Robinson Forest - Resilience
Treatment: allow some change in current conditions, but encourage eventual return to original conditions
Management Goals
Photo Credit: Jacob Muller, University of Kentucky.
- Increase species, structural, and age class diversity by creating a multi-tiered, open structure with a more open canopy condition than what would have been seen historically
- Favor native climate-adapted and drought tolerant species
- Reintroduce fire to the landscape
Strategies & approaches
- Extended irregular shelterwood
- Establishment cut to reduce density to 70-75% stocking rate with larger gaps in lower productivity sites and reduced density in the matrix
- Create 0.5 to 1.5-acre gap openings across 20% of the treatment unit to regenerate future-adapted, drought-tolerant native species
- Periodic harvests and understory control to maintain a lower stocking rate
- Prescribed fire may be used before or after the initial shelterwood treatments once oak species are able to recruit
Check Out other Treatments
Site Leads & Partners
Jacob Muller and John Lhotka (University of Kentucky) are the site leads for the Robinson Forest ASCC Site. Other key partners include The University of Kentucky Department of Forestry & Natural Resources, University of Kentucky Department of Plant & Soil Sciences, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky Natural Resources Conservation Service, Kentucky Division of Forestry, and the Kentucky Forest Industries Association.
Jacob Muller
Robinson Forest ASCC Site Lead
Assistant Professor of Hardwood Silviculture & Forest Operations Extension
University of Kentucky
730 Rose Street
Lexington, KY 40546-0073
(859) 257-5666
jacob.muller@uky.edu
John Lhotka
Robinson Forest ASCC Site Co-Lead
Professor of Silviculture, Department of Forestry and Natural Resources
University of Kentucky
730 Rose Street
Lexington, KY 40546-0073
(859) 257-9701
john.lhotka@uky.edu