This is about hardwoods. I came across an article (link (https://tfsweb.tamu.edu/uploadedFiles/Landowners/Hardwood%20Crop%20Tree%20Release.pdf)) that mentioned having 36 crop trees per acre, which means about 35 ft between all trees. I have a 40-ac woodlot of nice hardwoods and in a lot of it, there are far more than 36 trees/acre, but of course, most of them are small and would need to be cut for CTR. My question is... if there is a large hardwood and it's real tall, like its top is at or above the top of the canopy, it's getting close to all the sunlight it can get short of being out in the open. So, is there any need for CTR for that tree? Are the trees under really sucking up nutrients? I suppose they are. Meaning that CTR is not just all about sunlight but also nourishment? I'll bet there have been studies done on this, would be interesting to read up on CTR and results obtained.
That is a very interesting topic. Basically you are looking at several factors. Species mix, crown stratification, and age.
You want each dominant tree to have open spacing around the crown, at least 3 sides open if not all 4. You want enough sunlight on the ground floor to enable regeneration if you are looking at an uneven aged stand. If even aged than you'll do a full clearcut at some point and start over. The crown spacing enables the trees to grow in girth, diameter is the goal in crop tree release. Height is a factor of site quality, they may get there a bit faster if perfectly spaced but they'll get to the max of the site quality by age 50 or so.
The mid story species such as black gum and red maple can really deceive one into thinking that there are lots of crop trees when in reality there is lots of junk.
How old are the dominant trees?
What is the target species mix? In WO you may have less than 36 and in YP you may have up to 50 or even more.
Anyway to answer your question about a particular tree being at the top of the canopy it is all about capturing sunlight, if it is touching another tree in the canopy than it is inhibited and will dramatically slow growth because it can't sustain more biomass. Eventually nature would weed it out anyway and some tree will weaken and get killed by something.
Quote from: nativewolf on March 25, 2024, 07:33:05 AMThat is a very interesting topic. Basically you are looking at several factors. Species mix, crown stratification, and age.
You want each dominant tree to have open spacing around the crown, at least 3 sides open if not all 4. You want enough sunlight on the ground floor to enable regeneration if you are looking at an uneven aged stand. If even aged than you'll do a full clearcut at some point and start over. The crown spacing enables the trees to grow in girth, diameter is the goal in crop tree release. Height is a factor of site quality, they may get there a bit faster if perfectly spaced but they'll get to the max of the site quality by age 50 or so.
The mid story species such as black gum and red maple can really deceive one into thinking that there are lots of crop trees when in reality there is lots of junk.
How old are the dominant trees?
What is the target species mix? In WO you may have less than 36 and in YP you may have up to 50 or even more.
Anyway to answer your question about a particular tree being at the top of the canopy it is all about capturing sunlight, if it is touching another tree in the canopy than it is inhibited and will dramatically slow growth because it can't sustain more biomass. Eventually nature would weed it out anyway and some tree will weaken and get killed by something.
Thanks for the post. My big trees are certainly over age 50. Quite a few exceed age 70 or more. In part of it, I'd guess they are 80-100 yo, 30" DBH and bigger. White oak, red oak, hickory, sweet gum, black gum. Other hardwoods are red maple, ironwood, dogwood, cherry. Some loblolly pines and cedar scattered throughout. The tract was cut for pines maybe about 30-40 years ago. A few pines here and there are, say, 12"-18". No real big pines. As for my best, most common hardwoods, it would be white oak, red oak, hickory. I am surprised how many hickory I have, lots! "Too many" gum trees.
All of this said has a caveat in that this is a tract I may never harvest and just continue to use it for recreation and wildlife benefit; profit isn't a concern here. I like big trees! But I was also interested in the subject, in general.
My desired species are any hardwood except gum. (It's close to impossible to get rid of all, there are so many, plus, I would save some big ones anyway even if I could kill the others.) I want the largest hardwoods to thrive, yes, but also smaller hardwoods just because I like watching diversity in their battle to survive and thrive. I, especially, am fond of dogwood because they are so pretty in bloom, so, I treat them like a crop tree. Problem is, they die often. I lost more than normal last year, don't know why.
