BEN (Botanical Electronic News) brought an article on
PLENTERUNG by Prof.Dr. Rudolf W. Becking. I hope the FOREST
subscribers would be interested in reading it.
Adolf Ceska, BEN Editor
aceska@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
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No. 89 January 15, 1995
aceska@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Victoria, B.C.
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Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2
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PLENTERUNG, AN AGE-OLD PARADIGM FOR SUSTAINABILITY
From: Dr. Rudolf W. Becking, Research Consultant, 1415 Virginia
Way, Arcata, CA 95521-6855. Phone/FAX: (707) 822-1649
[Copyright R.W. Becking. Released with permission of the author
to the users of BEN on Internet. For any questions, additional
information or potential applications of Plenterung contact the
author directly.]
The earliest protocols regulating harvest of trees date from
1200-1300 A.D. in Central Europe. These regulations dictated
tree harvest at specific locations in the communal forests,
specified quantities or volumes to be removed and the harvest
times under supervision of an elected official, the forester!
The original harvest method was selective or individual tree
harvest, named Plenterung. In medieval times, these communal
forests played a vital role in local rural economies by supply-
ing fuel wood that was used daily for cooking meals, heating
homes, and for the manufacturing and processing of forest
products and foods. The population explosion caused the emer-
gence of commerce, the industrial revolution and urbanization
around 1600. During 1600--1800, Central Europe was ravaged by
religious and feudal wars resulting in concentrating political
powers in large industrial cities, with a capitalistic economic
control over the lands and their natural resources. Forest
resources were rapidly depleted and logging activities
encroached deep into the valleys and mountains. All the European
forests would have disappeared, except the last remnant forests
were saved by the discovery of new energy sources like coal,
oil, gas, and electricity to fuel the industrial plants.
The remaining heavily degraded forest, the so-called
"Mittelwald", was an open forest dominated by a few overstory
trees and a dense coppice of repeatedly-cut and resprouting
hardwoods to be used as a fuel wood. The conifers, lacking
sprouting ability, mostly disappeared. The age-old conservative
Plenterung system was effectively destroyed. In the 1870's, the
new science of forestry was born in Germany and France,
primarily to remedy these degraded forest wastelands for
economic reasons. The initial techniques were to remove the
entire Mittelwald and start replanting the cleared areas with
conifers, notably Norway spruce (Picea abies), white fir (Abies
alba), and Scots pine (Pinus silvestris). Thus, even-aged forest
management was born, and with it silviculture, mensuration,
forest economics, forest engineering and forest genetics. Im-
provements were made in thinning and harvesting schedules, soil
amendments, insect and pest controls, and trees were projected
as unsawn planks with $ returns! In spite of vigorous political
control efforts, Plenterung survived in isolated mountainous
communities of the Alps.
During the 20th century with an unprecedented world population
explosion, the long-term global effects of the capitalistic
even-aged forest management system created international con-
cerns and controls about global warming, preserving global
biodiversity and gene pools, threatened or endangered species,
clearcutting tropical and temperate rainforests, and loss of
top-soil and soil fertility by erosion and monocultures.
Plenterung emerges today as an alternative method to even-aged
forest management. Its science was perfected by Adolphe Gurnaud,
Henri Biolley and others around 1875, but its acceptance and
publication was severely limited. Plenterung is the only proven
silvicultural system regarding the forest as an ecosystem in
which all its components closely interact with the site, soil
and climate. Plenterung is also the unique forest management
system to maintain constantly a dynamic all-aged stand struc-
ture, volume and area controls. Plenterung relies heavily upon
local natural regeneration, intensive 100% inventories to
monitor stand growth in all size (age) classes every 5-7 years,
and harvesting trees only upon complete inventories to control
all its stand variables. Individual trees are selected for
harvest to improve spacing, growth, stand composition, diversity
in age and species, and the maintenance of the top canopy in-
fluence. Plenterung requires a permanent intensive road net,
with major haul roads and skid roads adapted to directional tree
felling, no landings, and no heavy equipment entry into the
stands. All the stand treatments are carried out simultaneously
every 5-7 years within the same permanent compartment. Before
any stand treatment, 100% inventories monitor the effects of
past treatments and adjust to maintain constancy of stand struc-
ture, volume and growth. Only the volume that can be grown
within the harvest intervals may be removed. Stand treatment
consists of maintaining a constant stand structure curve cover-
ing the entire range of 2-inch DBH-classes. Harvesting is done
on those trees in excess of the desired stand structure over the
entire DBH range. Stand growth is precisely calculated using
repeated inventories including stand ingrowth and mortality.
Using dual inventories, stand growth can account precisely for
intermediate windstorm or insect losses on a tree-by-tree basis!
Plenterung will automatically adjust to long-term cumulative
impacts and stand changes with its built-in most intensive
monitoring of stand performance and the significant stand
parameters. One of the unique features of Plenterung is that
time is no factor at all in the decision-making or stand invest-
ment. Economically it has proven to be a very stable and secure
investment with steady periodic returns while maintaining full
sustainability! This implies the total abandonment of even-aged
concepts including clearcutting.
Plenterung strives for maintaining natural processes on a com-
partment basis and, by extrapolation over all the compartments,
on a landscape basis. Another incalculable advantage is that
niches and natural habitats within the managed compartment will
be rotated among gaps and preserved within the same unit area.
This preserves natural biodiversity and gene pools.
Applications of Plenterung within the US have been hampered
because current stand conditions in a severely depleted forest
would require a lengthy period of restoration and investment.
Long time is needed to attain a suitable and profitable stand
structure of a mature late seral forest to implement and manage
for a dynamic and constant multi-storied and all-species/all-
aged stand structure. The current controversies over policies
implementing the preservation of the endangered/threatened
species like the Spotted Owl, Marbled Murrelet and Coho Salmon,
coupled with the re-enactments of the Clear Air and Clean Water
Acts, may provide a strong impetus to apply and practice Plen-
terung on a broad commercial scale, at least on public lands,
within the Pacific Northwest and the Redwood Region of Califor-
nia. Elsewhere, Plenterung has wide applications. The natural
forest types of the Cascades, Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains
are ideally suited for Plenterung application before they are
clear-cut. The Eastside forests of ponderosa pines and their
mixtures in the interior of the West are naturally structured
for Plenterung applications. Similarly, the mixed oak and con-
ifer forests of the eastern United States, including the Smoky
Mountains, have been observed to have a well defined Plenter-
structure in their original state. At the present, Plenterung
remains unknown to many foresters or is misunderstood.
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