YIELD

REGULATION
 Forest regulation
 Forest regulation determines the what, where, and when of timber harvesting on the
managed forest.
 The regulation decisions indicate what species and how much of them should be
cut.
 Forest regulation consists of manipulating forest lands and growing stock to best
achieve the forest owner's yield objectives.
 Regulating a forest is often a main forest management objective. The regulated
forest is desired to obtain a sustained yield of forest crops.
 Concepts and approaches
 A normal forest is an ideal state of forest condition, which serve as
standard for comparison of an actual forest estate, so that the
deficiencies of the later are brought out for purposes of sustained yield
management.
 On the given site, and for a given object of management, it is a forest
which has an ideal growing stock, an ideal distribution of age-classes of
the component crop and is putting on an ideal increment.
 NORMAL FOREST
 A forest which, for a given site and given objects of management, is ideally constituted
as regards growing stocks, age class distribution and increment, and from which the
annual or periodic removal of produce equal to the increment can be continued
indefinitely without endangering future yields.
 No virgin forest is normal. The nearest approach to theoretical normality is made in
plantation, which are entirely artificial.
 The normal forest is created not by nature, but by progressive scientific treatment. It
is a mathematical abstraction, on which all methods of yield regulation are based.
 The normal forest and its management can be demonstrated by assuming a 25 hectare
forest on a 25 year rotation with 25 stands, each 1 year older than the next. The site is
equal on all stands.
 Each stand is cut on January 1 of its 25th year and instantaneously regenerated.
 stand A1 is one year old in 1975, 2 years old in 1976, 3 years old in 1977 and 25 years
old in 1999.
 The sequence starts in 1975. A normal age class distribution exists because there are
25 stands, each varying in age by an equal interval, the oldest being equal to the
rotation age. Their productivity is equal because the site and stocking are equal on
each stand.
 On January 1, 1976, stand E5 is cut, because it has reached rotation age,
and is instanteously regenerated to normal stocking.

 A normal forest is a maximum concept (maximum increment) and deals

with an even aged forest.
 A regulated
forest may be even or uneven aged and need not produce
maximum increment. Thus a normal forest is a special case of a regulated
forest.
 Normality in regular/even aged forests

 The clear felling system, in which all age gradations from one year
to rotation age are present, each occupying equi-extensive/equi-
productive areas, in which the rotation age coupe is felled and
regenerated every year, offers the simplest example of a
conventional normal forest, capable of giving annual sustained
yield.
 Except when the rotations are very short, as in coppice system and /or plantations of
some fast growing species, it is seldom practical to distinguish between age differences
of only one year, specially where regeneration is mainly natural. In such cases, five,
ten or even more age gradations may be grouped together to form an age class.

 Shorter the regeneration period, narrower will be the age class range and more even
aged the stand; conversely, longer the regeneration period, wider will be the age class
range and less even aged the stand.
 Normality in irregular/unevenaged
forests
 The number of trees in each size class can ascertain normality of an uneven-aged
selection forest; it must have a normal series of size-gradations of the normal even
aged.
 In addition, it must have the normal volume and normal increment, as well as the
amount of irregularity per unit area that is deemed to be most satisfactory.
 About irregular selection forests, some people even think there can be no normal
selection forest; this of course is incorrect. It is true that it is easy to visualize a
normal forest of pure, even-aged, density stocked stand, each age occupying separate
areas arranged in a sequence.
 Yield tables and yield regulations
 Yield table is a tabular statement which summarizes on per unit area
basis all the essential data relating to the development of a fully stocked
and regularly thinned even aged crop at periodic intervals covering the
greater part of its useful life.
 Itdiffers from the volume table in the sense that while the volume tables
gives the volume of an average tree by diameter and/or height classes,
yield tables gives different parameters of a crop such as number of trees,
crop height, crop diameter, crop basal area, volume of standing crop,
volume removed in thinning, MAI, CAI etc. It gives all the quantitative
information regarding development of a crop.
 Yieldtable is not applicable to uneven aged forest because in its
present form it has been compiled from even aged pure crops
and therefore applicable to them alone.
 Yieldtables have not been prepared so far for uneven aged
crops because of the difficulties involved and the main
difficulty is that there is no one representative average age.
 Some tables have been prepared for such crops but they show
the ratio of increment (current or mean annual) to help in
deciding the policy of management.
 Yield regulations involved two functions
 Calculation/ determination of amount of yield and prescribing
the means of achieving it.
 Construction of a cutting (felling) plan

Correct regulation of yield is one of the main

functions of sound forest management.
 The objects of regulating yield, in short, are

 To cut each crop or tree at maturity

 To obtain maximum yield of the desired produce
 To cut, approximately, the same quantity of material annually or periodically and
 To limit the area to be felled to that which can be regenerated.
 The yield is usually regulated for the period of the working plan
Methods of Forest Regulation

 Forest regulation methods deal with how to get from an existing

forest with an unbalanced age-class distribution to a state where
the forest is regulated.
 The two basic methods for regulating a forest are area control and
volume control. The two approaches focus on cutting a target area
or volume, respectively, in each period.
Area Control
 The simplest way to achieve a regulated forest is to harvest and regenerate
the same number of acres each year (or period) as would be harvested if you
had a regulated forest. This approach is called area control, and it will result
in a regulated forest within at least one rotation.
 Note that, with the simplifying assumptions that we have made—that there
is only one site class and that all acres are equally well stocked—the best
way to select specific areas for harvest is to simply harvest the oldest acres in
the forest first.
 Exercise 1 - Area Regulation:
Stand Size: 75 acres
Rotation Length: 80 years
Cutting Cycle: 10 years

 Calculate the proportion of the area that will be cut at each entry

10
 0.125
80
 Interpretation: 12.5% of the area will be cut every 10 years with a 80 year rotation age

 How many acres will be harvested at each entry? ____________________

 75 acres * 0.125 = 9.4 acres