it depends on the kind of job the logger did. But I am wondering how long till the tops and the branchs start to rot? In ten years can you still tell it's been touched?

[bull]

Depends on how you handled the tops and slash..... if you just left it as and where it fell it will take quite some time. If you cut it smaller and layed it down or skidded over it it will break down much faster !!

[grassfed]

5-10 years

[lumberjack48]

I always put the tops in piles, so they could be burned, left the woods slash free.
If tops aren't loped down to 12", they dry out, get as hard as deer antlers.

[barbender]

Yep, that slash has to be down flat om the ground or it can really take a long time to rot. Really it's the new growth coming up that will make it look good again.

[JOE.G]

He did run alot over with the skidder and cut it real small, I am looking for my woods to be nice looking and healthy, and usable since I am always in it doing something.

[Corley5]

  The 1st two years are the worst.  A couple winter's snow pack will push the slash down and the regen will come up through it.  By the third year it won't look too bad but it will never look the same 

[thecfarm]

I cut alot of hemlock on my land. Any of those good size branches that are up in the air will still be there in 10 years. hemlock branches not touching the ground will last longer than a white pine. I'm cutting in an area my Father and me cut in. He passed away in '98. I can still find some hemlock branches that we did not cut up and get on the ground. We only had a tractor so no way to run the slash over. We did not cut this area hard. I can hardly tell we was in there. I had a logger come in and do some cutting in certain areas. I had him cut those areas hard. The white pine came into to those areas. But he did a real nice job. Made it look ALOT differant. If someone put a blindfold on me and took it off when he first cut,I would not of known where I was.

[JOE.G]

I can always take a day and go out with some saws and my quad and chop stuff up smaller and lower.

[CarlR]

A mulcher (forestry mower) can really speed this up, but they're costly.  I have a little experience with this, here is what I've seen.

If mulched really coarsely, the largest chunks are the size of a man's arm.  These will be flat and hidden by growth in a year or two and mostly gone in 4 or 5.  If mulched finely, chunks are reduced to baseball-size at most.  The mulcher tends to roughly till these into the soil.   The chunks of this size are largely gone or buried just below the surface in the second year.  Stumps are a little different.  The mulcher can grind a stump flush or just below the surface.  But since most mulchers work more like a hammer mill than a chipper or stump grinder, it's a slow process.  Depending on the type of wood, the stump will be flat but obvious for a long time.  Grass and undergrowth is disturbed severely, but not down to the roots.  It will usually re-sprout the following spring.

Cost is a real drawback or may be prohibitive.  A tracked skid steer and a mulching head in good enough shape that they might hold together could cost $20,000 to $40,000.  These machines depreciate quickly and the risk of severe mechanical failure is high, so resale value might be zero.  Maintenance and consumable part costs are high.  Mulchers are also thirsty.  When I figured costs a few months ago I came up with $77.50 per hour for my machine (operator-me $0, no transportation cost, fuel $4.00/gallon).

Justification?  I haven't thought of a business case that supports these costs except maybe for some higher use of the land.  For continued forestry, the cost is prohibitive.  For hobby, love of the land, aesthetics or because this is what I want to do?  This might be worth looking at.

CarlR

[grassfed]

It is actually better for the land and wildlife to just leave as much of the tops and poor quality logs where they fall.  Humans may like a clean organized look but nature loves chaos. 

[JOE.G]

I have a skid steer here , but I am not looking to spend that kind of money. I you tubed vdeos of it and they seem cool but like you said to costly.

[Ianab]

It is actually better for the land and wildlife to just leave as much of the tops and poor quality logs where they fall.  Humans may like a clean organized look but nature loves chaos.

This..

Those messy piles of slash are where your wildlife and new tree seedlings are going to shelter. Give the ground a couple of years and things will have greened up again. It will still look "recently logged", but it will be green and look "alive" very quickly. Maybe 10 years and the slash will have rotted down and it will look like a forest again, although of course only with small trees.

