Experience of the Reconstruction Cutting in the Forest Belts of Kamennaya Steppe

Abstract

In the last decade in forest-agrarian landscapes areas and territories of Russia all the more urgent becomes the problem of deterioration and preservation of protective forests, loss of effective ecological-reclamation impact on agro-ecosystems. For forest strips that are in the age stage of maturity and overrun, the most common processes of their degradation are the growth of forest edges, thinning of the upper tier and inner rows of the stand, the presence of a large number of dry and diseased trees. In the overwhelming majority, it is impossible to correct such plantations by thinning, and urgent work is needed to reconstruct them. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the methods of reconstructive logging in forest belts of unsatisfactory composition and condition for growth indicators and the pathology of pedunculate oak cultures. Studies conducted in 1986–2018 on the territory of the Stone Steppe (Talovsky district of the Voronezh region). The object of research was the reconstructed unsatisfactory in composition and state of the stand 9-row forest shelter strip No. 206 with the creation of pedunculate oak cultures. The plantation was created in 1948 according to the tree-shrub type of mixing: Kya – Kya– (D + Azh) – Kya– (D + Azh) –Kya– (D + Azh) – Kya – Kya, where Kya – maple american, D – English oak, Azh – acacia yellow. Its direction is from north to south. Row spacing – 2.3 m, the distance between the trees in a row – 0.7 m. Experience laid in three versions: 1 – control, forest strip in the initial state – 0.46 ha; 2 – arrangement of longitudinal corridors in the forest belt – 0.50 ha; 3 – device diagonal corridors at an angle of 30° to the longitudinal axis of the forest belt – 0.38 ha. It was established that a more thorough soil preparation and favorable light conditions in diagonal corridors ensured the best growth of pedunculate oak cultures during the study period and by the age of 40,
the elevation above the longitudinal corridors (western and eastern) was 18.1 and 3, 8%, and the diameter of the trunk – 40.2 and 14.8%. The maximum increments in height and diameter are observed 17–20 years. Characteristic is the lag development trees in extreme ranks relatively central series. Compliance with thinning regimes in experimental variants of pedunculate oak contributed to the presence of 76.6...93.0% viable specimens of the total number of trees. The highest value is observed in a more favorable light exposure – diagonal corridors, where their average excess, compared with the longitudinal corridors (western and eastern), is 9.4 and 5.7%. The absence of thinning (thinning) of forest crops led to an increase in the share of forest mortality in the options of experience by 5.9...7.7% of non-viable trees and partially viable, respectively, by 10.3...13.0% and 10.9...9,4%, while reducing viable trees by 26.7...31.6%.
For citation: Turusov V.I., Chekanyshkin A.S., Lepyokhin A.A., Experience Reconstructive Felling in the Forest Belts of Kamennaya Steppe. Lesnoy Zhurnal [Forestry Journal], 2019, no. 5, pp. 48–56. DOI: 10.17238/issn0536-1036.2019.5.48