Understanding Forest "Regeneration"

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- Sanford Smith here with Penn State Cooperative Extension.

Every profession has its jargon or technical terms, and forestry is no exception.

In forestry, there's many terms that we use that are somewhat technical or strange for people, but one word is key for everyone to know, and that is the word regeneration.

Regeneration is a word that makes some people think of water softeners or medical issues, while in forestry, regeneration has two meanings and they're critical for everyone to understand.

The first is that regeneration means the re-establishment or regrowth of a forest after some kind of disturbance.

The disturbance might be a wind storm or an ice storm, it might be a pest attack.

The other thing is timber harvesting, that can cause a stand to wanna regenerate a forest area to wanna regenerate.

When I say stand, I mean an area of forest, an area of trees.

So that's the first definition of regeneration.

The other meaning of regeneration is kind of unusual for people.

Regeneration is a word we use to describe small trees, young trees.

We can have regeneration from stumps like this one that had been cut in this sense, but even if it had broken off, you'd get regeneration from the stump or seedlings like this.

This is from seeds that grew up in the ground.

So you have young trees like this and young trees like this, you can also have trees that come up from roots, we call them root suckers.

So regeneration is another word, another meaning of the word regeneration, so to speak, and in this case it means the small trees, the individual trees.

So the first meaning is really a process of renewal and re-establishment, and the second meaning are actually these objects, the small trees.

it's important to have good regeneration on any site in a forest, and there's such a thing as advanced regeneration.

So that means the trees that are growing here under the larger trees.

And when you're evaluating a stand for the suitability of some kind of harvest of trees, you look at that advanced regeneration to wanna make sure it's sufficient to grow back a forest because in fact regeneration is really talking about the future forest, the process that's going to happen as well as all these young trees.

This is the future forest.

Regeneration is a critical word for you to know.

Thank you very much for listening.