A Brief History of Silviculture

Almost all forest and woodland has been subject to man's activities at some time or other. In most parts of the world the dominant historical influence has been the clearance of forests for farmland. In Europe and the Middle East much of this clearance occurred in pre-Roman times. Up until the late Middle Ages the main use of woodland was in the provision of small and medium sized material for fuelwood, building poles, fencing and wattle. These products were mostly supplied by a variety of short rotation coppice systems. Demand for timber was satisfied by standard trees left to grow on amongst the coppice or form isolated trees in wood pastures where animals grazed the undergrowth or grass beneath. It was not until the early 1600's when wood scarcity and the decline in land productivity became an important resource issue across much of Europe. Modern silviculture was therefore born out of necessity to develop restoration techniques for sustaining the productivity of woodlands and forests. It is interesting to note that no matter what time period or where in the world forests are located, they are usually exploited first, and then after resource depletion silvicultural restoration is developed, and this is still going on throughout most of the world today.

Under the leadership of such men as Cotta, Hartig and Köenig, silviculture began to break away from its empirical basis and to find a foundation in the underlying sciences that were developing in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even before this time, Duhamel du Monceau in France and Enderlin in Germany had appreciated the need of lifting silviculture from the rule of empiricism. In 1767, Enderlin published a treatise on the characteristics of forest trees and of forest soils. Later, "Verhalten de Waldbäume gegen Licht und Schatten" by G. Heyer (1852) is probably the earliest attempt to analyze, in a comprehensive manner, a site factor operating in the forest. It is a classic, in which for the first time the theory of tolerance is described, upon which so much of our silvicultural practice is based.

Some of the most complex silvicultural techniques have been practiced for centuries in the tropics but on small scales. With the advent of colonialism "scientific silviculture" with the practice of rigorous experimentation and record keeping was first developed in Britsh India under the leadership of Brandis first director of the Indian Forest Service (1850-1885). His book "Forestry in British India" (1890) described silvicultural ideas that apear to have come full circle. He proposed silvicultural techniques for village and community forests, and the cultivation of a host of non-timber forest products.

In 1861, forest experiment stations were recommended by Elbermayer. It was not until 1866 that "oecology" (ecology) was first defined by Haeckel as the science treating of reciprocal relations of organisms and the external world. Methods of the silviculturists in the process of being worked out at forest experiment stations were seized upon by the plant ecologist. With the development of experimental plant ecology in the latter part of the 19th century, the work of the silviculturist and the work of the ecologist came together, both searching by means of experimentation for the fundamental laws underlying the relation of vegetation to the site. The field of the plant ecologist and the field to the silviculturist differ chiefly in magnitude and in the application of results. Although the student in silviculture has gained immeasurably from the ecological concept, the entire foundations of silviculture cannot be relegated to ecology. (From Foundations of Silviculture, J.W. Toumey, 1928)

Silviculture at Yale

In progress.

Yale Silviculture Alumni