Exactly how things regenerate depends on your climate, tree species, and how you manage it. Walk away and do nothing is one valid management technique, but you can also plant, thin and prune to regenerate a more desirable forest type in the future.

Ian

[JOE.G]

I didn't clear cut the land I logged I just thinned it, I did make a few opened areas but nothing huge.

[Ianab]

With smaller clearings like that I'd guess a trained eye would still be able to tell the area was logged recently, but you will have a heap of regeneration and new growth happening, and it will look like a forest again.

"Natural" is a strange term. If a wind storm came through and knocked down 20% of your tress it would be  heck of a mess, but it would be a "natural mess".

Ian

[JOE.G]

The ferns are already regrowing, All i want to happen is for the slash to be cleared up a bit, either by my help or though natural causes, I am young I can wait five years, I may log some more this winter.

[bill m]

As others have said it all depends on how the logger deals with the tops and slash.
This is a picture of one of my jobs after one year

 
The next photo shows some of the white pine regeneration after one year.

 

[thecfarm]

bill,you can come log mine land anytime. A very nice job. This is what the public needs to see.

[JOE.G]

Bill very nice, That is what i am looking for for some areas, others I d like it a little more Natural for the animals, I have the woods near my home looking like took a lot of cutting and burning to do it.

What did you do with your tops and slash?

[bill m]

The slash is all still there, I just cut it small so it lays down flat.

[terry f]

   "Humans may like a clean organized look but nature loves chaos", alot of truth to that grassfed. I work in the animal feed business, and you sell pretty feed to the customer, the animal couldn't care less what the feed looks like.

[Holmes]

   bill m that is a very nice looking job...

[Corley5]

  I started a northern hardwood thinning last winter and finished it early this spring and the landowner was unhappy because of all the slash and we cut it down so NOTHING was more than 24" off the ground and very few were that high most were flat.   I told him when we started that it would look bad for a couple years.  Guess he didn't believe me  ;)   He and his wife were judging it right after the snow melted before anything began to green up.  It didn't look any worse than any other log job and better than most.  The NRCS agent I worked with on the job thought it was fine and did his best to smooth things over but I guess we won't do the rest of the job  ;D 8)   The land owner was also POed because we didn't get every stick of 100" pulp and when I sent the forwarder back to clean up his trails when the last of the snow melted my operator didn't pick up some we'd left like HE told him too so HE could cut it for firewood.  I figured from the firewood he'd cut and stacked in his shed and what I saw on the ground that we might have left 5 pulp cords at the most.  He didn't get it when I told him that for what I got paid for it after costs that I couldn't chase every last stick.  He told that he didn't want it going to waste and we'd made work for him cleaning up.  I told him that it wasn't going to waste he was utilizing it and if it rotted back into the ground that was good thing.  He said that we should have left them stand in that case and had nothing to say when I told him that this was an improvement thinning and the trees were cut for the benefit of the trees we left whether we picked them up or not.  The best timber was on the piece we cut.  The rest is 80% pulp and on some pretty rugged hills too.  No reference from him  ;D :D

[g_man]

This is how I leave slash on my own land. I just cut it so it is close to the ground. Most people would probably think this is an awful job. I don't know... maybe it is. But I prefer to leave everything that dosn't go on the truck right in the woods were it came from. Good for the soil, Good for the wildlife, and protects new growth.





People who need there woods to look neat and tidy and call it natural have not spent much time observing mother nature.

gg

[WDH]

g_man,

To me, that is a great looking job.  Bill, you also do very nice work!

[JOE.G]

G Man that looks fine also, I am not complaining the logger I used did a great job, I am just wondering what to expect as time goes on.

