Timber Stand Improvement
Much of our forestland in New Hampshire is growing far too densely. The trees are in great competition with each other, mainly for sunlight and nutrients such as water. Think of your woodlot as a garden. For a garden to be productive, healthy, and produce vegetables it needs to be weeded. The same is true for a woodlot. The low-grade and diseased trees should be “weeded out” to allow your healthy and valuable “crop” trees to accelerate in growth without unnecessary competition. If left alone, nature will very slowly self-thin. However, there is no guarantee that the resulting forest would meet the landowner’s objectives. Different timber harvesting techniques such as pre-commercial thinning and selective thinning can be applied to a site to more rapidly improve the quality of a stand or entire woodlot. Such techniques will increase the value of the stand, improve composition, health, and accelerate growth of even-age or uneven-age stands.