VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

HARDWOOD FOREST MANAGEMENT: AN EXCHANGE OF E-MAILS

Once again a question posted on our Discussion Forum precipitated an exchange of e-mails containing so much valuable information that it had to be put in more permanent form as an article.  . T. L. Investor. from southern Indiana posted the original question as follows:

TLI: PTAEDA2V+ECONV seems like such a thorough and complete growth and yield model and financial-analysis program.  I wonder if such a program exists for hardwood forest management.

An article in the April . 99 edition of The Logger and Lumberman states that in the 13 states comprising the Southern United States, . Fifty-two percent of the timberland is classified as hardwood, while one-third of all timberland is pine. The remaining 15% is mixed pine-hardwood..  It goes on to say that . Hardwood growth and removals are also increasing, with growth exceeding removals by a wide margin.  Both upland and bottomland hardwood stand types show strong increases in acreage for age classes greater than 60 years old..

It seems that foresters, who are trying to establish pine plantations, are frequently battling hardwood volunteers, and I thought I read somewhere recently that hardwood chips for pulp were becoming more sought after.

Does JMV&CO get involved in hardwood forest management?  What growth and yield and financial forecasting programs do you use or recommend?  Is it possible to manage hardwood timber, plantation style, with the same scientific intensity that you have been able to with loblolly pine?

JMV: There is nothing like PTAEDA2V+ECONVR for hardwoods for several reasons: 1) with rare exceptions, hardwoods occur in stands of mixed species and do not do well in pure stands, 2) each species has a slightly different market, 3) some species have very high values, whereas others have virtually none, and 4) therefore very little genetic-improvement work has been done on any species.  Thus it is not possible to manage hardwood timber, plantation style, with the same intensity that we apply to loblolly pine.

On the other hand, because hardwoods occupy about 50% of the land in SE U.S., their management constitutes about 50% of our practice.  We just do different things with them.  The way to calculate growth is described on pages 98-100 of . How To Make Money Growing Trees..  Many stands have been logged several times during the past 75 years, removing only trees with no defects and leaving the culls, so something must usually be done to correct decades of mismanagement.  We always recommend what. s needed, but because returns require spending money for future results, many owners leave this job to their heirs.

TLI: I read the section in your book that you referenced.  This led me to ask Prof. William L. Hoover at Purdue University approximately the same questions:  What growth and yield tables are used in Indiana to analyze the rate of return that may be achieved in a timberland investment?  In the South they use PTAEDA2, which appears to be very well researched and accepted as a good forecaster of growth and yield of Loblolly Pine.  Is there a comparable G&Y program to use in Indiana hardwood?

WLH: As you can imagine, the mixed hardwood stands of the Central States are much harder to model, especially compared to pine monocultures.  The best available model is "Twigs" developed by the US Forest Service.  I haven' t used it in a long time.  It should be available in some form at http://www.fs.fed.us/fmsc/fvs/fvs_cs.htm.  It requires that you provide the data for a specific stand: number and size of individual trees in the stand.

I'm certain the level of investment in our timberland is lower than it should be because of the difficulties in estimating returns and risks.  But there's no way to simplify growth and yield estimates for our complex, highly variable, mixed-species, unevenaged stands.  Regarding genetic improvement of hardwoods, help is on the way.  Purdue in cooperation with the Northcentral Research Station, U. S. Forest Service, has established the Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center (HTIRC).  Its website is http://www.ncfes.umn.edu/4157.

JMV: We used "Twigs" when we did a study on a large tract in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early 1990' s and were satisfied with its results.  But it' s hard to use even for pros.  We had to get lots of help from Dr. Harold Burkhart at Virginia Tech in our project.

You also asked for the meaning of  "thinning from below" and "thinning from above." These very loose terms generally describe whether you thin by removing mainly small trees to favor the big ones or big ones to favor the small ones.  We don' t use them because they don't take quality into consideration.  In most pine stands, there is time for only one thinning, and so far as we are concerned, you make a big mistake if you don' t take out the junk while you have a chance.