Elam Thin

 

1. Name - Elam Thin

Context | Objectives | Treatment Specifics | Utilization | Targets | Pre Treatment data | Post Treatment data | Links

The 95,000 acre Collins Almanor Forest (CAF) is owned and managed by the Collins Pine Company. CAF is located in the transition zone between the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Range and the southern Cascade Range. When management began on the CAF in 1941, the focus was removing older, decadent, and suppressed trees. As was common at the time, most trees harvested were 18 inches DBH and larger. Single-tree selection encouraged shade-tolerant fir, which began replacing the desirable sugar and ponderosa pine.

Now CAF emphasizes thinning from below, chip thinning submerchantable fir, and group selection, which leave larger openings and allow for pine regeneration. Since 1986 Collins has chip-thinned 25,000 acres (about one quarter of the property) and removed over 700,000 green tons of fuel from overstocked stands by taking advantage the Collins Pine Compant co-generation power plant (11 MW). Since the shift of focus to thinning from below, pine regeneration has improved.

The Elam Thin is a good example of the biomass removals Collins continues to use to reduce fuel loadings and encourage regeneration. The project was completed in 1999 through a contract with Holt logging. Holt used a Timbco harvester, hand falling, ground-based skidding, a log processor and a chipper. Stem density and basal area were reduced from 780 trees per acre and 332 square feet per acre to 120 trees per acre and 160 square feet per acre respectively. The sale produced 1,327 thousand borad feet (MBF) of sawlogs ($350 per  MBF) and 4,027 dry tons of hog fuel ($35 per dry ton). The hog fuel was trucked 11 miles to Collins's cogeneration plant. 

Links

• Collins Almanor Forest