Clearcut, HighGrades, Restoration, Multispecies Plantings

[gnmcmartin]

James:

  I have taken a few so far--I just got my digital camera last summer.  They are not very good.  I have never been able to take good pictures of trees and/or forests. I need to experiment more. My older plantations are of white pine, red pine, and Norway spruce, sometimes mixed, sometimes areas overlapping.  They are about 45 to 50 years old, trees 85 to 100 feet tall, pruned mostly to 25', some to over 40, and regularly thinned.  When I get a chance I will make a better effort to get some good pics and I will post.  But I know most people in this BBS will hate them and think they are ugly.  But you asked, so....  All I have ever needed is an audience of one!

  --Gaines

[Don]

Gaines/James-
It is easy to see that Gaines has learned the lessons that uncontrolled hubris will teach, and approaches his task with humility.  This is one of the primary tenets of forest restoration, and reforestation (planting) shouldn't be that much difference. In my case, I haven't had my own property to apply forestry to.  And my tree planting experience is primarily that of serving the public, providing stewardship of the land.  In an era when monocultural plantings were standard, and spacing variable but always there, and for the most part, the 'rows' resulted from that.
But that was then, this is now.  We now know the value of 'bio-diversity' and encouraging biodiversity at the reforestation level is not only appropriate, but compelling.  Do we know enough to do it 100% right, the first time?  Only a few of us probably. Doesn't matter.  What does matter is the specifics of the sites being reforested.
For context, I'll suggest a five hundred mile swath of the west side of the Sierra Nevada range in central/eastern California.  From 5000 to 7000 feet in elevation (approx.) one will find a layer of classic mixed conifer forest community (ponderosa pine, sugar pine, jeffrey pine, doug fir, cedar, white fir) that mixes in a more or less random fashion (with respects paid to variations in topography, aspect, elevation, soil type, etc.).  I suggest (and have seen mixed plantings in this forest type) that to not plant multi-culturally is folly.  That thousands of years of relatively undisturbed forests are demonstrating the species that are likely to succeed.  
Yes, yes, yes, there are so many factors to consider (fire adaptation, fire regimes, climate change, etc.) but I suggest that it is exactly these many factors that mitigates for a multi-cultural, bio-diverse oriented planting.

In the west, it's time that the Forest Service went back to being a service, not as in the past to lobbyists and congressional interests, but to the public, and as the steward they should have been all along.  

Uhmmm, all for now...
-Don

[gnmcmartin]

Don:

  You were a restoration forester, And did some work on or near the north rim of the Grand Canyon--do I remember right?  All I can say is wow!  What a wonderful profession, what a wonderful place to work,  I visited the Grand Canyon several times, both north and south rims, and hiked in and out.

  I also know the Sierra Nevada.  I attended UCLA and spent as much time there as possible, mostly in Sequoia Park.  But I also took back-pack camping trips into the High Sierra--at a time before reservations were needed far in advance, and when one could still drink from streams.

  Anyway, I know the environment you describe, but have little or no sense of how the various kinds of trees and shrubs work together.  Not that I really understand much more about our forests here in the east.  Anyway, I would love to take a walk with you out there somewhere and learn.

  The best way to create a forest from an open field--from scratch, so to speak--in our environment here in the east, would simply be to just leave the area alone--maybe exclude the deer--and let the plant succession take over.  If there is a mixed forest nearby, nature will plant the forest and over time a mix of species adapted to the area will grow--and there is your forest! But we are talking about a process that would take more than one lifetime--maybe two or three.

  I have paid some attention to redwood lands in CA. There has been some debate about how best to restore some cutover lands to  something like a natural redwood forest.  One camp in the discussion says plant redwoods.  The other says, “no, let the alder and whatever take over the site, and eventually redwoods will become established on their own and the result will be a healthier forest growing on healthier soil.”  Well, I like both approaches--maybe part of the land can be done one way, and another part left to the plant succession to work things out.  For me the issue with planting is that it saves time--if the result can be something like satisfactory.  But I don’t understand enough to really enter any debate.

  --Gaines