Methods to inventory and strip thin in dense stands of aspen root suckers

doi:10.3832/ifor1461-008

Methods to inventory and strip thin in dense stands of aspen root suckers

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 8, Issue 5, Pages 590-595 (2015)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor1461-008
Published: Apr 22, 2015 - Copyright © 2015 SISEF

Research Articles

PDF Version

Full Text

Citation

Geo-mapping

Aspen and their hybrids have demonstrated high biomass productivity and can produce abundant regeneration in the form of root suckers. This makes aspen particularly intriguing for bio-energy production, because replanting costs can be avoided and additional biomass can be obtained by thinning the regenerating stands. Mechanical strip thinning (removal of stems in parallel strips) has been proposed as a fast and efficient method for capturing biomass that would otherwise be lost to mortality in such stands. However, determining the appropriate width for the residual rows is challenging, due to the difficulty of conducting inventories with traditional sampling tools and the variability in gap sizes between root suckers in the residual rows. In this study, we describe the development and testing of a simple inventory tool that may be used to conduct either fixed-area or variable-radius sampling in these stands. Also described is the development and testing of an equation that uses such inventory data along with Poisson distribution theory to predict the size of the largest gap between root suckers within residual rows, which in turn can be used to inform strip thinning operations. Based on the promising results of our limited tests, we encourage further evaluation of these methods with regeneration from planted and natural aspen stands, as well as other root suckering species.

Keywords

Bio-energy, Coppice, Poisson Distribution, Populus, Thinning

Authors’ address

(1)

Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management, Iowa State University, 339 Science Hall 2, Ames, 50011-3221 Iowa (USA)

Corresponding author

William L Headlee
wheadlee@iastate.edu

Citation

Headlee WL, Hall RB (2015). Methods to inventory and strip thin in dense stands of aspen root suckers. iForest 8: 590-595. - doi: 10.3832/ifor1461-008

Academic Editor

Luca Salvati

Paper history

Received: Oct 01, 2014
Accepted: Mar 24, 2015

First online: Apr 22, 2015
Publication Date: Oct 01, 2015
Publication Time: 0.97 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Breakdown by View Type

(Waiting for server response...)

Article Usage

Total Article Views: 14648
(from publication date up to now)

Breakdown by View Type
HTML Page Views: 11197
Abstract Page Views: 498
PDF Downloads: 2209
Citation/Reference Downloads: 14
XML Downloads: 730

Web Metrics
Days since publication: 2018
Overall contacts: 14648
Avg. contacts per week: 50.81

Article Citations

Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Jun 2020)

(No citations were found up to date. Please come back later)

(no Plumx Metrics available for this paper)

Publication Metrics

by Dimensions ^©

Articles citing this article

List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.

(1)

Avery TA, Burkhart HE (2002)
Inventories with point samples. In: “Forest measurements (5th edn)” (Avery TA, Burkhart HE eds). McGraw-Hill, New York, USA, pp. 230-258.
Gscholar

(2)

Berry AB, Stiell WM (1978)
Effect of rotation length on productivity of aspen sucker stands. Forestry Chronicle 54: 265-267.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(3)

Christian DP, Hanowski JM, Reuvers-House M, Niemi GJ, Blake JG, Berguson WE (1996)
Effects of mechanical strip thinning of aspen on small mammals and breeding birds in northern Minnesota, USA. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 26: 1284-1294.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(4)

Dickmann DI, Stuart KW (1983)
The culture of poplars in eastern North America. Michigan State University Publications, East Lansing, MI, USA, pp. 168.
Online | Gscholar

(5)

Eckenwalder JE (2001)
Descriptions of clonal characteristics. In: “Poplar culture in North America” (Dickmann DI, Isebrands JG, Eckenwalder JE, Richardson J eds). NRC Research Press, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, pp. 331-382.
Online | Gscholar

(6)

Felker P, McLauchlan RA, Conkey A, Brown S (1999)
Case study: development of a swath harvester for small diameter (< 10 cm) woody vegetation. Biomass and Bioenergy 17: 1-17.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(7)

Gilmore DW (2003)
To thin or not to thin: using the Forest Vegetation Simulator to evaluate thinning of aspen. Northern Journal of Applied Forestry 20: 14-18.
Online | Gscholar

