Intro to Silviculture

• Silviculture

  The practice of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health, and quality of forests to meet diverse needs and values
• The name 'silviculture' comes from the Latin silvi- meaning 'forest' + culture- meaning 'to grow'.
• Silvology

  The study of forests and woods
• Silvicultural system

  The process of tending, harvesting and regenerating a forest
• Natural forests

  • Forests that have regenerated naturally, composed of all the species (e.g. trees and other plants, fauna and fungi) that occur naturally in them
• Natural-forest silviculture


  The practice of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health and quality of natural forests to meet diverse needs and values
• Levels of decisions on silviculture in natural forests

  • Silvicultural systems
  • Silvicultural treatment regimes
  • Silvicultural operations
• Silvicultural system

  The process by which the crops constituting a forest are tended, removed and replaced by new crops, resulting in the production of stands of distinctive form
• Silvicultural treatment

  A planned programme of silvicultural operations that can be implemented during the entire or partial rotation of a stand
• Silvicultural operations

  Procedures that aim to achieve stand-specific objectives by using silvicultural techniques
• Types of silvicultural systems

  • Monocyclic ("uniform", "even-aged")
  • Polycyclic ("selective", "uneven-aged")
• Monocyclic systems


  • Involve harvesting all marketable timber in a single felling operation, with the length of the cycle more or less equal to the rotation age of the species under exploitation
• Polycyclic systems


  • Involve the harvesting of trees in a continual series of felling cycles, with the length of these felling cycles usually about half the time required for a particular species to reach marketable size
• Polycyclic systems rely on the existing stock of seedlings, saplings and poles in the forest to produce the next harvestable crop, whereas monocyclic systems generally do not make use of existing stock, instead relying on seedlings recruited after felling to produce the next crop of trees
• Forest inventory

  The systematic collection of data on the forestry resources within a given area, allowing assessment of the current status and laying the ground for analysis and planning, constituting the basis for sustainable forest management
• General steps for all inventory operations

  • Definition of the inventory objectives and information desired
  • Development of sampling design and methods
  • Data collection (field surveys, remote sensing data analysis and other sources)
  • Data analysis and publication of the results