Thinning a very dense woodlot

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Shultonus

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Fargo, ND
So my family owns a small lake lot in (NW) Central Minnesota. It is about 5 acres.
The oldest trees appear to be about 140 with most of the canopy in the 70 year age group.
The site is grossly overstocked. Basal area 170-300 average 200 (4- 1/20 acre plots: avg DBH 14" avg distance 9 feet). There are also numberous seedling and sapling maples, and a strong (3-5" DBH) understory of Ironwood. The primary species in order are Burr Oak, Sugar Maple, Basswood, Black Ash. There are pockets of Aspen, a few scattered Green Ash, a few remnant Elms, and the some Red Oak.

Most of the trees are poor lumber from frost splits, crooked trunks, low knots, and disease. I am slowing going to start releasing some of the best oaks.
I plan to leave most of the basswood as coarse woody debris or standing dead (girdled). With some younger specimen trees with good growth form (atypical for this species).

The problems I am encountering is, its is literally impossible to cut a tree down and have it hit the ground and
the existing coarse woody debris (some from 35 years ago, and others from more recent wind sheer/disease).

How to I cut or move the CWD when it is about 20 in diameter and buried, 6-10" in the soil to make skidding paths (I will be using a John Deere 770- small I know).

Third question, all the thinning literature I've read said to remove Ironwood as a low value species (for lumber). I am hesitant to remove them because a) they are hard on the saw and b) they are a sub-canopy species that shouldn't compete (for sun) with the dominants. One of my goals for the property is to maintain on-stie carbon storage.

Fourth question: the herb understory is very deficient in most of this, but there is roughly a 1/3 acre where it is excellent and another 1/2 acre where it is adequate. How fast can I expect this layer to regenerate, and is there a way of preventing Poison ivy from dominating?

Fifth question.... when girdling basswoods.. they tend to be multistemmed. Do you need to remove the entire group or is girdling one stem viable?

Final question: there seems to be a deficiet of saprophytic fungi on my CWD (I've only seen sulfur shelf once), is there a way to improve this?

Thanks all!
 
What is CWD? Cord wood seems to fit the first time you use it.
Ironwood and posion ivy are more prevalent at the edge of a field than in the deep forest where I go. Ironwood probably won't compete like you say, not sure about the hard on the saw teeth. I just cut into the hairy vine that goes up the side of a tree. cut mostly parallell to the trunk , cut say a foot, then say 9" then say 6" one chain kerf until through and not hit bark of tree. It is safe and can tell from a distance has been disabled. It doesn't seem to come back at an alarming rate if at all in a forest.

I tend to pick on the maple trees.

That is about all I can comment on.
 
I'll just start from your third question which may also apply to your fourth question:
3-4) So they are an understory that are not - and won't be competing for residual crown competition, however, they may shade your vegetation.
Sun, rain, food, shade and duration of grow season will all play a part. Some may only grown on a wetter, shady north facing slope.

If in fact that is what you are referencing as "herb". They can fill in too quick in some environments once opened up. As with planted softwood stands, it would have to be controlled, (brushed) along with the hardwoods until the conifers are in a few growing stage.
I hope carbon storage is not some fancy name you have for fire wood now? Like carbon credits value as in living trees then?
5) You have to girdle all stems in the copice or girdle below the stools.
One little strip of cambium in tact and the tree will live.
A 4" band is preferred.
6) I think you are talking about sap rot disease & Heart rot disease
The conks can be referred to as shelve shape with type's of HRD.
Spores from fruiting bodies can spread easy with some species. Tree removal is best asap.
The white or perhaps yellowish fungus will show up on trees as the rot in the sap wood decays in death. Does not necessarily mean it was killed from sap rot disease. The fungus is not the disease, but an indicates of it's presence.. to the best of my knowledge.

Got to go for now .
___________
CWD = coarse wood debris in his description/prescriptions
He is talking about dead fall (fire ladders)
 
Your tractor is very small, like you say. That said, unless you can cut into a clearing, you'd be well served having a way to pull trees around safely. A skidding winch, even on a small tractor like that is a huge asset. I do some harvesting in similar conditions, and most of the time I'll go 18' up with a ladder and wrap a choker around the trunk so I can pull it down when it gets hung up. Check out the smallest farmi winches. There's several other brands, but that's a starting point.
 