(8)

Goerndt ME, Mize C (2008)
Short-rotation woody biomass as a crop on marginal lands in Iowa. Northern Journal of Applied Forestry 25: 82-86.
Online | Gscholar

(9)

Green BK (1998)
Variation in rooting potential and shoot growth of full-sib hybrid aspen. MS thesis, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA, pp. 63.
Gscholar

(10)

Haight FA (1967)
Handbook of the Poisson distribution. Operations Research Society of America, Publications in Operations Research No. 11. John Wiley and Sons Inc, New York, NY, USA, pp. 168.
Gscholar

(11)

Hall R, Headlee W, Ruigu S (2010)
Developing a hybrid aspen coppice system for the Midwest agricultural region of the United States. In: Proceedings of the “5th International Poplar Poplar Symposium”. Orvieto (Italy) 20-25 Sep 2010, Book of Abstracts, pp. 98.
Online | Gscholar

(12)

Headlee WL (2012)
Productivity and biometry of hybrid poplars with respect to establishment, regeneration, regional modeling, and utilization of bio-energy byproducts. PhD dissertation, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA, pp. 140.
Online | Gscholar

(13)

Hida T (1953)
On some asymptotic properties of Poisson process. Nagoya Mathematical Journal 6: 29-36.
Online | Gscholar

(14)

Libby WJ, Cockerham CC (1980)
Random and non-contiguous plots in interlocking field layouts. Silvae Genetica 29: 183-190.
Gscholar

(15)

Liesebach M, Von Wuehlisch G, Muhs HJ (1999)
Aspen for short-rotation coppice plantations on agricultural sites in Germany: effects of spacing and rotation time on growth and biomass production of aspen progenies. Forest Ecology and Management 121: 25-39.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(16)

Littell RC, Stroup WW, Freund RJ (2002)
SAS® for linear models (4th edn). SAS Institute Inc, Cary, NC, USA, pp. 466.
Gscholar

(17)

Long JN, Shaw JD (2005)
A density management diagram for even-aged ponderosa pine stands. Western Journal of Applied Forestry 20: 205-215.
Online | Gscholar

(18)

Manso R, Pardos M, Keyes CR, Calama R (2012)
Modelling the spatio-temporal pattern of primary dispersal in stone pine (Pinus pinea L.) stands in the Northern Plateau (Spain). Ecological Modelling 226: 11-21.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(19)

Padgett LV (2011)
Practical statistical methods - a SAS programming approach. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, pp. 290.
Online | Gscholar

(20)

Perala DA (1979)
Regeneration and productivity of aspen grown on repeated short rotations. Research Paper NC-176, North Central Forest Experiment Station, USDA Forest Service, St. Paul, MN, USA, pp. 7. Paper no. 4622, Aspen Bibliography, DigitalCommons@USU, Utah State University, USA.
Online | Gscholar

(21)

Reineke LH (1933)
Perfecting a stand-density index for even-aged forests. Journal of Agricultural Research 46: 627-638.
Online | Gscholar

(22)

Rytter L (2006)
A management regime for hybrid aspen stands combining conventional forestry techniques with early biomass harvests to exploit their rapid early growth (short communication). Forest Ecology and Management 236: 422-426.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(23)

Van Lieshout MNM (2001)
Clustering methods based on variational analysis in the space of measures. Biometrika 88: 1021-1033.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(24)

Zalesny RSJ, Hall RB, Zalesny JA, McMahon BG, Berguson WE, Stanosz GR (2009)
Biomass and genotype × environment interactions of Populus energy crops in the Midwestern United States. BioEnergy Research 2: 106-122.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(25)

Zasada JC, David AJ, Gilmore DW, Landhausser SM (2001)
Ecology and silviculture of natural stands of Populus species. In: “Poplar culture in North America” (Dickmann DI, Isebrands JG, Eckenwalder JE, Richardson J eds). NRC Research Press, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, pp. 119-151.
Online | Gscholar

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry

Contents

Search

Journal Info

Journal Subjects and Fields

For Authors

For Reviewers

For Readers

SISEF Publishing

Search iForest Contents