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

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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.

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