Assessing the impact of thinning of dense pine stands on tree growth pattern diversity

There is a high need to improve plantation forest cultivation technologies, including thinning, that ensures an increase in its economic efficiency and productivity of forest stands. The objective of the research is to assess the impact of different thinning options of 15-year-old artificially regenerated Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) stands on the structural diversity of the forest stand in terms of tree growth patterns and their responses to climate fluctuations. The authors studied anexperimental site based in one of the Mari El forestries, 30 years after the thinning of the forest stand, the intensity of which varied from 25 to 80% by the number of trunks with the initial density of 10 thousand specimens/ha. The radial annual growth was measured on 60 trees (12 in each of the five experimental variants) with an error of ± 0.05 mm. The authors proved that the forest stand in all experimental variants was heterogeneous in the nature of tree growth, among which there are groups that are diametrically different from each other in terms of ecological requirements for environmental conditions. Early intensive dense forest stands thinning generated in the pine forests of the Mari El Republic did not have a significant impact on the diversity of their structure in terms of tree growth patterns. However, an increase in the radial growth of trees was traceable within the first eight years after thinning, later on its value in the control sections was higher. Coenopopulations of woody plants are self-regulating dynamic systems, the value of the current annual growth of trees in which is guided by the mechanism of stabilizing selection, based on the feedback among them. The specimens with a high growth rate normally will show a decrease in value in the following year, which ensures that this parameter is maintained within the framework of specific environmental conditions. Thus, we are concluding that the thinning of the tree stand has not had a significant impact on the way this mechanism works.

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