Hello, and welcome to the series "How to Manage Your Forests."
My name is Steve Fitzgerald, and in this video, we are going to talk about species selection and crown classes.
In managing your forests and thinking about trees
that you might leave or cut, one of the things to think about
is the position of the tree in the canopy.
And some trees tend to get bigger
as they grow and others lag behind.
And they develop into what we call
'crown classes', so think about this...
you've got trees that are dominate, they are the tallest ones
have the most green crown, very vigorous.
Another class is Co-Dominate, they're a little big smaller.
They form the main part of the canopy of the forest.
Then there are intermediates that just have the tip top of the crown
actually in the canopy, and they're getting just a little big of light.
But they are falling behind the dominate and co-dominate trees.
So here we are at the forest, in the middle of a thinning operation
and in this operation, we remove
the suppressed, and intermediate, and some of the smaller co-dominate trees.
Leaving the better dominate and co-dominate trees to continue to grow.
The log deck you see behind me reflects the smaller sized trees that we took out
and these trees, even though they are small, they will help pay the way
for this operation and also allow us to improve the long-term health for this forest.
It's important to know crown classes because
it relates back to tree health and vigor.
So if you look at dominate and co-dominate trees they tend to have bigger crowns.
Perhaps 30% or greater, green crown
compared to intermediates & suppressed
which have a smaller crown, have low vigor, and are likely
the die in the near future.
This one over here, has two right there together
and
one haul probably the same 10% crown on the top so
That's a better pick now send it to the mill
cause otherwise in a couple years, its going to die,
And you are going to lose everything in there.
By removing your intermediates and suppressed
we can create more space for the better trees, the dominate and co-dominate trees
to keep on growing, and maintain a healthy forest.
I picked that one because
that one isn't going to make it.
underneath, the other one
that's not going to grown up no more.
So I keep that one
So another aspect of is which species should you leave.
So here on the west side I have a Douglas Fir on my left and a Grand Fir on my right.
This tends to be a dry site and Grand Fir
doesn't do well, in the long run, on a dry sites.
They are susceptible to drought, insects, and disease.
So in a thinning operation, we might remove the Grand Fir
and leave the Douglas Fir
for long-term growth and health
So on the east side, where we have
a mixture of species:
We want to leave the species that
are best adaptive to those sites.
So some of those sites are pretty dry and in those cases we would
leave the Ponderosa Pine, maybe some Douglas Fir and
probably remove a lot of the Grand Fir because they are
again, susceptible to insect, disease and drought.
So having your trees properly marked will help you be successful in managing your forest.