All very nice points and very true, as were David South's comments about misconstruing the data with respect to pine vs. hardwood plantations. In my defense, I was responding to comments that referred to Alabama as a "tree farm heaven" and I tried, apparently very unsuccessfully, to show that there is in fact a lot of Alabama forest that is not solely pine plantation. For this I apologize for being so "simplistic". I also agree that the issues concerning stand management are increasingly more complex, in no small part because of the continuing shift in the US toward practices based on principles of landscape ecology and ecosystem-oriented management (finally). The real challenge for American foresters is now finding ways in which tenets from these areas can be incorporated into management plans (and for this, I'd welcome responses from folks in Europe who have been at this sort of thing since long before we Yanks became interested in it). John Kupfer Dept. of Geography Univ. of Memphis jakupfer@msuvx1.memphis.edu
Mail converted by
MHonArc 1.1.0