Cutfoot Experimental Forest - Resilience

Treatment: allow some change in current conditions, but encourage eventual return to reference conditions

Management Goals

Resilience treatment post-harvest. Photo Credit: Brian Palik, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station.
 
  • Red pine remains dominant (50-75% basal area)
  • Increase heterogeneity and structural complexity
  • Increase native future-adapted species
  • Productivity remains high and disturbance remains low, but there may be variability within an acceptable range

Strategies & approaches

A group of people preparing to plant trees seedlings in bags.
Planting of almost 300,000 trees among Transition and Resilience treatments. Photo Credit: Doug Kastendick. 
 
  • Site preparation in gaps with harrow disk
  • Variable density thin (20% in gaps, 20% in reserves, matrix thinned to 110 ft2/acre)
  • Maintain red pine dominance
  • Plant future-adapted native species in gaps (eastern white pine, jack pine, red oak, bur oak, and red maple)

Check out other Treatments

Resistance

Back to Forest Main Page

Transition

ASCC Cutfoot Transition_Peterson

Site Leads & Partners

Brian Palik (USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station) is the site lead for the Cutfoot Experimental Forest ASCC project site. Site level coordination is supported by Doug Kastendick (USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station). Key partners include the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, the Chippewa National Forest, Linda Nagel (Utah State University), Tony D’Amato (University of Vermont), Peter Clark (University of Vermont), Miranda Curzon (Iowa State University), Rebecca Montgomery (University of Minnesota), Toni Lynn Morelli (USGS), Alexej Siren (University of New Hampshire).

Brian Palik
Site Lead

Research Ecologist
Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service
Forestry Sciences Laboratory
1831 Hwy. 169. E.
Grand Rapids, MN 55744
Phone: 218-326-7116
bpalik@fs.fed.us