Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate how thinning practice influences the preferences of adult Danes for forest recreation in young stands of even-aged oak. The study was based on five pairs of colour photographs from each of five recently thinned plots in a 13-year old experiment. The plots included 7000 stems ha-1 (unthinned), 5300 ha-1 (traditional thinning), 1000 ha-1, 300 ha-1 and 100 ha-1. All cut trees were left on the ground. The study was carried out as a national survey based on postal questionnaires (n=243, response 73%). Interviewees ranked the photographs according to the criterion: Which forest environment do you prefer as a visitor? Visitor accessibility was interpreted as being more important than stand density per se. Thinning slash was pointed out as a major factor for the impression of accessibility. Low to mid-range densities (300-5300 ha-1) were preferred over very dense (7000 ha-1) or very open (100 ha-1) stands.

Keywords

Forest recreation; oak; Quercus; slash; stand density; thinning; thinning waste

Published in

Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research
2009, Volume: 24, number: 1, article number: PII 909236457

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02827580802592475

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/90137