Explain Reprod to me

[FishnhuntOR]

Can someone explain reprod to me.
why is it so thick?
If they do, when do they do thin it out and why.

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[No_Regerts]

Replanted clearcuts that are open enough where sunlight allows for a lot of brush, while being old enough for replanted trees to make things difficult to see through as well.

As the trees grow up, it starts to choke out the other stuff.

 

[jbett98]

It's all about the money.

The Myth of Replanting: 5 Ways Oregon’s Laws Destroy Forests

Here in Oregon, a little less than half of the land is forested. Almost all of that forestland is owned either by private timber companies, the State of Oregon, or a federal agency such as the U.S. Forest Service, or the Bureau of Land Management. In Western Oregon, there are two very different...

oregonwild.org

 

[Stomper]

It's all about the money.

The Myth of Replanting: 5 Ways Oregon’s Laws Destroy Forests

Here in Oregon, a little less than half of the land is forested. Almost all of that forestland is owned either by private timber companies, the State of Oregon, or a federal agency such as the U.S. Forest Service, or the Bureau of Land Management. In Western Oregon, there are two very different...

oregonwild.org

Everything is about the money…. just another environmentalist group using emotional language and moving the "goal posts". They use vague terms with no data sources to actually advocate letting forests burn up in wildfires rather than to harvest trees. Then when the trees are harvested it's not the trees of their liking being replanted…. and proper clear cutting doesn't "strip all life" from the area.

I guess they think houses and furniture are built with magic dust.

 

[Mikej]

Can someone explain reprod to me.
why is it so thick?
If they do, when do they do thin it out and why.

My assumption is, trees are left close together so as the trees grow lower limbs don't develop enough to make knot-holes. Knot holes are not a good thing for finished lumber.

I don't know about that article. I think both sides are making bubblegum up. That huge stump in the article looks like it was cut 50 years ago. Maybe touched up to make it look a little more recent.

Look at a satellite picture of the Tillamook State Forest to give some context.

Tillamook State Forest · Oregon 97119

âââââ · Woods

www.google.com

I've been going out there to hunt mushrooms every fall since 1983. I've seen a lot of my places clear-cut or severely thinned. some places they left slash on the ground right where it fell, you could barely walk through it.

If any of them gave a crap about forests they'd start building houses with more rock products. No bugs, no rot, no burn..

 

[Mike7b]

It's clear cut, burned and then replanted, usually by three years after the harvesting is done, I be live they have up to five years. It depends on the state or if it's a federal timber sale. Up here, the trees grow back fast, so usually ten or twelve years after replanting, they do what's called pre-commercial thinning, they go in and slash smaller trees and brush, leaving what will become a nice, well spaced forest. I quit logging in '95, I went back to the last strip we logged in '95, probably five years ago, the trees were 20 to 25 feet tall, in dire need of thinning, but unfortunately the forest service is a shell of its former self. They would rather see it burn than actually manage the forests.

 

[The Heretic]

1) It depends on the logger, and management, but they tend to plant more than what they want because a certain percentage die out early on. Neighbors have had to replant more than once due to this, and the state requires that clear cuts be replanted. To maintain the AF zoning, there has to be a certain percentage of marketable trees per acre.

2) Anymore, tree farms will harvest at about 40-50 years, a lot of those are not for dimensional lumber, but for poles or posts going to different markets - so not as much thinning is necessary if at all. Telephone/power poles are in high demand. Older trees above a certain size are not in demand because most of the mills don't have the equipment to handle them anymore. Many (most?) of my trees and lumber (60-150 years old) went overseas - especially the cedars.

 

[Member 34319]

This thread was not what I expected. Pretty sad stuff. I dumpster dived into Oregon's "green energy" recently and found that we like many other area in the US are now using "bio mass" to fuel the energy grid. What's "bio mass" you ask? It's trees.

Edited to add that biomass only makes up 1.5% of the states total energy grid, but the number of facilities grew over the last 5 years. Most if not all of them are owned by timber companies.

 

[The Heretic]

This thread was not what I expected. Pretty sad stuff. I dumpster dived into Oregon's "green energy" recently and found that we like many other area in the US are now using "bio mass" to fuel the energy grid. What's "bio mass" you ask? It's trees.

Edited to add that biomass only makes up 1.5% of the states total energy grid, but the number of facilities grew over the last 5 years. Most if not all of them are owned by timber companies.

Waste product from timber manufacturing.

Not sure if you are old enough to remember when they just burned it. I am. They looked like miniature volcanoes.

 

[41mag]

you realize the Forest Service is under the "Dept of Agriculture".....which has a set of goals independent of making the greenies happy?

There is as many areas of conflict between the 'interested parties' as say, those groups engaged in public discussion of a New Dam somewhere. Multiple user-groups with conflicting agendas. Think of such as "hiking trails" vs "bike trails" vs "motorized vehicle access" in the Public Lands.

40+ years ago before I moved into a 'forest lands' area, I had a heap of flatlander-pavement dweller opinions on how the forest "should be". I was mostly wrong then. May not be any more 'right' now, but understand the amazing conflicts at least.

 

[GWS]

Waste product from timber manufacturing.

