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To the rescue for Scots pine

Date: 2017.07.05

Norway spruce stands planted on sites were Scots pine would usually be recommended can initially look fine, but they often turn out to perform badly in the end due to growth ceasing and various damage as they get older. Here you can read about two initiatives from south Sweden aiming at shifting this negative trend so we see more and better Scots pine regenerations in coming years.

Future silviculture
The newly established research program FRAS, “Framtidens skogsskötsel i södra Sverige (Future Silviculture in south Sweden)” is a joint program run by the Linnaeus University, the Forestry Research Institute of Sweden and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and in close collaboration with the forest sector in southern Sweden. FRAS will focus on methods for forest regeneration that can provide rapid and safe establishment of Scots pine by natural regeneration, direct seeding or planting.

A doctoral project called “Scots pine regeneration in south Sweden” will be initiated in the autumn. Another FRAS doctoral project is called “Smart forest regenerations” and this project will aim to find ways to make forest regeneration more effective and to give forest owners better opportunities to a more targeted forestry. New kinds of computerized tools, eg. water and ground water maps and digital terrain models based on laser scanning, will be used to make better choices on regeneration methods to reach the targets of that stand in the future. This can hopefully be one key to less dominance of Norway spruce in the future young stands of south Sweden.

Cooperation between forest owners and hunters
The collaborative project “Mera Tall” (More Scots pine) in southern Sweden aims to implement in practice all that knowledge that already exists about the balance between forestry and herbivores. The project involves the following partners: Sydved, LRF Skogsägarna, Skogsstyrelsen, Mellanskog, Södra Skogsägarna, Holmen, Sveaskog, Vida and Svenska Kyrkan.

So far the project has shown that a fruitful cooperation can be reached between forest owners and hunters within a demonstration area in Småland county, and the results in the forest have been monitored annually by inventories of feeding pressure and feeding damages, as well as the herbivore populations. Various methods that can improve the interaction between hunters and forest owners have been tested in order to give a better balance between feed availability and feeding pressure. The goal is that the ways of cooperation that are being developed and tested here can be used in large areas in south and central Sweden, and that this can promote new Scots pine regeneration there.

Read more about the FRAS program at the partner organisations home pages: Linnaeus University , Skogforsk and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences .