Clearcutting

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Clearcutting, or clearfelling, is a controversial forestry/logging practice in which most or all trees in a harvest area are cut down. This method differs from a coppice system by allowing revegitation by seedlings. Logging companies and forest-worker unions support the practice for safety and economical reasons. Detractors see clearcutting as a destruction of habitat and even as a contributor to global warming. Clearcutting is sometimes used by foresters as a method of mimicking disturbance and increasing primary successional species like aspen, willow and Black cherry. Clearcutting has also proved to be effective in creating habitat and browsing areas in which animals otherwise would not have without natural stand replacing disturbances such as wildfires, large scale windthrow, or avalanches.

Ecology

In forestry, clearcutting is practiced to help instate tree species that require high light intensity environments. Generally, a harvest area more than two heights of the trees in the adjacent forest will cease to have its moderating influence on the microclimatic conditions.^[1] The width of the harvest area can thus determine which vegetative species will come to dominate, those with high tolerance to extremes in temperature, soil moisture, and resistance to browse will establish, in particular secondary successional pioneer species.

In temperate and boreal climates, clearcutting can have an effect on the behavior of snowfall. The depth of snow in a clearcut area is usually higher than that in a forest or in other silvicultural methods that retain overstory, such as a shelterwood, due to a lack of interception and evapotranspiration. This results in a lower amount of soil frost, which in combination with higher levels of direct solar radiation results in snowmelt occurring earlier in the spring.^[2]

Types

Many variations of clearcutting exist, the most commonly practiced are:

• Standard (uniform) clearcut – removal of every stem (whether commercially viable or not), so no overstory remains
• Patch clearcut – removal of all the stems in a predetermined area (patch)
• Strip clearcut – removal of all the stems in a row (strips), usually placed perpendicular to the prevailing winds in order to minimize the possibility of windthrow
• Clearcutting-with-reserves – removal of the majority of standing stems save a few reserved for other purposes (for example as snags for wildlife habitat), often confused with the seed tree method

Additionally, other forms of forest management are often confused with clearcutting. Slash-and-burn, the permanent conversion of tropical and subtropicals forests for agricultural purposes, is most prevalent in tropical and subtropical forests in overpopulated regions in developing and least developed countries. Even though slash-and-burn entails the removal of all stems in a desired area, the fact that the land is not retained as forest land makes it a form of deforestation and thus incompatible with the modern definition of a clearcut.

The practice of high grading is often also erroneously confused with clearcutting. High grading is considered a form of selective cutting, as it is the removal of only commercially valuable trees and the retention of all others. Over time this reduces the genetic viability of the forest, resulting in poorer or less vigorous characteristics of the offspring in the stand.

Criticisms

Before the advent of modern forestry, high grading was the chief method of logging, with no regeneration for the areas cut, which were converted to other uses or left to regenerate naturally. In areas of the world where replanting is not undertaken, this continues to be the case. In the past and present, this kind of clearcutting without any replanting is practiced in forests where virtually every tree is valuable, as in an old growth forest.^{[citation needed]}

Clearcuts that are improperly planned have some of the same negative effects of clearcuts with no plan for regeneration. For instance, clearcutting on steep slopes can result in very high erosion rates.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Even aged timber management
• List of tree species by shade tolerance – shade intolerant and some intermediate species are primarily regenerated with clearcuts
• Seed production and gene diversity

References

External links

Look up clear cut in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Clearcutting in Maine
• Read Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Clearcutting
• CBC Digital Archives - Clearcutting and Logging: The War of the Woods
• Clearcutting on the Ritchiewiki