[thecfarm]

I hear the stories of guys able to cut 10 truck load a day. I usually say,Not on my land you will. bill sure is not one of those guys. I only cut on my land,so I get all the money,so I can spend the time to do a real nice job. I like to cut my brush about 2-3 feet long. I even run the saw up and down the limbs to remove the smaller limbs too.I like to walk other loggers jobs. The real nice job I spend some time just walking. The bad ones I don't spend much time on.

[Bogue Chitto]

After my pines were thinned, all the limbs and tops where chipped up and sent to the mill.  I ended up getting a check for the chips. 

[Tramp Bushler]

A healthy forest , and a park are 2 very different things most of the time . A small tree service size chipper will get alot of work done for caring for your land .

[SwampDonkey]

We thin young tree stands with brush saws and the cut fir, spruce or hardwood might have limbs 6 feet off the ground attached to a tree that might be 20-30 feet long. In 10 years and the winters that go along with it, the brush is all pretty much soil. All you see is the stumps that were 2" to compare with the remaining trees that are now 6" on the but.  ;D I can walk you on thousands of acres of thinned ground and it's all clean under it, just moss and actually very few anything else except the rabbits, partridge, song birds, squirrels, and moose. ;D

[g_man]

Ten years ago this was a landing. There was a huge slash pile of mostly white pine just behind or to the left of that firewood. Without exageration that pile was as big as a house and at least 16 feet tall. Being white pine I thought it would take 30 years to get to where it is now after ten. It is still rasberries and there is still rotting slash in there but it well on its way to being gone. I have not done anything to it. just let it sit.

[JOE.G]

Wow that rotted away quickly, I like the hard wood, trees and that is why I left most of them, I have a lot of Cherry Ash and maple, I do have hickory, ironwood,oak, sicamore, beech, birch and some others, but the first three I mentioned makes up the majority of my Hard wood, I have Hemlock and a few different types of pine also.
I do have a lot of fruit trees also but they are in a different section.

[ArborJake]

 We always found the best place to hunt was were it had been logged, right away and for the next few years. In New York were I am it usually grows up with briars right away and all the wildlife makes use of them. They're just miserable to walk through.

[WDH]

The blackberries and raspberries are very important wildlife foods.  Opening the forest floor to sunlight from logging brings in a whole another group of pioneer plants, many which are very beneficial food for the birds, bees, and critters.

  Disturbance in a landscape has very important wildlife benefits.  Wildlife thrive on edge between habitat sites.  Logging creates a lot of edge.

[JOE.G]

That is part of the reason why I wanted to open it up some, give some other plant life a chance to live, I don't have any briars around here don't want them either.

[markd]

Don't worry, you'll never know it was logged a hundred years from now.

[Corley5]

I took a ride through my own woodlot last evening.  We cut it a year ago and it's looking good.  It's quite open in places because of the removal of some very big diseased beech.  It's filling in with northern hardwood regen, raspberry and elder berry.  Looks good to me.  Lots of green  8) 8)  Looked pretty rugged after it was done ;D

[Ed_K]

I've been doing so TSI work on a job that was logged 2010 I took picts there not as good of picts as I had expected.Their in my album,I'm going to take another when I get a day of better weather,to post here,just wanted to bring this back up.

[JOE.G]

I took a quad ride with my kid's last week, some places look nice others look rough, the log roads are pretty muddy at this time I am guessing with time thatll harden back up.

[thecfarm]

Those rough areas just go in with a saw and cut things down. I never realized how many dead trees I had until he got done cutting. I'm still working on them.

[JOE.G]

He took out some pulp wood along with some fire wood, there is still enough wood down to heat a home for the winter I wish I could find someone to come in and get it.

[Phorester]

A logging job is not a landscaping job.  Never has been, never will be.

I have landowners call who are horrified at the way their woods look during or after logging.  I ask, were you satisfied the way your woods looked before this logging?  They say, yes.  I ask, how long ago was the last logging done?  Many landowners don't realize that their property had been logged before because their woods "looked so nice".  (Something to think about here..........)

