Reduce wind and ice damage: Increase structural diversity of the forest

Increase structural diversity of the forest

Climate change may make some natural disturbances more frequent and more intense. The most common natural disturbances affecting forests in Massachusetts are wind and ice events. These types of disturbances typically have a disproportionate impact on trees with big crowns in the main canopy.

Forests where many of the trees are the same age and height, may experience greater damage during such events than those with a diversity of tree sizes and ages. Therefore, in order to increase your forest's resiliency, it is important to increase its structural diversity or the number of layers in the forest. This usually means opening large enough gaps in the forest canopy to encourage the establishment of young trees, while also maintaining older and/or larger trees. It is important that your forest has trees of many different heights, many different diameters, and many different species. This increases the number of pathways by which your forest can resist and recover from the impacts of disturbance.

In addition, promoting forests with diverse age classes may increase the forest’s ability to store carbon by increasing the area occupied by trees (i.e., packing younger smaller trees underneath larger, older trees). Carbon storage refers to the amount of carbon contained in tree biomass in a forest. In fact, about 50% of a tree’s mass is carbon. Increasing structural diversity relies upon successful tree regeneration, which can be challenging on sites with high levels of deer pressure or invasive plants. Refer to the resources below on strategies for increasing tree regeneration.