New felling ages for the forests of the Republic of Belarus

Abstract

Current ages of felling in the forests of Belarus were established in 2001. In production forests they make up 81 years and more for coniferous stands, 101 years or more for hardwood, 61 years or more for birch trees, 51 years and more for black alder –, aspen – 41 years and more. The current age of logging does not correspond to high-grade assortments for coniferous and alder stands. In Belarus, due to the improvement of the structure of forests over the past 25–30 years, adequate conditions have been created for improving the methods for determining cutting ages and a certain increase in ages and turnovers. Changing the harvesting ages requires the formation of a new regulatory framework in connection with the adoption of a new Forest Code. Recently, new cutting ages for the forests of the Republic of Belarus have been developed and adopted. They are formed on the basis of quantitative and technical ripeness of the forest, taking into account ecological requirements. New logging ages for conifers (pine and spruce) of the II grade and below have been increased by 10 years; for ash, the logging ages are reduced; for black alder the ages was raised by 10 years. The adopted changes are not supposed to induce marked increase in the size of the calculated cutting area, and the output of commercial timber at the plantations of pine, spruce (site productivity grade II and below) and black alder will not rise substantially in the near future. The alignment of the age structure of tree stands due to new cutting rules is expected to produce the effect no earlier than 2050–2060.

Keywords

• felling turnover
• forest ripeness
• pine
• spruce
• oak
• birch
• aspen
• black alder
• forest use