Silviculture

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Natural Regeneration
Pre-Commercial Thinning

Silviculture is the art and science of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health and quality of forest stands. Since 1976, Corner Brook Pulp and Paper has carried out a comprehensive silviculture program aimed at providing a sustainable supply of raw material for the mill and maintaining other forest values.

The company harvests approximately 7000 hectares of forest each year, and all harvested areas are assessed for natural regeneration within 2 - 3 years after harvest.  Some 85 - 90 % of harvested areas regenerate naturally, which represents one of the highest rates of softwood natural regeneration in Canada.

The main silviculture treatment in naturally regenerating stands is pre-commercial thinning or stand spacing, designed to give selected crop trees sufficient space for optimal growth.  Harvested areas that do not meet the Provincial Stocking Standards are reforested by artificial means, generally planting.  Under certain circumstances direct seeding is undertaken.

A pre-commercial thinner at work,
carefully selecting  dominant "crop" trees.

An abundance of seedlings,
naturally regenerating on a cutover.

Natural regeneration is the natural establishment of seedlings in a healthy forest stand.  Most mature softwood stands in Newfoundland have a sufficient amount of advanced regeneration at the time of harvest to form a new stand.

The term "advanced" refers to the presence of regeneration, often a dense carpet of seedlings on the forest floor, in the stand even before it is harvested.  Corner Brook Pulp and Paper's strategy is one of tending natural regeneration rather than establishing large scale single species plantations.

Pre-Commercial Thinning (Juvenile Stand Spacing)

The main silviculture treatment for natural stands is pre-commercial thinning.  This is a treatment carried out when stands are 10 to 15 years old to reduce the density from the natural 20,000 to 50,000 stems per hectare to approximately 2,000 stems per hectare. This provides the remaining trees with sufficient space for optimal growth.  Pre-commercial thinning can increase the growth of merchantable wood fiber in a stand from 1 to 2 cubic meters per hectare per year in unthinned stands to 4 to 6 cubic meters per hectare per year in thinned stands.

Harvested areas which do not regenerate naturally are planted with spruce seedlings grown at the Provincial nursery at Wooddale.  Plantations are established at a density of 1,800 to 2,500 stems per hectare, depending on site conditions.

A breakdown of our silviculture program by treatment type is shown in the figure below.  Some 68,000 ha. of  young forest has been silviculturally treated by Corner Brook Pulp and Paper since 1976.  The bulk of the treatment (70%) has been pre-commercial thinning of naturally regenerating balsam fir stands.  The remaining treatments are aimed at reforesting areas that have not regenerated naturally after disturbance such as wildfire or logging.  These are planting, seeding, site preparation and vegetation management using herbicides.  To date more than 13 million seedlings have been planted by Corner Brook Pulp and Paper and we have a greater than 90% survival rate in our plantations three years after planting.  Our strategy of tending natural regeneration rather than establishing large scale single species plantations gives us one of the most natural and biologically diverse industrially managed forests in Canada.

Our silviculture program is very labor intensive.  Each year 250 to 300 people are employed by the Company on silviculture projects providing more than 3,000 person weeks of employment.  This is high  quality employment; the average earnings of our pre-commercial thinning employees is over $18 per hour.

For more information on Silviculture download section 9 on our FMPOPs page