Restoring woodland forest

I've recently acquired a 20 or so acre plot of land i plan on building a home on in zone 6 in the US.

It has a wooded lot that somewhat recently burned down in a fire, and has regrown. There are few to no large trees, but many tall young and mid size trees. This fire was not natural (caused by a meth head who owned the land long ago, apparently).

My goal, ultimately, is to restore this wooded lot and help guide it towards old growth characteristics. I realize in my lifetime achieving an actual old growth forest is possible, but i do believe i can help push it towards that goal slightly faster than i would by leaving it untouched.

My current plans are as follows:
1) determine the makeup of the forest and ascertain how many, if any, invasives there are. These will be the first to go in step 2.

2) thin trees to allow for growth, while leaving the majority or all the deadwood where it falls. I may even girdle a couple to provide standing deadwood, as I've read that it can help with a unique niche for some wildlife. I'll have to mark these appropriately so nobody gets hurt by a dead falling tree, these would probably be furthest from the house.

3) plant any missing natives, or species that seem to be lacking from the natural habitat in some of the gaps from thinning (I'm guessing species that come later in the forest cycle may be missing, usually quick growing trees tend to dominate the early landscape after destruction (fire).

4) nearest to the house, plant trees for production and coppicing in some of the gaps, furthest from the house would be less productive species (for humans, at least). I may include some non natives, for this zone 1 zone 2 area I'm a little more relaxed in my goals and will mix in some productive species just for personal enjoyment.

I'll try and repeat steps 1-3 periodically as the forest grows and the canopy closes again. I'm hoping this will provide a diversity of tree ages if i continue to do it over several decades. I'm hoping this is my last house, although you never really know.

This property also has some utility poles with wires (fiber I think) running through the property where i can't plant trees, i think this would be a great spot for a garden as I won't have to clear any woodland for it. I'm not sure what the legality around that is, or if the government sends someone to mow periodically, or how that is handled. Hopefully someone knows if that's a possibility? In the US by the way.

Now to the point. I've never actually done this before and don't really have any idea what im doing. I was hoping some people here may have some better insight, ideas, or resources that i can leverage to help in this endeavor, or tell me if any of my goals outlined are a waste of time or possibly even detrimental to my goals .

Some questions I've yet to answer:
* How do i determine what species to plant, do i just randomly mix and match climax and pioneer species together?
* Should i leave some groups of trees untouched and not thin them?
* If a section of trees ends up being almost entirely invasives, do i cut it all at once or just keep thinning and planting until they're all gone?
* Should i be looking to plant species other than just trees?
* How should i determine the natural composition of the forest? I don't think there's much or any old growth nearby, and if i can find some in the state, there are different ecological niches throughout and different soil types where different species may have thrived. Do i just plant a wide variety and see what happens?


I haven't had too many chances to look at the property yet, so as you may notice i don't know how many invasives are on the property and some other facts. I hope to be back in the US by july or so, and am planning on beginning my forestry journey within a month of my return. I unfortunately won't be able to answer many questions about the existing forest composition.

That's an admirable goal. You could probably not do any harm by simply planting more trees, as densely as you can, to accelerate the successional stages of forest regeneration. Here are some syntropic agroforestry resources that you might find useful:

Syntropic farming overview

Resources on the work of Ernst Götsch

Happen Films piece on Perma Dynamics

Series of shorts describing the journey of Tamalu Farms in Kenya

You could do a classic SA treatment in your food-growing area and then let things manage themselves as you head to the margins of the property, with just light touch interventions like the control of invasives that you mention. I like your plan to intentionally create snags and deadwood, since these are pretty much absent in early stage regrowth.

Whatever you do, I'm sure many of us would love to see updates and photos as the project unfolds.

Thanks for the links Steven, I'm still getting through some of them but snytropic agroforestry definitely seems to be the right place to start.

It looks like I'll have to start figuring out the light requirements for species in my area (emergent, high, medium, low) as well as their preferred stage of succession (climax, secondary, etc). I hadn't put any thought into that, but it makes sense that I would need to move through the stages of succession and plant appropriate species based on their light requirements.

Thanks for the help!

Klaus

I completely forgot in my last reply, I'll try to take some photos when I get back to the states of the location. I plan for this to be a very long term project (many years or decades), so I probably won't post updates too frequently, but I'll try to remember to post something periodically as I make progress.

I'll also be building a house on the lot, so maybe I can include some photos of that once construction begins.

Klaus

Old growth forests typically have well established mycelium as well. Perhaps encourage fungal growth as well since they develop relationships with trees.

To me, I would not worry about invasive plants until you are on the property and find that they are indeed a problem.

Concentrate your energy to planning and building that house.

In the meantime maybe you can have some wood chips brought in.  finding leaves to compost would be a good idea to.

And yes, adding mushrooms to the picture is a great idea.