Not sure if you are old enough to remember when they just burned it. I am. They looked like miniature volcanoes.

View attachment 1012720

A squaw!!

I remember seeing those everywhere when we went to the PNW on vacations. Then somebody figured out how to make particle board and sawdust became valuable I saw some freighter in Coos Bay getting loaded with what at least looked like sawdust with mountains of it sitting ready for the next ships. I say its better than burning it.

 

[Member 34319]

Waste product from timber manufacturing.

Not sure if you are old enough to remember when they just burned it. I am. They looked like miniature volcanoes.

View attachment 1012720

Sort of the same, now it just boils water.

The claim they only use the waste, but they don't. When needed, they just grind up whole trees and burn them. They use terminology like "wood chips" to give the public a sense like it is a byproduct of cutting lumber, but in reality it can actually be whole trees ground up and burned. In some counties, they even consider tire mulch "bio mass" and burn it because it came from "natural" sources.

I know it's completely off topic, but it just boggles the mind what we are doing to the forests.

 

[The Heretic]

Sort of the same, now it just boils water.

The claim they only use the waste, but they don't. When needed, they just grind up whole trees and burn them. They use terminology like "wood chips" to give the public a sense like it is a byproduct of cutting lumber, but in reality it can actually be whole trees ground up and burned. In some counties, they even consider tire mulch "bio mass" and burn it because it came from "natural" sources.

I know it's completely off topic, but it just boggles the mind what we are doing to the forests.

If the trees are poplar, then yeah, they may grow them for biomass. But they are not going to grind up trees that can be used for dimensional lumber. No mill will accept my maple or alder trees - it costs too much to haul these "weed" or "junk" trees to the mill to make it profitable. So the loggers just stack them into slash piles to burn them on site. It is usually up to the landowner to either burn them or leave them as they are, mostly they get burned. I burned about half mine. The rest were too close to standing timber to risk burn. I have other stacked logs that I have tried to give away as firewood but no one will come cut them up, so they are mostly laying there slowly rotting.

 

[Idaho44]

Once a icon of 'mills', the ubiquitous teepee burner, don't think you will find any actively used today. Most have been 'decommissioned in favor of the production of chip (particle) board (OSB) used to support the housing 'industry". Glue and wood burns quickly! Ever wonder where the Aspen trees in Colorado have gone?

 

[Cavedweller]

Can someone explain reprod to me.
why is it so thick?
If they do, when do they do thin it out and why.

Trees produce a lot of seeds. In a natural forest system, most of them would not survive. Lightning strikes would start small fires that would keep the forest floor clean of debris and kill most seedlings, while larger, mature trees would be protected by their thick bark. These small fires would burn themselves out in a relatively short period of time. The result would be a mature forest with widely spaced adult trees with limited reproduction. (There is also a factor called forest succession which for simplicity's sake I won't get into). Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans would also set fires each year to clear the forest floor of brush to improve visibilty for hunting.

The policy of fire exclusion over the last 100 years or so has meant that natural thinning does not take place. Thus, the forests have become clogged with debris, brush and excess reproduction. Also, forest management practices have changed over the last 50 tears or so. The forest service used to practice pre-commercial thinning much more so than today. These days there is a more of a "leave the forest alone" management philosophy.

(I majored in forestry for 3 years in 69-72 before deciding I didn't want to walk around in the rain counting trees)

RE: biomass - if the biomass burned were the result of brush clearing and pre-commercial thinning it would be a much smarter way of disposing of the material than slash piles, and would also help pay for the clearing/thinning operations.

 

[The Heretic]

Once a icon of 'mills', the ubiquitous teepee burner, don't think you will find any actively used today. Most have been 'decommissioned in favor of the production of chip (particle) board (OSB) used to support the housing 'industry". Glue and wood burns quickly! Ever wonder where the Aspen trees in Colorado have gone?

Yup - I am 67 and I was so young that I barely remember them on our trips to/from the coast, but I do remember them. I think I remember some from my teens (?) at the mills in the Lyons/Mill City area, but I think they mostly went out of use in the early 70s or before.

 

[41mag]

Part of the slash pile burn theory is local soil receives minerals etc rather than fuel waste. I've known folks to argue this single point for hours.

 

[Mike7b]

Lmao. I thought this was a pacific northwest forum. Ya'll must be a bunch of cubicle dwellers. Sorry, I worked in the woods my whole life, my paycheck still comes from natural resource extraction. Go check out Hancock timber resources group, they own vast acreage of timberland in eastern Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana,. Go drive through their lands, then drive through blm or forest service land, one is being managed for timber production, the others are a fire waiting to happen.

 

[Brandyn525]

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[The Heretic]

Lmao. I thought this was a pacific northwest forum. Ya'll must be a bunch of cubicle dwellers. Sorry, I worked in the woods my whole life, my paycheck still comes from natural resource extraction. Go check out Hancock timber resources group, they own vast acreage of timberland in eastern Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana,. Go drive through their lands, then drive through blm or forest service land, one is being managed for timber production, the others are a fire waiting to happen.

In case you didn't glean it from my posts, I am a timberland owner.