History of the aspen management guides

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History of the aspen management guides

	Aspen regeneration in Northern MN (2005, A. Ek, University of Minnesota)

Aspen is the most widely managed tree species in the Lake States Region of North America. This has not always been the case however. Before European settlement, aspen made up an ecologically important, though relatively minor component, of Lakes States forests. During early settlement, logging of pine and other desirable species was often followed by widespread fire, both human induced and natural. In stands where aspen was present, the species quickly took over through vigorous root suckering from parent trees. In areas where aspen was not immediately present, its light, wind dispersed seed may have fallen on the freshly disturbed soil and germinated. As a result, aspen became the second most dominant cover type in the North Central Region behind the northern hardwoods forest type.

In 1911, Weigle and Frothingham published a 35-page U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Bulletin entitled, The aspens: their growth and management. This early guide was based on the careful observations and measurements of field foresters and served as the primary guide for managing aspen stands for nearly two decades. In 1929, Joseph J. Kittredge Jr., a PhD student at the University of Minnesota and S.R. Gevorkiantz, a forester with the U.S. Forest Service, Lake States Experimental Station, published the first of many papers on aspen in the North Central Region entitled, Forest possibilites of Aspen Lands in the Lake States. This work was followed by a number of publications describing the uses and management of aspen but it remained one of the seminal works on aspen in the Lake States. Despite the well documented uses, aspen continued to be a relatively unused resource until well into the 1970s. As the forest industry began to take a commercial interest in aspen, the amount of published literature on the species began to increase and by the early 1980s, there were a number of aspen management guides in circulation. The primary emphasis of many of these guides was on establishing and managing aspen stands to improve timber growth.

During the latter part of the 1900s, the objectives of management broadened beyond timber output, especially on public lands.  Land managers are now being challenged to address questions that are not well covered by existing guides, while continuing to produce timber. Despite their widespread use, the aspen management guides produced to date have several increasingly apparent deficiencies.  These include:

1. Attention is focused on managing the stand as an isolated unit, without considering landscape concerns;
2. Timber production is almost the sole consideration of most guides, with little attention given to how management recommendations should be modified to allow for recreation, aesthetics, wildlife, water, or other objectives;
3. Guides tend to focus on the management of pure even-aged stands, and provide little information on the maintenance of mixed-species and uneven-aged stands.
4. Existing guides are poorly linked to landscape level ecological interests, to vegetation and soil types, and they base the productivity of aspen stands almost entirely on site index.

In order to provide a guide for managing aspen with multiple objectives in mind, this new guide was developed by a multidisciplinary team of public and private forestry professionals, researchers, and practitioners.  It attempts to address some of the above deficiencies by bringing up-to-date information from many disciplines to address a wider range of management issues.