TALKING POINTS

Are there alternatives to intensive plantation forestry that landowners can use in their pine and hardwood stands?	Yes. Both pines and hardwoods can be managed using natural regeneration. By that I mean relying on the seedfall from trees in the stand, or on sprouts from stumps or roots, or by a combination of both seedlings and sprouts. In the pines, natural regeneration usually comes from seedfall from cones that open in the autumn during good seed years. But good seed years vary among the pines; loblolly has frequent good seed years, longleaf has very infrequent seed years; slash and shortleaf fall in between. So you might have to catch a seed crop when it occurs, and nurse the pine seedlings along as advance growth until the harvest occurs. In the hardwoods, new seedlings can regenerate naturally from seedfall after logging, or from seed stored over the years in the forest floor that germinates when a stand is cut. Sprouts are also more common in hardwoods, and come from stumps, roots, or saplings that are broken off or cut during logging. For example, oak regeneration is commonly found as advance growth that builds up over a decade or two, and also from stump sprouts that are produced at the time of harvest. But other hardwoods such as yellow poplar and black cherry germinate from seed stored in the forest floor that remains viable for years, and that germinates only after a natural disturbance or a harvest puts sunlight on the forest floor.
If a landowner wants to use natural regeneration, what kinds of silvicultural treatments will be used?	We can apply either even-aged or uneven-aged methods to get natural regeneration in pine and hardwood stands. The key is to keep some good seed producers in the stand until the new seedlings are well established. The easiest way is to use an even-aged method such as the seed-tree or shelterwood method, where some parent trees remain in the stand, and regeneration occurs everywhere in the stand. The second and more complicated method is an uneven-aged approach, where most of the trees are retained in the overstory except for a few places where openings of varying size are created, and the regeneration then develops in those openings. Regardless of whether you’re managing pines or hardwoods, though, you’ll want to rely on the advice of your forester when using natural regeneration. You’ll have to thin your stands before harvest to build up the crowns of the parent trees so they produce enough seed. When you’re ready to harvest, you’ll need to apply silvicultural treatments to prepare the forest floor for seedfall or to properly develop hardwood sprouts. And sometimes it’s necessary to conduct these treatments at exactly the right time of year, commonly in the early fall. Even though it sounds complicated, it’s really not; forests have been regenerating themselves naturally long before foresters came along. All that we foresters are doing is trying to refine exactly when the process gets started.
What about mixed stands? Can we manage both pines and hardwoods at the same time?	It’s possible, There are two basic approaches—keep hardwoods and pines in separate areas in a watershed, or manage stands having hardwoods and pines closely intermingled.
The advantages of mixed stands	They are aesthetically pleasing, especially with flowering hardwoods Hardwoods add significant wildlife values in managed forests—hard and soft mast, den space By definition, forest diversity is increased It’s darn near impossible to eradicate hardwoods There have been growing market for hardwood pulpwood and lumber in the past decade All this adds up to providing a better way to meet a landowner’s management goals
Some important disadvantages	Regeneration is difficult—oaks from sprout origin, pines and other hardwoods from seed origin; tough to balance early growth between sprouters and seedlings hardwoods take more space than pines and result in less growth and volume per acre, that means less timber income You cannot use broadcast treatments such as aerial spray of herbicides to control competing vegetation, because you’ll kill desirable hardwoods. As a result, tactics for competition control must be applied selectively, which takes more effort and might cost more

So, the bottom line is that mixed stand management is far more complex than managing pure stands of either species group. You'll be using some practices that work in pines, and some practices that work in hardwoods. Among the best tools for mixed stand management is prescribed fire, and I know that can be difficult or intimidating for some landowners. If a landowner wants to manage mixed stands, especially when the time comes to regenerate both pines and hardwoods in a stand, he or she will need a forester to advise them.