I've always favored a five hundred year rotation.
You know good and well that I'm with you on this one. Let's thin at, say, 75-year intervals, such that we get 1200-yr results at 500 yrs! Forestry is not about the quick returns.
t was in reference to your inquiry regarding a DNR parcel located in S11 T11N R2E. The Unit Forester..... asked me to let you know that a boundary line survey was just recently completed for that south (east/west) line of S.11 T11N R2E. A planned Variable Retention Harvest and Commercial Thin is being prepared for upcoming BID in Fall 2016.
That is exactly what I expected. Variable Retention is currently the most defensible harvest method; it looks forward to at least the next thin entry. It has its flaws, namely that DF doesn't like to grow back under any shade at all, but its major strength is that it makes money now, it leaves trees to make money later, and it leaves trees to stabilize slopes.
I'm working on a prescription method now that addresses the weaknesses of Variable Retention Harvesting and builds on its strengths. I've got 3 seasons with field crews using it now and have had to almost completely re-write it twice as many times. When I have it mostly figured out, I'll post it here. I rely heavily on my crews to break my procedure and to challenge and refute my assumptions. You'll see them all credited in the acknowledgements. I couldn't do this alone.
I expect the first cut marked this way to come down in 2019. It'll be another 10-15 years before I can assess how well it worked. I am basing it on a lot of different procedures, most notably "Crop Tree Harvest" from the Northeast.