TITLE:
Assessing Soil-Related Black Spruce and White Spruce Plantation Productivity
AUTHORS:
Shane Furze, Mark Castonguay, Jae Ogilvie, Mina Nasr, Pierre Cormier, Rolland Gagnon, Greg Adams, Paul A. Arp
KEYWORDS:
Forest Plantation Productivity Mapping, Black Spruce, White Spruce, Soil Type & Drainage, Digital Terrain Modelling
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Forestry,
Vol.7 No.2,
April
13,
2017
ABSTRACT: This article focuses on modelling and mapping the productivity of black (Picea mariana) and white spruce (Picea glauca) plantations across the Black Brook forest management area in northwestern New Brunswick, Canada, encompassing about 200,000 ha. This effort involved establishing 3500 50 m2 survey plots, each informing about: plantation age (15 to 43 years), planted species type, stem count, tree height, basal area, and wood volume. All of this was supplemented with location-specific productivity predictors, i.e., xy location and specifications pertaining to soil type, soil drainage (established through digital elevation modelling by way of the depth-to-water index DTW), and years since thinning (pre-commercial and commercial), and. The DTW index, as it emulates the elevation rise away from open water features such as streams, rivers and lakes, allowed the re-mapping of existing soil borders by topographic position and drainage association. Non-linear regression analysis revealed that plantation height, basal area and volume all increased with plantation age, as to be expected. Pre-commercial thinning in plantations