forest service measurements-forestbook

forest service measurements

The advertisement has become in recent years in many forestry companies, but also among private forest owners to a forgotten art. Lack of time, ever-widening areas and lack of expertise led to the fact that the display is completely omitted or left to the harvester driver. The advertisement implements the silvicultural plan and is therefore decisive for how a stock develops. In other words, one should be prepared to sacrifice a few hours for the advertisement when it comes to the long-term future of a stock.
No advertisement without a plan
However, before making the announcement, it should be decided which silvicultural targets should be implemented with the measure. In addition to promoting rejuvenation or regulation of the tree species mix, two objectives are included in each successful forest measure:

• The growth potential of wood should be concentrated on the best, ie the most vital, stable and valuable trees.
• The stability of the stock should be increased.
  This can be done by carefully selecting the trees that should remain in the stock and selecting an intervention strength strong enough to compete with the remaining trees, while not jeopardizing the stability of the stock.
  The future tree
  The trees that remain in the stock and that are the growth bearers are called Z-trees or future trees. Due to their current appearance, these tree individuals are expected to form valuable trunks. The typical features of a Z-tree are:
• Trunk without errors such as knottiness, rotation, Zwiesel
• No root damage
• No bark damage
• well trained crown (at least 30% of the tree length)
• Prevailing position in the stock
  In order to promote these trees, potential competitors should be removed. However, not every tree that stands near a Z-tree is an actual competitor. Trees that do not push into the crown or only into the lower part of the crown of a Z-tree, are no competition and can therefore remain in the stock. For a long time it was common to show the Z-trees in the inventory. The disadvantage of this method, however, is the high workload, since almost every tree must be checked for suitability as a Z-tree. Often one is too hesitant to give a tree the rank of a Z-tree. The biggest disadvantage of the Z-tree method, however, is that you can not predict future events and do not know whether the chosen Z-tree will not be the victim of wind, beetles, snow or lightning in the coming decades.