Restoring Old-Growth Forest Characteristics

Old-growth forests, with their abundant deadwood, multiple canopy layers, and variation in tree ages, densities, and sizes, are different than our ecologically young second growth forests. These differences have important implications for forest benefits such as wildlife habitat and climate change mitigation. We cannot re-create true old-growth forests; however, we have opportunities through both passive and active forest management to restore old-growth characteristics to our ecologically young forests in New York and New England. This webinar will describe the differences between old-growth forests and our current second growth forest and opportunities to restore missing characteristics to our forests while meeting our other goals. Presented by Paul Catanzaro, University of Massachusetts.
More information and a downloadable pdf of the newest bulletin about restoring old-growth forest characteristics is available here masswoods.org/caring-your-lan...
Note: Slide #9 should report approximately 100,000 acres of old-growth forest in NY, representing less than 1%.

[@stormcrowe9820]

Thank you, very informative

[@Vireo]

Wonderful presentation. Here in southwest Ohio we have very little old growth forest, some decent mature woods, and tons of secondary growth (as the formerly cleared land grows back from the utter destruction of the late 19th century). We are absolutely overrun with invasive species; Amur honeysuckle, wintercreeper, English ivy, garlic mustard, Japanese honeysuckle, lesser celandine, Ailanthus, Japanese stilt grass, some spots of buckthorn and barberry, and now the recently arrived Japanese chaff flower. I could add at least a dozen or more species to this list. I work in habitat restoration for our city park system and the problems we face are immense.

[@peterellis4262]

I find this extremely interesting. Our site is 20 acres of woodland in SW MI within the Allegan State Game Lands (formerly State Forest). I know from historic aerial photographs that the site had been clear cut prior to 1930, and abandoned. I speculate that there was an attempt to drain the land that failed. There are still remaining channels running to an abandoned county drain. In less than 100 years, this site has restored itself to something that I think qualifies as "old forest" as you are defining it.

[@2flight]

Chaos over extended time is the marker for old growth. Management, even to restore old characteristics, is not chaos. Chaos allows the full spectrum of opportunistic behavior of all species.