Forests are much like a garden where desirable plants need proper spacing and access to available resources, in order for trees to grow, stay healthy, and produce for you. They need important resources such as sunlight, nutrients, and water. If trees are not given adequate room to thrive, they become susceptible to disease, grow slowly or not at all, and have reduced capacity to produce valuable food for wildlife.
Trees can be viewed as a carbon factory, where the leaves are the workers and the stem (or trunk) the warehouse. The leaves are a marvelous thing, created to capture sunlight, breathe in carbon dioxide, and convert it into oxygen. They also make sugars and other compounds to be sent all over the plant for growth and storage as wood in the stem. The more leaves the tree can support in the crown, the more it can grow and produce. If the crowns of the trees are overly crowded or not getting enough sunlight, the tree will not grow to its full potential.
Proper thinning of your woods at important intervals will ensure that the best trees in your forest have the best chance to thrive and grow to maximum size before it reaches maturity. All trees have a lifespan, and if your goal is to produce large healthy trees that provide excellent wildlife food and cover, then carefully managing sunlight in your woods is essential.
The process of TSI (timber stand improvement) is a way in which foresters can systematically thin your woods to the proper density, keeping over-story and understory in mind to improve growing space, keeping your good trees growing strong and healthy.
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