Eucalypts at Full Gallop!
Gustavo Iglesias Trabado 
GIT Forestry Consulting - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS
GIT Forestry Consulting - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS
As we leave behind the last pieces of the cold and dark season and we approach the next summer solstice, the available energy from longer photoperiods finds plenty of building materials in abundant soil water reservoirs resulting from a rainy winter. Impulsed by increasingly mild temperature trends our local eucalypt plantations in Galicia are forced to stretch their muscles and start increasing their growth rhythm from a "slow pace" to a"full gallop".
Fig. 1: Example of a unpruned unthinned high site index cold hardy Eucalyptus nitens plantation growing on ex-agricultural deep acidic soils. Balanced fertility enhances rapid growth and a pasture understorey is well kept by intensive grazing [*]. Note the tall and slender crowns, and the large amount of discarded dead branches along the trunk. (Click image to enlarge)
Depending on tree age and planting design, and depending on the silvicultural strategy followed, this full gallop will mean either fast growth in height as each tree builds new food factories (also known as leaves) to replace the "obsolete" (less efficient due to shading, which impairs photosynthesis) ones in a fierce race to the sky... or a more gradual filling up of larger available spaces, building wider live crowns and increasing their girth.
Variations on the first case are the common ones to implement simple management strategies, and the most suitable to try to maximise tonnage per cultivated surface unit. Hence, the classical production process for pulpwood, or, these days, biomass crops (energy crops).
Fig 2: Eucalyptus polyculture: pasture plus pruned and thinned trees producing high value logs following a multi-product agroforestry management regime. Note the pruned basal logs, wider spacing obtained through thinning, and larger alive crowns. (Click image to enlarge)The second case, less common as it involves a bit more (but not that much!!) complex production processes, tries to maximise value produced per surface unit. It can allow the combined production of more than one timber types (logs "designed" to feed different industrial lines), including high value logs for select market niches, and it is largely compatible from early stages of the production cycle with other productive (hence, value generating) uses for understorey. A sensible agroforestry approach that can help optimise land resource uses for some afforestation scenarios.
No choice of these is better or worse. Each one of them can be technically and financially viable and each one is able to yield commercial primary products, generating a profit for the timber investor, and generating added value up the different timber industrial chains. What can be variable is the macro and microeconomics of these different approaches, and its attractiveness for investors depending on their profile. The main point is being able to allocate these alternatives in the right places, according to the preferences of investors and the constraints and advantages each particular area can offer. Regardless of where, if suitable, the more diverse production, the lower risks of financial dependence on commodity markets. Regardless of the choice, meanwhile, the trees will keep growing... at full gallop!
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© 2007-2009 Gustavo Iglesias Trabado. Please contact us if you want to use all or part of this text and photography elsewhere. We like to share, but we do not like rudeness.
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