I am presently mapping woodlands in British Columbia (namely Vancouver Island) and have found that there is a lot of bare clearcut that appears to have young trees growing in it (like this)
There was topic dealing with “light forest” here:
The reason for the low density of trees was different there but the result to be seen OTG similar. To my understanding a forest area can well include some clearcuts without loosing the feature of being a forest. In my area I do not cut such places out of the area tagged as landuse=forest but just add the tag man_made=clearcut. As soon as trees cover the place again (like in your sample) I remove the clearcut tag and that’s it.
Anyhow if you want to take in the lower desity of trees I would think about tagging landuse=forest + forest=low_density or consider using scattered_trees=yes which was another proposal made in the quoted topic.
These aren’t equivalent to “light” forests as they are not a climax vegetation. I don’t know if the new growth is identical to what was there before, but usually secondary re-growth is impoverished compared with primary forest. I’m presuming the re-growth of trees is recruited from seed rather than regeneration of stumps, so this will affect density.
Ecologically they are a type of scrub until the canopy closes, and will support different vegetation and birds. I think the choices are therefore natural=scrub or natural=wood/landuse=forest : which to choose will depend on how long before the canopy closes. I’ve tended to opt for the latter on planted areas of the National Forest in England, because these form a closed broadleaf canopy after only a few years (i.e., within the interval of aerial imagery refreshment and mapper visits).
Yep, this is what I said. Nevertheless the regrowth - depending on the local situation - comes out very similar in appearance and I would not see any reason why not to use similar tagging.
Not at all. If you allow the forest to regrow by itself you may get a much better quality of forest/wood than what was there before - depending on the local situation again. Poor forest/wood quality is in most cases based on human activities (planting monocultural trees for fast harvesting).
Allowing a clearcut to regrow you will get a mixture of scrub and fresh trees for a while which is part of the forest lifecycle. Which tags you choose depends on your preference and the local situation. My interpretation of the OP pic is a low density forest, not a scrubby area. That’s why I still support the tagging options I mentioned before.
My perspective here is ecological, rather than that of a forester. Clear felling destroys habitats which are only partially restored once the regrowth has occurred. Over time things can get better, but only if plants and animals can move in from adjacent similar habitats, which in many places is now unlikely as ecosystems become fragmented.
There are quite a few woods in England which were clear-felled during WWI and then allowed to re-grow. Although valuable, it is often still possible to identify differences between them and true ancient woodland (defined as wooded since 1600, but in practice since the last Ice Age).
Of course that is true, renewing ancient woodland in the same quality after being clearcut takes a couple of hundred years for sure. I have been talking more about the situation in Western Europe where you won’t find many places with untouched ancient woodland. Woodland here is under forest management since hundreds of years and of poor ecological quality due to economical preferences in most places. Anyhow this drifts off-topic so I’ll leave it with that.
