Station 10: Harvesting Systems

In 1924, white pine and white spruce were planted on 3.6 acres here as a mixed species plantation that grew for 66 years. Frost damage and insect attack slowed tree growth and caused many pines to have multiple stems or crooked, but still the trees produced a lot of wood. By 1990, the stand was ready for harvest.

Harvesting is done not only to take products out of the forest, but also to stimulate regeneration within the forest. Here you can see two different harvesting systems, each encouraging a different type of regeneration.

Both examples shown below were harvested in 1990.

Can you see how the two new stands differ?
Which has more single stems?
Which more multiple stems?
How does their growth rate compare with the seedlings and sprouts growing under the large trees left in the shelterwood area?

Shelterwood: Leaving big trees as sources of seed and shade

Clearcut

In this heavy thinning, about sixty percent of the trees were cut, and another twenty-five percent were subsequently lost to "windthrow" after the big trees that helped support them were gone.

We are no longer harvesting from this site and most of the young trees are hardwoods that were already growing here before the thinning.

In a true shelterwood system, the remaining large trees would provide the seeds for new young trees and the big trees would eventually be harvested once younger trees had become established.

Clearcut sprouts and seedlings had access to full sunlight. Go to the station 9 for further description.