Intensive management increases flexibility in managing wood supply

We modelled the potential impact of intensification of plantation management and thinning, on timber supply of an ~500 000 ha forest in Alberta, Canada over a 200-year planning horizon. Pre-commercial and commercial thinning were applied to a portion of the better sites, which allowed shortening of the time to merchantability and earlier harvest than unthinned stands; less than 25% of the forest was thinned over the course of the plan. The sustainable harvest rate, represented here as the annual allowable cut (AAC), increased by ~14% above baseline, when thinning was applied. Similarly, there was a 20.7% increase in AAC projected with the relaxation of even flow rules if thinning was also applied. Finally, thinning offset the expected decline in AAC after a 20-year surge in cutting of mature pine, designed to slow an epidemic of mountain pine beetle. In terms of wood supply, the volume extracted at thinning was Key words: forest management, intensive, timber, thinning, triad
Introduction Intensive management systems, i.e., including planting to achieve full site occupancy, vegetation management, and pre-commercial and commercial thinning, have been slow to be adopted at a forest level, on [...]