1. Landowner Tree Selection for Forest Improvement
2” in 10 years
Peter J. Smallidge
Cornell University
State Extension Forester
Welcome to everyone
Express excitement for the nations first forestry seminar webcast series, installment #2
Turn “RECORD” on
Introduce yourself
Profile audience (13 states, plus Germany Average of 105 acres, high of 360)
Allow for any early questions in the chat box.
Poll #1

2. What I Hope You Learn Today
Overall: how to grow healthy trees that make you feel good about your forest.
Specifically:
How your objectives relate to tree selection
Factors to consider when selecting trees to cut and leave
Strategies to remove unwanted trees
This presentation will focus on what you need to know to improve the health and “outputs” from your forest.

3. Why Grow Healthy Trees
Accomplish goals sooner and with greater control
Timber production
Wildlife habitat
Wildlife foods
Aesthetics
Water quality
Healthy trees are important for a healthy forest. A healthy forest provides many important values and is more efficient and less hazardous than a forest that isn’t healthy.

4. What makes for healthy trees?
The outputs related to health require adequate tree growth. Sunlight typically limits tree growth. Cutting releases desired (uncut) trees from competition for sunlight.
Individual trees retain their health by being able to sustain growth. Growth is sustained when a tree has a competitive advantage over neighboring trees. Some trees are naturally advantaged, other trees need to have the competitors removed so they can remain healthy. But, this isn’t to say that you have to cut trees, but cutting trees is necessary for ownership objectives that desire certain species and certain qualities of those trees.

5. One example of good growth following thinning Sugar maple: 2” radial increment, 4” diameter, 10 years
Crown closure in a spruce plantation.

6. Does an action support your objective?
Many landowners rate privacy, aesthetics, and wildlife as a primary ownership objectives.

7. How to Pick Winners and Losers
You’re making an investment of time, money, and sunlight. Pick your investments carefully.

8. Pick Winners and Losers Based On….
Owner objectives for favored species (soils)
Healthy crowns
Crown class
Species mix for soil
Vigor and defect
Spacing

9. The tree crown is the production factory.
Trees are like a company or business, where growth depends on the ability to respond to opportunity. Thinning is an investment – physically, physiologically, and financially. Don’t invest in a tree (or company) that doesn’t have the ability to respond to improved conditions. When thinning cut those trees with small crowns, poor stems, or symptoms of poor health.
The tree crown is the production factory.
Don’t invest in a weak factory.

10. Favor for Crop Trees Avoid as Crop Trees From Nyland, 1996. p. 355
Thin to favor the trees with crowns in the dominant or co-dominant crown class. These make the best crop trees.
The horse race is half over, who is winning and who should you bet on?
From Nyland, p. 355

11. Know your soil type and the tree species that grow well on those soils
Know your soil type and the tree species that grow well on those soils. Favor trees suited for the soil. You can’t squeeze blood from turnip.
Make investments in trees that are best suited to the site (1st) and that match your objectives (2nd).
Sandy loam, good organic matter. Sugar maple, red oak, beech, white pine.
Sand, low organic matter, very well drained. White pine, red pine.

12. Matching Species to Objectives
Wildlife Species
Red oak
Black cherry
Red maple
Hickory
Service berry
White/chestnut oak
Hemlock
Timber Species
Black cherry
Sugar maple
Red oak
White ash
Red maple
White/chestnut oak
White pine
If possible, encourage a variety of species in your forest. However, don’t include diseased or high-risk trees just to add diversity. Note that many wildlife species also support timber objectives

13. Eutypella
Weak Crotch
Fusarium
Nectria
We have a fact sheet on tree health in the publications section of
Maple borer
Reduce defective trees. They have slower growth, provide inoculum, and are more likely to break during a storm.

14. Try to adjust spacing for equitable distance among retained trees
Try to adjust spacing for equitable distance among retained trees. Not always possible.
Sometime you have to make a tough choice based on spacing. By doing nothing you may hamper the growth of two trees. This is easier when trees are 6 to 10 inches, but the choice is difficult when the trees are 12 to 16 inches because the loss of one good tree won’t be offset by the growth on the retained tree. It’s best to start the thinning when the trees are younger.