In my area Poison IVY dies back to the soil every year, and gets max 18" (shade) and 28" (mostly sun).

What metrics and functions should I pay attention to for winches?

Are there outward signs of heartwood rot?
 
What metrics and functions should I pay attention to for winches?

If you go to tractorbynet.com and explain what you're looking for you might get some good recommendations. Personally, I have a farmi 351. It pulls with 3,500 kg of line pull. They make at least one smaller one, the 290 I think. If you do some googling on skidding winches you'll find other brands that probably also have small sizes. Your tractor is on the very smallest end of what they're designed to fit, so making sure it'll fit and not be too heavy would be important. Then, see if you have a somewhat local dealer for any of the brands and go from there.
 
I have done a fair amount of this kind of work.

Ironwood - if you cut it green, it is not hard on saws at all. At 3" it is unlikely to have any dead spots in the stem; maybe once in a while at 5". But as it gets larger from there, it can develop dead heartwood and that is hard to cut. I cut a hinge on the front of an 8" Ironwood once, maybe a half hour after sharpening. I proceeded to make the falling cut from the back and I could not complete it - tree was hollow inside with the hollow surrounded by dry, dead wood. But it is worth getting rid of big old Ironwood as it can really dominate understory. Take a few pre-sharpened older firewood chains out with you in case of needing to cut half-dead ones.

Some ownerships do invest in "Ironwood Control", particularly upon creation of new Canopy Gaps for regen. It can exist in high densities as a seedling, these can be easily cut with a brush saw. As with any unwanted Tolerant species, it is best to start by cutting the largest, seed source trees first and then always chipping away at getting rid of the little ones. It will reduce regen of other species if left unchecked.

It is excellent firewood; just remember to cut it into firewood pieces right away, not later. It is also a pretty good species for Ruffed Grouse, with 2 food sources for them on one tree - the seedpods in the fall, and the male pollen catkins over the winter.


Poison Ivy - over here in the northern half of Michigan, I rarely see this become anything more than a shin high colony of stems, though occasionally one manages to vine up onto some other woody stem. Even then the vine never achieves much diameter. On a recreational property, I would work on knocking it back some, _before_ you open up any canopy above it. I would go with a foliar spray of a high concentration of Round-Up, though I can't suggest an exact % to mix I don't think that info would be hard to come by. You could create that yourself for use in a backpack sprayer, much cheaper rather than buying the "Poison Ivy Control" branded bottles of the stuff. I would focus that on areas near buildings, lawns, etc. and proceed outward from there. I would think north central MN would be nearing its range limit to the north and you might have a good chance to keep it under control compared to other places. It is also not all that common as you move north, so you might be in a better situation with it compared to other places you might be familiar with.


Carbon storage - the less you disturb the soil, the more carbon will remain in it.


Basswood - I had an order for 170# of Basswood seed the other day. If you drop some, you could pick from the tops and sell the seed.


Dropping stems all the way to the ground - the more you do this kind of work, the better you will be able to drop things. Start by working near a clear area that you can drop a stem into easily. Then continue working from the area of the first cut stems and use the new canopy space to drop more stems. It helps to drop the small stuff (Ironwood) where a bigger tree is going to land, in advance; work from small diameters up to final bigger dbh cuts. It can be the time consuming part of pre-commercial TSI, for sure. Some species drop a little easier with the weight of the leaves, some slide out of tangled canopies a little easier in the winter. Red Maple stump sprout colonies are often the worst time consumers. Focus on what the top of the crown is going to do, and how it can fit through canopy that won't be cut, and make a falling plan for a stem from that. Then interface that falling plan with the normal safety procedures. Sometimes the canopy hole you want to drop into won't match the easiest lean of the tree however. Sometimes, there will be no way to drop a stem+crown completely and simply, and it is actually easier to deliberately drop towards a stem where it will hang, cut the hung stem as high up as you are willing to reach, and then flip the now shorter stem+crown over where you want it to go, by hand. Depends on diameters and each stem's situation. Other times it can work out to run a powerful sharp saw through a small stem at an angle at waist high, making the stem fall straight down, if you have plenty of falling experience to understand what is going to happen. This works the best in a moderate amount of snow. Once the cut stem is stuck in the ground, you then push it over to where you want it to go, and sever the waist high stump, recalling that the more flush you cut most deciduous stumps, the higher quality of stump sprout will grow from them later. Stump sprouts coming off a low stump (Ironwood) are also easier to cut again years later, compared to high stump sprouts.

