Many forest owners value their forest for wildlife habitat, recreation, and aesthetics. Given accurate information, many want to manage their woodlot using sound silviculture but clear-cutting as a regeneration method may not be visually acceptable. While a profitable timber harvest is of interest, a visually pleasing residual stand may be more important. To meet this objective, Stand D1 of the SVAREC forests was selected to demonstrate All-Age Management using group selection silviculture and individual thinning of select trees to create four age classes.

Most forest owners value their forest for wildlife habitat, recreation and aesthetics. Given accurate information, they may manage their woodlot to achieve these and other goals using sound silviculture. Thinning over-stocked woodlots is one silvicultural management tool. Thinning can modify spacing and diversity of species to meet desired goals which may include timber, wildlife, aesthetics and more. Thinning also improves woodlot vigor by removing over-mature, suppressed, defective or weakened trees. To meet theses objective, Stand D2 was selected for a thinning research & demonstration site.

Shenandoah Valley AREC fact sheet.