Growth and Development of Outplanted High-quality Northern Red Oak Seedlings and the Effects of Competing Herbaceous Production within Four Overstory Treatments – First-year Results

INTRODUCTION The topic of successful regeneration of oak (Quercus spp.) has acquired great attention and generated numerous research papers over past decades. However, the successional replacement of oak persists as a major concern in eastern deciduous forests, particularly on mesic or highly productive hardwood sites. Research suggests that oaks historically persisted on productive sites due to a disturbance regime that included repetitive low to moderate intensity fire events (Delcourt and Delcourt 1997, 1998, Johnson 1993a, Van Lear and Janet 1992), which no longer exists in eastern deciduous forests (Delcourt and Delcourt 1997, Lorimer 2001, Van Lear and Janet 1992). Presently, obtaining oak reproduction within intrinsic accumulator systems (areas with a high propensity to accumulate advance reproduction, generally poor quality sites) is not difficult (Crow 1988, Johnson 1993b, Rogers and others 1993). However, after a heavy overstory removal on highly productive sites (generally site index at base age 50 of > 70 feet), oaks are out-competed by other hardwood species and are quickly replaced or relegated to subordinate positions in the canopy (Clatterbuck and others 1999, Johnson 1993a).