But practice will speed you up as you go.
 
CWD is coarse, woody debris. It is just that. trees left on the ground to break down and improve the soils. It also provides habitat for critters which is why loggers call it Rat Logs.

On girdling: I don't know much about hardwoods but heard a terrible story about a fatality in an area of girdled trees. A crew came back into that area to do a precommercial? thinning and trees had been girdled after the last harvest. Those trees were rotted and proved to be unsafe to work under as one of the workers had one fall on him. I believe there was a lawsuit and a settlement, and Idaho comes to mind as the place.

Just be aware that girdled trees become just like any other snag, unsafe to be around very much.

A feller buncher would be an excellent piece of equipment to get your limb locked trees on the ground. Unless there is a logger working nearby with one, it probably isn't feasible.
 
So my family owns a small lake lot in (NW) Central Minnesota. It is about 5 acres.
The oldest trees appear to be about 140 with most of the canopy in the 70 year age group.
The site is grossly overstocked. Basal area 170-300 average 200 (4- 1/20 acre plots: avg DBH 14" avg distance 9 feet). There are also numberous seedling and sapling maples, and a strong (3-5" DBH) understory of Ironwood. The primary species in order are Burr Oak, Sugar Maple, Basswood, Black Ash. There are pockets of Aspen, a few scattered Green Ash, a few remnant Elms, and the some Red Oak.

Most of the trees are poor lumber from frost splits, crooked trunks, low knots, and disease. I am slowing going to start releasing some of the best oaks.
I plan to leave most of the basswood as coarse woody debris or standing dead (girdled). With some younger specimen trees with good growth form (atypical for this species).

The problems I am encountering is, its is literally impossible to cut a tree down and have it hit the ground and
the existing coarse woody debris (some from 35 years ago, and others from more recent wind sheer/disease).

How to I cut or move the CWD when it is about 20 in diameter and buried, 6-10" in the soil to make skidding paths (I will be using a John Deere 770- small I know).

Third question, all the thinning literature I've read said to remove Ironwood as a low value species (for lumber). I am hesitant to remove them because a) they are hard on the saw and b) they are a sub-canopy species that shouldn't compete (for sun) with the dominants. One of my goals for the property is to maintain on-stie carbon storage.

Fourth question: the herb understory is very deficient in most of this, but there is roughly a 1/3 acre where it is excellent and another 1/2 acre where it is adequate. How fast can I expect this layer to regenerate, and is there a way of preventing Poison ivy from dominating?

Fifth question.... when girdling basswoods.. they tend to be multistemmed. Do you need to remove the entire group or is girdling one stem viable?

Final question: there seems to be a deficiet of saprophytic fungi on my CWD (I've only seen sulfur shelf once), is there a way to improve this?

Thanks all!
I've been avoiding this one, cause its not the type of forest I"m familiar with, and I'm not a forester per se.

but if the timber is so dense you're having trouble getting trees to hit the ground, then you will need to think about machines that can handle the trees, these machines in general are large, heavy and tear **** up, even when trying to be careful. The baby tractor you have is just going to be more work then its worth, not to mention more then a little dangerous.

As for the understory growth, its going to get damaged, but it should grow back it just won't be real pretty for a year or three, as long as you don't tear up the soil real bad through compaction or rutting.

as for carbon storage... well decomposing trees release as much carbon as they consumed, but they also release methane which is far worse as a greenhouse gas. Living trees consume carbon and to some extent store it, up to a point, when they become old and vigorous growth slows, in which case they begin to die and rot releasing CO2 and methane, so its a judgement call as far as age of the stand vs benefits of thinning/clear cutting/selective cut

for girdling, personally I avoid it, as Ms. P stated it creates a very unsafe environment once that tree dies, and rots back a little bit, I've only seen it practiced once around here, and that was on a remote piece of dirt done as an experiment through some college, If basswood copasices(sp?) as it sounds like it does, girdling is about the worst thing you can do, as all it will do is create yet more stems to deal with
 
I spent two years working in Up Nort Wisconsin.
The forest was a different world from the PNW. Logging was 95% mechanized. Much of the forest had been planted by folks riding on some kind of torture device (gathered from what I was told) that was towed behind a tractor that made furrows, so trees were in rows. Loggers complained that the rows were too close together. I pointed out that modern mechanized equipment did not exist when the trees were planted.

