Silvics and Silviculture

On this page you will find an assorted collection of silvics and silviculture resources to use in your forest management activities. As we move towards increased integration of silviculture activities and ecological information, these resources will help answer questions about how to use site-level characteristics that affect tree growth (aka site index) when making forest management decisions.

Whatever your forest management goals may be, understanding the ecological characteristics of the land, knowing the silvics of your tree species, and knowing how manipulating the stand will affect the trees and shrubs growing there will guide you to the results you want.

What is Silvics?

Silvics is the study of individual tree species. When we study silvics, our goal is to understand how a tree species grows, reproduces and responds to environmental factors. You can also call this “autecology,” which is the ecology of an individual species or taxonomic group and how it responds to changes in the environment.

What is Silviculture?

Silviculture is the application of silvics knowledge to manipulate forest stands. Silviculture is also called applied forest ecology. Think of silviculture as the theory and practice of controlling forest establishment, composition, structure, and growth.

Lots of natural resource managers practice silviculture – wildlife biologists, park and campground managers, and of course, foresters. Silviculture concepts and principles aren’t just for growing timber; for example, you might want bigger trees in your picnic area, or want to attract certain species of wildlife to your woodlot. You are using silviculture to achieve these non-timber forest management goals.


Silvics

These 10 silvics sheets were developed with 60 forest and wildlife resource managers from Minnesota and Wisconsin who participated in the Certificate Course in Ecosystem Silviculture. If you find information is missing for a particular species, please contact Louise Levy, so that we can update the forms as we go along.

Keep in mind that silvics information is usually presented as generalities – the specific behavior of a tree species may in fact vary from site to site due to the specifics of that site’s soils, topography, and local or regional climate.

The USDA Forest Service has published two silvics volumes. These are now only available electronically. Click on the links below to view and download the .pdf files.

Silviculture

Minnesota silviculture guides

The Minnesota DNR has developed silviculture guides to go along with its Native Plant Community Field Guides (.pdf). You will find information on 10 plant communities to guide you in stand-level forest management. There are terrific resources here, including definitions of terms, forms, and tables.

ECS Silviculture

Ontario silviculture guides

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has developed some fabulous tools for forest resource managers. Some of them are below.

Wisconsin silviculture guides

The Wisconsin DNR has put together a comprehensive and easy-to-read Silviculture Handbook. On page 5 you will find a clear and short explanation of the relationship of site-index to ecological classification information. (Wisconsin uses Habitat Types, an ECS developed by Dr. John Kotar.)

Download the entire handbook (.pdf - 25 MB)

Download the handbook in sections on the Wisconsin DNR website.

 

 

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