15. Safe operations depend on your skill level and available equipment
Safe operations depend on your skill level and available equipment. Most people aren’t as good as they think they are.
Obviously select against trees that are hazardous. Be careful if you’re doing the cutting or advise those who do the cutting. Don’t undertake a thinning activity unless you have participated in a training session that teaches chain saw safety and skill.

16. A garden approach to forest management.
Crop Tree Management
Thin around the crowns of the most desired trees.

17. FTG = Free to Grow = 0 1 2 4 3 What makes a good crop tree?
In this “cartoon” of an aerial view of the forest, the tree in the center has zero sides of it’s crown that are free to grow. Dark green crowns are potential crop trees, light green crowns are competitors of crop trees, and cross-hatched crowns are not competition with crop trees.
What makes a good crop tree?

18. FTG = 4 = Optimum Growth 1 2 3 4
This tree has optimum growth.

19. FTG = 3 = OK for Adjacent Crop Trees1 2 4 3
If two crop trees are adjacent, you can think of their crowns as one unit, and thin around that.

20. High Intensity Crop Tree Release
Notice the number of trees with potential for growth.

21. Low Intensity Crop Tree Release
This forest has a higher residual number of trees, and the trees that were released will grow well, but there will be less of an increase in growth per acre than with a more intensive application of crop tree management. The right decision depends on your objectives.

22. What to Expect from Correct Thinning – the numbers*
Species
Index
% Tree Size Increase
Author
BE, SM sapl
Diameter 33
Donoso
Oak
35 – 100
Hilt
Maple, cherry
Cords 75
Hough
N. Hdwds
Diameter & basal area
Marquis
N. Red oak
Diameter, precomm 85
Ward
Upland oak
Board ft.
B. oak, r. maple, b. birch 50
BC, SM, RM
Basal area 25
Smith, et al.
* Most thinning removed approximately 33% of the basal area

23. What to Expect from Correct Thinning – general trends
Positive effects
Best growth response with
High site quality
Trees 50 to 85 years
Healthy residual trees
30 to 50% growth (cords, board feet, etc.) increase
Improved quality of stems
Reduced mortality
Improved live crown ratio (start with young trees)
Diameter response in 2 to 5 years, varies by species
Diameter doesn’t predict response potential (Leak)
Response depends on intensity of cut

24. What to Expect from Correct Thinning – general trends
Cautions
Increase in epicormics by 30% (Marquis 1969), but little effect on butt log quality (Smith et al 1994)
No effect on height growth
No effect on release of low canopy trees

25. Directional Felling …”you decide the direction a tree falls.”
Game of Logging for Landowners
Don’t “chase the tree”
Directional Felling Advantages
Reduce hung trees
Safely and quickly release hung trees
Position log for extraction
Reduce risk of personal injury
Increased productivity

26. Should you girdle ?
In areas you don’t often go, you can girdle trees to kill them. This leaves a standing snag, good for some bird species but not something you want near a campsite or picnic table.

27. Flame Weeding (research)
Will kill trees
Is USDA organic approved
Some logistical advantages
Economics are unknown

28. Herbicide Treatments for Thinning
Cut-stump treatment [Misc. publications at ]
Basal bark treatment
Foliar treatment
google psu uh174, #2 on list

29. Leave the losers to avoid damage to residual trees
This landowner is teaching other landowners about crop tree management in his woodlot. He decided to leave the competitors on the ground, that is was cheaper to get firewood from other parts of his woodlot or to buy it than to risk damaging the crop trees.

30. So, should you thin? You should thin if You should not thin if
Closed canopy and irregular crowns
Dead lower branches
No understory
Disease and defect
Slow radial growth
You should not thin if
Shallow roots and thin soils
You see daylight
Contact a NYS DEC forester for a FREE visit to evaluate stocking (number of trees per acre). Flag trees and have a DEC forester discuss your selection with you. DEC foresters will mark an acre to illustrate correct tree selection, or, will assess your marking with constructive ideas.

31. For More Information www.ForestConnect.info
NYS DEC, public service forester
Consulting or industrial forester
Master Forest Owner volunteer (CCE)
(crop tree management)
Poll #2