Oak in mixtures and monocultures : results from the Snogeholm study area in southern Sweden

Oak is a tree specie with fine, high valued wood and thereby timber of oak has high economical value. One drawback of growing oak is the expensive establishment cost due to high seedlings price. Establishing and growing oak in mixed stands could be a solution for this problem. Another problem with o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Loginov, Dmitry
Format: H2
Language:Inglés
Published: SLU/Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre 2012
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Description
Summary:Oak is a tree specie with fine, high valued wood and thereby timber of oak has high economical value. One drawback of growing oak is the expensive establishment cost due to high seedlings price. Establishing and growing oak in mixed stands could be a solution for this problem. Another problem with oak management is a quality of oak trees as it could be easily reduced due to e.g. crooks, epicormic branches, forks (double stems). Different mixtures will influence the possibilities to get oak trees with high quality. This study was carried out in the 16 years old plantations in Snogeholm study area in southern Sweden. Oak is growing in monoculture and in mixture with different tree species in this area. The oak specie is Pedunculate oak (Quercus Robur) for all stands except one monoculture plantation with Sessile oak (Quercus Petraea). There were studied 10 different planting methods where oak was growing together with spruce in different arrangements, beech, lime and birch. It was found that it worth to plant oaks in mixture with conifers, the best solution is to plant oak in mixture with spruce in groups. Mixtures will provide higher total volume than in monoculture and better crop oaks quality. Mixture of oak with beech gave the lowest quality for oak.