I say, Your woods looked like it does now at the end of the last logging job, too, but you liked the way it looked before this one, and it will look good again after new vegetation softens the harsh look of this recent logging job, and the tops and limbs rot down.  On small jobs around here, say 2 - 5 acres or so in a subdivision, there are some loggers who will bring in a mulcher and mulch all the tops and limbs, but it is a big expense for the landowner, as has already been mentioned.

How long before it doesn't look like it's been logged?  In my area, maybe 5 years.

Again, a logging job is not a landscaping job.  Never has been, never will be.

[JOE.G]

The loggers I had look at the part of my Property that I had logged this year said this area doesn't look like it's ever been touched. But I got your point.

[SwampDonkey]

Hardwood up my way, by this I mean "mature" sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, white ash don't sucker so the stumps get consumed by the earth so to speak. So I might question the "this area looked untouched before" line. ;) This happened pretty quick when the second growth over grows the site. By the time I run a brush saw over a clear cut (about 12 years after harvest) no sign of a hardwood stump. Keeping in mind the species I mentioned. Because red maple will sucker like the dickens, mature or young tree stump. ;) So if a similar site had a selection done, the same would happen to them stumps. I'm thinning right now on a farm woodlot that gets cut by the farmer piece meal for firewood and logs and pulp over many years. And the sections I thin near his skidder trails have no stumps. You'd almost think he bladed trails down through the woods that grew back up. Nope, just nature.  8)

[leeroyjd]

I just started a job I had cut 10 years ago and it looks great.I won't take all the credit-the forester is,in my opinion,one of the best.Also the landowner cleaned up the tops on their own.

[Phorester]

The loggers I had look at the part of my Property that I had logged this year said this area doesn't look like it's ever been touched. But I got your point.

JOE.G, wanted to be sure you knew that my comments weren't directed at you personally, just meant to be general in nature.

[JOE.G]

No it's fine didn't take it wrong, The area I logged this time wasn't something that is easy to get to, I had to put culvert pipes in and stuff, it is a remote area along a river the trees were very large and there weren't any roadways had to make our own, if it wer logged it had to be many many years ago.

[Ed_K]

Here's a pict I took after cutting in a heavy hemlock stand.


 
We're hoping to generate oak & w/pine on this 44 ac property.The trees are cut and left to keep the deer out hoping for 15 yrs before they rot down.
So it all depends on what your trying to accomplish as to how bad or good the land will look.

[lumberjack48]

Ed i don't understand how your going to keep the deer out. I've been deer hunting on blocks where the logger left tops in the skid trails, tops everywhere. I could barely get though it, what a mess, deer had been bedding down all over in that cut. They were safe from the hunters, nobody in their right mine would try go through it.

Any logging i did it looked like a park. I always had designated limbing and topping areas. It was the way i logged, it didn't slow me down, it speed-ed things up i was never stumbling over tops.

Ed_K the lot in the picture looks very good, i would grade that a [ A ]

[JOE.G]

"Any logging i did it looked like a park. I always had designated limbing and topping areas. It was the way i logged, it didn't slow me down, it speed-ed things up i was never stumbling over tops."

It would be nice if everything was limbed and topped in one spot.

[SwampDonkey]

I prefer it dispersed, it breaks down quicker than in piles. The piles become dens for porkies to move in. I've thinned with brush saw around those sites with piles and nothing more surprising to meet porky at face level up in a fir tree.

[Ed_K]

Lumberjack 48,the deer may travel thru some of it but they can't posibbly get at all the regen.I dropped a lot of junk hemlock crisscross and a lot of s.maple up to 10" that are 5-8 feet off the ground.My nice looking logging job of 2010 is now mess but the NRCS makes the rules and pays the landowner to do work like this.

[lumberjack48]

Ed_K, i understand, i've had to do work on Federal land that i didn't agree with, even the Ranger didn't agree, but rules are rules.

