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Florida Land Steward

Florida Land Steward

Uneven-aged Management - A "Natural" Approach to Timber

With timber prices down for many products, less interest in investing in costly regeneration after harvest, and greater interest in a more natural approach to forest management, many landowners are looking for alternatives to the traditional plant, thin and harvest approach of timber management. Uneven-age management is an alternative that sustains the forest cover, provides income at more frequent intervals, minimizes regeneration costs and provides many wildlife habitat and recreational benefits.

An uneven-aged stand is a group of trees that differ significantly in ages; by convention, the spread of ages exceeds 25% of the planned life span for an age class. 

In uneven-aged management, we remove mature trees, or groups of them, leaving gaps and young trees to grow, allocating a portion of the growing space to regeneration.

To contrast, we remove all of the trees when harvesting an even-aged stand in order to allocate all of the growing space to regeneration. When growing southern pines for timber, an even-aged management scheme is commonly used. To see the advantages and disadvantages associated with using these reproduction methods, visit our Even- vs. Uneven-Aged Reproduction Methods section.

In both cases, we are opening up a temporary void in the ecosystem so that the space can be occupied by a new age class to replace the one removed in the harvest.

For more information on converting an even-aged stand to uneven-age, read the University of Florida Extension Publication, Opportunities for Uneven-age mangement in second growth longleaf pine stands in Florida.