I do it all the time on my woodlot, pretty much as described by nativewolf. I work in mixed wood, but I promote any decent hardwood. Most of those are maple, ash, aspen, birch. With the wildlife we have around here, most of those will never make a log. A lot get rough housed by moose and bear or girdled by rabbit and porkies. ffcheesy ffcheesy I also thin out my balsam fir, working at getting a new generation of fir going. It's not hard to get fir to sprout up from seed, other than I can't cover all the ground fast enough. ffcheesy Anywhere I have, the fir is regenerating well and they have an easy go, not much shrubs or undergrowth around. A man only has so much time and age creeps up. :sunny: I need to cut a lot of fir that is as old as nicer ones, but have small narrow crowns. Mine's all used for heating. None or very few are ancient, for fir 80+ years is ancient. They grow fast, but top out around 75 feet for the most part in my area, but get one 90 foot but not common, compared to a red spruce which can get as tall and fat as white pines on good loam.
Good luck with your management work.
I've never seen a tract that has gone through CTR far as I know. Do you, literally, wipe out all small saplings? I've got thousands! On my tract, if I left 'only' 36 hardwoods per acre, those would be pretty big trees. Probably, say, 14" to 36" DBH hardwoods. When you are done, it seems like it would be park-like. Is that correct? Do you go back every so often and whack out the saplings again? Is the fact that there is MORE sunlight going to sprout more saplings and brush?
Yes and Yes and Yes. You'll have a park like forests (that is what they looked like pre colonization based on reports by botanists and explorers. It's how armies rode through or walked through forested areas. The reason is fire, fires kept things open. I am grossly simplifying for hardwood & pine forests in general. Forgive the broad brush.
You'll have regeneration immediately and should try to favor the oaks, WO in particular. If you can get WO under WO than everything else is simple and will happen. Yes, remove gums when possible. See about doing a controlled burn before a CTR, your state forestry dept may do wildlife enhancement burns.
EHP has a neat forests where they have moved a hardwood ecosystem into an uneven aged hardwood complex. I would really like to go see it but troubles have prevented that so far.
Our piedmont forests were much like this, huge trees. 40-60" oaks and young regeneration here or there.
WO mortality is an increasing concern here in VA. I'd start working on a second crop, let the 70-90 year old trees grow and start some little mini clearings to get enough sunlight for the new WO crop and then nurture that along over the next 30 years. WO is going to be a rare commodity by then.
Each forest type is slightly or possibly radically different. Climate / soil / species all interact, which is something that the OP mentions is fascinating. But each forest type will naturally mature in the way the system wants.
One valid "management plan" is to do Nothing and just watch what happens over time. It will probably take several lifetimes to reach it's "Natural" end state, and even then, that state might be it all catches fire and starts again.
But we humans naturally have some other aim in mind, and so want to "manage" the forest, more akin to weeding and harvesting crops in a garden. People will have different goals in their management. Timber value is of course one, long term or short term gain are a trade off there. But wildlife, hunting, conservation, or simply aesthetics (or some mix of them all) are all valid objectives.
I mean clear cutting and walking away is a plan, just not a very good one. The forest will eventually come back, but it will be a LONG time before it looks the same. Locally we have trees that were there before humans even set foot in NZ. Cut them down and it's 1,000 years to get them back... There are areas of forest that were basically clearcut, but left to regrow, They are now "forest" again, but after only ~100 years they still look nothing like the untouched areas.
Some of my largest trees, mostly red oak, white oak, maybe a hickory here and there, have a hollow side at the base, at the ground. From an aesthetic standpoint, cool trees. Otherwise, very healthy trees with huge crowns with a 30+ inch DBH. In regards to a crop tree release project in the traditional sense, how is one supposed to treat a tree like this? Would you assume that it is going to die or blow over and take it out yourself? It appears to me that they have lived like this for a very long time. I mean, they might outlive me just like they are. I could 'harvest' them as firewood. If it's apt to die within a few years, I hate to just donate such massive trees to the forest floor, I tend to prefer letting smaller trees be donated for that!
Decide what you want, and make your plan accordingly. Likely no two foresters will come to the same decision about your dilemma. A walk through your woods one day will conjure up one plan and another day a year or two later will beget another different plan. Albeit once the tree(s) be gone, can't have them back if that plan changes. ffcheesy
Lots of good comments on here about this. One thing I can add is the idea of live crown ratio. Typically a maple or oak would have a live crown ratio of about 40% (100 ft tall tree would have 40 ft of live crown and 60 feet of clear bole). If your tree has the tip above the adjacent tree crowns (dominant crown position) then you could remove an adjacent tree of two (remove poor quality trees) if the live crown of the crop tree is less than 40%. If you have more than 40% then best to leave the adjacent trees to help train the crop tree to produce clear bole. Just another aspect to consider.
Mountain D