Inside the Silviculture Industry: Pre-Planting
The work that Leader Silviculture does covers everything from planting, brushing, and slashing, to pruning, juvenile spacing, and more. Although we cover a large variety of services in the silviculture industry, there are many things that our company has nothing to do with. To help build a deeper understanding of everything that goes into logging and replanting a block, we wanted to break down the entire silviculture industry into its individual parts and showcase the importance of each one of them. Because this article would look more like a novel if we covered everything at once, this article will focus on the main things that take place up to the moment when a new tree is put in the ground by one of Leader Silviculture’s planters. Enjoy!
Planning & Harvest
Perhaps surprisingly, a logging company can’t just go into a forest and start lopping down trees willy-nilly. In fact, doing so would be a massive mistake, both financially and environmentally. Once a logging company has decided that they want to harvest one of their blocks, the first thing that they will do is go through the area and figure out what stock of trees is currently there. Then, they will decide what they want to harvest and will send an order to a tree nursery. Unfortunately, you can’t call up a tree nursery, place an order for 400,000 cedar trees, and expect them to be delivered by next week. Not only do nurseries not carry much stock that isn’t pre-ordered, but even if they did, several other factors need to be considered. Each seed is not created equal - things like the tree’s region and elevation need to be matched in order to maximize its chance of survival. That’s why tree nurseries require at least a two-year lead time on their orders. That way, they can begin growing an exact number of seeds according to the logging company’s specific requirements.
The other reason a forestry company will want to do all of the legwork before beginning to harvest is to minimize downtime between harvest and replanting. The longer they wait between those jobs, the longer there will be for competition, like shrubs, bushes, and other foliage, to begin to grow. More competition means they’ll need to spend more money and time ensuring the restock can survive adequately. That’s why forestry companies need to do as much work as they can upfront, and minimize the time spent between phases.
Once the trees have been ordered, and the company has begun coordinating with the other companies needed after the harvest, The company can start harvesting their current stock. Once they’ve done that, they can move on to the next phase.
Pre-Treatment
Once the forestry company has finished its harvest, it can begin preparing to start restocking via planting. The first thing they will need to determine is if any pre-treatment measures need to be taken to prepare the ground for the next round of trees. First, a company will need to go through the harvested block and measure the expected survival rate of any trees planted if left untreated. If the survival rate is low, the next step would be to determine how to improve the chance of survival. There could be many reasons for low expectations for survival; As discussed, poor planning can lead to more competition for new trees. There may also be high points in the ground with little access to water and, conversely, low points that will become supersaturated. New trees require goldilocks-style circumstances with just the right amount of water saturation, nutrients, and access to sunlight. If these conditions aren’t present, they may need to be created by bringing in machines to remove competition or adapt the landscape for better soil conditions. Once the proper conditions are met, a prescription can be made for planting.
Prescription
A prescription is a document that outlines the rules that need to be followed by the planters. It includes things like what tree varieties to plant and the required spacing between each tree. Much like how different regions and elevations require different types of seeds, those same factors determine the maximum density for the new stock of trees. For example, on the coast of BC, you can plant up to 800 Trees/hectare, with an average spacing of a 3.6M radius separating each tree. However, in the interior of BC, you can plant up to 1600 trees/HA at an average spacing of 2.7m. Once the pre-treatment is complete and the prescription is written, it can be given to a tree planting company like us, and we can begin to plant the trees according to the prescription. Failure to do so, and we don’t get paid, so it’s crucial that we do so correctly. Luckily, we have an incredible and experienced team of planters, and we trust that they will always get the job done properly and quickly.
The planning, harvesting, pre-treatment, and prescription processes can take a long time to complete. Often, it will be a matter of years between when a forestry company decides they want to harvest a block, and when a tree planting company begins to restock that section. There is a lot that goes into every one of the jobs in this process, which is why it’s so difficult to cover everything in one article without it being a super long read. To make things as consumable as possible, we will cover the planting process and beyond in future articles, so check back in again soon to learn more about the silviculture industry!
