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UNEVEN-AGED MANAGEMENT
When trees in a forest stand have a range of ages from
young to old, the stand is called uneven-aged.
When forest landowners manage their forests by
selectively removing individual trees and replanting
seedlings, their approach is known as uneven-aged
management. This is opposed to even-aged management
where all of the trees have the same age, and they are
all harvested at the same time.
A balanced uneven-aged stand looks like an undisturbed,
old-growth forest. As older individual trees die,
seedlings which have been struggling in the understory
shoot up to fill the canopy. Uneven-aged management
methods were developed to try to duplicate the natural
replacement of trees in old-growth forests.
Crop trees are selected as the desired oldest
generation. The trees around them are eliminated to open
up some of the canopy for understory trees and to
allow the crop trees to reach their potential. In other
areas of the Managed Forest, all of the older trees of
less desirable species may be sacrificed;
this exposes seedlings to the sunlight and emphasizes
the forest's younger generations.
Since forests tend to
evolve to a mature, or climax, stage with a dense canopy
until some disturbance opens it up, uneven-aged
management requires a little more attention than
even-aged methods. Uneven-aged
management continually tries to keep the forest from
reaching climax stage through thinning, crop tree
release, and small areas of regeneration.
If this management method is performed well, the forest
remains healthy and vigorous. Diseased trees are thinned
out; the better trees are favored; the nut
and seed producers are encouraged. The disadvantages of
this method is that harvesting individual trees is
difficult, frequently causing damage to live trees.
Most everything about forestry is a compromise. |
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