Operations were just like here as far as tearing up the ground. It depended on the logger and on me. Most of the loggers were very professional and able to operate that way. Just like here, there were a couple who didn't care. I had quite a learning curve. What they called steep ground I called flat. I couldn't get over the size of landing that was needed. They don't load logs the right way and don't have real log trucks. :) The trucks are big flat beds with self loaders and just like the song, take 40 acres to turn around. (obvious exaggeration on my part here).

In all regions, I've been impressed how somebody who is very experienced, can operate such a large machine in a stand of doghair, and not damage leave trees. It is doable, and it can be done. What could be done in this case is for the OP to research if land nearby is going to be logged. If it is, then talk to the logger, forester and do some checking on the quality of their work. Loggers with expensive equipment cannot harvest small blocks of timber here and there. If one is working nearby, it would be possible. Moving equipment (trucking) is a major expense. We call it move in/move out.

From what I've seen, a feller buncher or processor is the way to get limb locked stands opened up. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot of time pulling hung up trees down with your skidder or farm tractor. I know. I tried to help a friend do a commercial thinning. We gave up. It was scary and slow and we were forester types, not loggers. Professional fallers get trees hung up in such stands also. The problem is that the trees are not big enough weight wise and tall enough to get momentum to crash through the crowns and hit the ground. Physics. But, if you've got the time and patience and understand about hooking onto trees and pulling them down, go for it.

Do you have a county forester? Maybe they can help. Such a department existed in Wisconsin and here in Warshington, we have the Department of Natural Resources which is a state wide agency that can help. My friend, the one that I worked with trying to get trees on the ground has worked with them and just won a state award. We also have a Family Farm Forestry Assoc. which is geared towards educating and helping small tree farm owners. You might look into something like that.
 
... .

What metrics and functions should I pay attention to for winches?

... .

I think you should re-consider your tractor first. It only has a base weight of 2000# and a three point lift capacity of 850#. I owned a 750 which other than a .1 liter smaller engine is pretty much identical to a 770. Fun to play with if you lived there and had lots of free time, but not practical if you don't. I cleaned up a couple of acres with mine on level ground with a hydraulic winch mounted on a box blade - however, even with the blade cutting in the ground it did not have the necessary mass to pull anything very heavy. The three point hitch is not strong enough to skid a fair size stem. I broke the arm off mine trying to skid a 18" or so white pine log. I am now on my third compact tractor that I use for similar purposes, a 4710 which as now equipped weighs close to 6000#; I still consider it basically a toy for the kind of work you want to do. If your ground is not level, then you are an accident waiting to happen. Just catching a wheel on one of those partially buried stems you described is enough to dump you over. And a skidded log of hardly any size will take you and the 770 about anywhere gravity wants the log to go. Not trying to discourage you from the task or knocking your tractor (I wish I still had mine), I just don't want you hurt or investing in the wrong tool. The cost of a skidding winch etc. will go a long ways towards hiring a local skilled operator with the proper equipment who can get in and get out. If part of your intent is transforming this land as a recreational activity for yourself, then that is another matter except the safety concerns.

Ron
 
A 5 acre ownership would definitely need to try and work together with any neighbors to do anything commercially for most anything but high value stems at peak market conditions, I think.

It can be possible to do a commercial TSI cut where local markets can use the wood. Perhaps this has gotten a little easier with the amount of people who will buy in their firewood as pulp sticks straight from a log truck. But all such ideas are very local.
 
That's an incredible density. In my area (Appalachian plateau) I rarely see over 120 ft2/ac. With bur oak being the most common (are they also the oldest trees?), that area was probably an oak savanna originally, which covered a significant part of Minnesota. The rest of the species came in after fire suppression started in the early 20th century. I'd start by deciding how open you want the woods to be (savanna, oak woodland, closed canopy forest), and get help from state foresters/ecologists to define and work toward that goal. The first two options will require extensive thinning and periodic fire. The last option is the easiest but will result in the eventual loss of oaks - they can't regenerate under a dense, closed canopy. Sorry I'm not offering any solutions to the mechanical difficulties of thinning the stand - I'm just suggesting you have a clear management goal in mind before starting.
 
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