Rehabilitation of Degraded Woodlands - Webinar

[Peter Smallidge]

Exploitive harvesting, including high-grading or diameter-limit cutting, and some natural disturbances have altered the species composition, condition,  and structure of northeastern forests to an extent that deliberate rehabilitation is necessary to return the forest to productivity and health.  Dr. Nyland will identify the types of conditions that characterize degraded stands and describe principles and practices that will help foresters and forest owners to bring a degraded forests to a more productive condition.

Today's webinar by Dr. Ralph Nyland, of the State University of New York - College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY CESF) addressed the pervasive condition where woodlands are harvested through exploitive practices such as diameter limit cutting and high-grading.  These practices cut only the biggest and best trees, while leaving behind poorly formed, low vigor, and low crown class trees with limited capacity to form a productive and diverse future forest stand. 

The strategies necessary to help these degraded stands recover depend on the intensity of the high-grade, the mixture of species retained, the abundance of interfering vegetation, and deer pressure.  Dr. Nyland's webinar provides recommendations for management actions to begin the process of rehabilitation.

Link to the webinar here.

A copy of the presentation is too large to share here.

Link to the exit evaluation here.

(picture of a high-graded stand)