Primary Literature - PropagationNation

This page contains papers from the scientific literature relevant to redwood silviculture. Redwood is unique in many ways, but for silviculture its most unique attributes are its high tolerance for shade, its pest resistance, and its ability to re-sprout from stumps. One problem with redwoods is that bears like to strip the bark to eat the cambium.

These papers can be dense to read and are geared towards a more technical audience. However, with a little bit of work to understand some of the common concepts and terms, one can get a lot of useful information from these. Of particular interest will be the tables that describe timber yields, height growth, and diameter growth in relation to site conditions and tree spacing. Readers should consult the following conversion table to relate the metric units in many of these papers to more familiar English units.

Measurement type	Metric measurement	Equivalent English measurement
Diameter	1 cm	0.4 in
Height	1 m	3.28 ft
Basal area	1 m2 per ha	4.36 ft2 per ac
Tree density	1 tree per hectare	0.4 trees per acre
Wood volume	1 m3	0.4 MBF*

* This is an approximate average because m3 measures all wood, while MBF only measures wood that makes it into boards. The amount of wood that makes it into a board is dependent on log length, diameter taper, and species.