Improving the composition, structure, and productivity of early successional and mid-rotation stands in Maine’s Acadian Forest
Those most interested in the information produced from this project will be forest managers of approximately 10 million acres of large, privately owned forestland in northern Maine. These managers and landowners provide the raw material that supports Maine’s forest products-based economy, which has an annual 8 billion dollar direct and indirect economic impact on the State’s economy. We will (1) Identify the timing, intensity, and method of commercial thinning prescriptions in spruce-fir stands that can provide logs of a particular diameter and species in a specific period of time and that can maximize the net present value of forest management activities; (2) Identify low-cost and effective silvicultural prescriptions that will shift the species composition of natural hardwood regeneration in partially harvested stands away from diseased beech and toward higher-value sugar maple and yellow birch; and (3) Provide data, models, and conceptual relationships from long-term silvicultural experiments that will help improve growth and yield models used by forest managers across the region make sustainable forest management plans.
The primary impacts and outcomes of these accomplishments will be that (1) forest managers of spruce-fir stands in Maine will know how to commercially thin spruce-fir stands to produce the conditions desired by their landowning clients; (2) forest managers in Maine will know how to effectively and efficiently improve the composition of hardwood regeneration in beech-dominated stands; (3) the acreage of commercial thinning treatments in the state increases annually; (4) the acreage of treatments to improve the species composition in beech-dominated stands increases annually across the state; and (5) the leading forest growth and yield model in the region includes data and relationships derived from the long-term studies described in this proposal.
Investigators: Wagner, R.; Seymour, R.; Weiskittel, A.
Unit: School of Forest Resources
Termination Date: 30-Sep-20