When we started clear cutting in the early 70's, people would jump me about it. I tried to explain that i was only doing what the contract said. And if i didn't completely level it i would be charged for damages. It was the best thing that happened to the big Aspen sales, cut it all down so that it all comes up the same. 
In the 60's we cut a  lot of Diamond Match wood [ saw bolts ] We'd go though a stand of Aspen an only cut the sound trees. Cut 3 or 4 bolts off and leave the pulp in the woods. I've gone though 100's of acres only cutting the bolt timber out and leaving the rest stand. This was a very poor practice by the State and the Feds, it should have been all cut down.

[ashes]

^^^Just curious why it is better to cut it all with the aspen. I am guessing that the regen is really fast in full light, but correct me if I am offbase.

[Ianab]

^^^Just curious why it is better to cut it all with the aspen. I am guessing that the regen is really fast in full light, but correct me if I am offbase.

I'm not familiar with Aspen, but many species of tree only regenerate properly in full sunlight, like a clear cut area. If you selectively cut single trees you may get some other species growing in the shelter of the remaining trees.

A selective cut also tends to take the best trees, and leave the weaker suppressed trees which don't grow on well even when released.

So few new trees, and poor growth from the trees you left means it's not good management.

If you choose not to do a large clear cut for whatever reasons (wildlife, aesthetics etc) then normal practice would be small clear cuts of 2 to 5 acres in size spaced through the forest. It then doesn't have the "wasteland" look of a large clearcut, but the clearings can regenerate properly. You can do a series of cuts 5 to 10 years apart, and once the whole forest has been cleared the first patches are getting close to harvest again.

Ian

[Phorester]

Here's a picture of a clearcut forest;



28 years after clearcutting.  There is a baseball cap hanging in a tree near the center of the pic for scale.

Remember, at the same instant a clearcut is the end of one forest, it's also the beginning of a new one. Just a forest of little trees instead of the big ones that were there immediately before.

Regeneration clearcuts need to be cut as clear as possible, everything down to 1-2 inches diameter cut, to maximize sunlight on the new trees.

[WDH]

A clearcut is also a boon to many species of wildlife.  It can be a very good thing as a part of the broader landscape.  Disturbance is natural in the system and required for balance.  Clearcutting gets a bad rap, but used wisely, it is a great management tool and good for the critters, birds, and the bees, too.

[JOE.G]

Looks like there is a lot of stuff on the ground in that pic, I am guessing that is just branchs and leaves/pine needles from the new trees.

[Ianab]

Looks like there is a lot of stuff on the ground in that pic, I am guessing that is just branchs and leaves/pine needles from the new trees.

Yup, like a natural forest.

The trees naturally shedding branches, weaker trees are being suppressed and dying off, undergrowth plants are establishing under the canopy etc.

Difference between a Forest and a Park

Ian

[Phorester]

I modified the post of my clearcut picture to mention the baseball cap near the center of the picture I hung there for scale. (I was by myself that day   ;D
The loblolly pines average 8" - 10" diameter, some range up to 14" dbh.

And as IANAB says, this is how a pine forest looks at this age.

[SwampDonkey]

About the only differences in vegetation I see on clearcuts is the scale of the trees and some sites have lots of pin cherry. As far as the plants on the ground I see no difference. Right now the prominent ground plants are the bunch berry in bloom, lady slippers, and wintergreen and earlier the triliums. Also see lots of blueberry bushes, which look real lush and green. Lots of bumble bees, hummers and song birds, a few partridge, lots of bears and moose and more deer this year than there has been. Almost stepped on a fawn with the chaulk boots. ;D

[Sixacresand]

My dad had 30 acres clear cut in the early nineties.    The pines reseeded and the place is like a jungle   Without some serious timber management, it will probably be another 30 years before there is any more useable timber.  I won't live that long, so right now just plowing roads thru it for trail riding and food plots. 

[WDH]

You could thin it with hack-n-squirt herbicide if the timber is not merchantable.  That would help immensely.