Question about soil compaction

[heus]

I have been real careful about not making too many trails through my woods for sap collection and wood gathering. I was wondering, if you have to make a path past a mature maple, is it best to go right next to the tree or farther away? It seems to me that it would be harder on the roots to make the trail at the dripline, rather than past the base of the tree. Any opinions?

[heus]

Dr. Tim? Any suggestions?

[DrTimPerkins]

Dr. Tim? Any suggestions?

Sorry, not within my area of expertise. If I come across anything, I'll let you know.

[gmcooper]

Heus,
If I remember from college days it was better to locate a tote road as far from the trunk as possible to minimize the amount of potential damage to root system. I thought the theory was the further out the smaller the total area impacted. Now if you are making a 90 degree corner around the tree I'm not sure.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Trees that are under stress from soil compaction would show signs of it. Trees also compensate for it if they cant find water or oxygen in the compacted soil the roots might die back but they will also send out others that will go deeper. If the road is a seasonal use road the freeze and thaw cysle will keep it loose. Look at the the crowns of the trees next to unpaved utility roads. Most of the ones I see look nice and full. Bigger on the road side than the woods side. Running equipment up close to the trunk of the tree and tearing the bark off the root flares will do more harm to the tree. Its hard to compact wet soggy ground with high floatation tires.

[jason grossman]

heus, living in your area and having logged in your area for 14 yrs i have seen and done it all. with that said it is best to be away from the tree trunk and main roots. the fine roots will adjust and grow different directions. the larger roots will take more damage causing rot to get into the tree quicker. just remember in our clay soils use it as little as possible and just make one rut. more damage occours when people try to jump out of the rut. it's also easier to fix them later if there is only one.

[heus]

Jason,
Thanks for the info. I cant believe how little topsoil there is on our land. Two to three inches then clay under that.

[ToadHill]

I'm not a forester, but I recall a research paper from years ago that was prepared by someone at UVM or Cornell regarding soil compaction and sap streak disease. As I recall, the basic explanation was that maples have a lot of hair like capillary roots and if the soil is compacted around them or the roots are damaged, a lot of the affected trees will develop sap streak disease. It is evidenced by crown die back, but the problem is that it doesn't show up until 5-7 years later. A long enough time for most of us to not make the association with the original damage. This was first discovered when farmers were allowing livestock to graze in their sugarbushes to keep the vegitation down. It was later studied in logging operations and it has been documented that there was substantially more dieback from sap streak disease adjacent to skid trails. I can attest to the effects since I have a small bush that was litterally destroyed in this fashion. Years ago, after some intensive clearing of underbrush the crowns started to die about 5 years later. Now less than 50% of the trees survived. Hard lesson to learn. If anyone knows more about this please feel free to correct my layman's understanding.

Randy

[heus]

This is great info thanks.

[sapsucker78]

I have found it interesting that you almost never see a maple in a fence row where the ground in farmed on each side. They seem to do good on the edge of a woods where the ground is only farmed on one side, but not if both sides are farmed.

[TF Maple]

I have found it interesting that you almost never see a maple in a fence row where the ground in farmed on each side. They seem to do good on the edge of a woods where the ground is only farmed on one side, but not if both sides are farmed.

It seems like oaks are more common on fencelines and in fields, but I do have 3 maple trees that are exceptions to the rule. They are in the fenceline between fields and produced a lot of sap last year. Started out at 6% sugar and never dropped below 3% all season.:)

[whalems]

Wow 6%! Who needs on RO If we could get all are tree's to do that!:lol:

[DrTimPerkins]

I'm not a forester, but I recall a research paper from years ago that was prepared by someone at UVM or Cornell regarding soil compaction and sap streak disease. As I recall, the basic explanation was that maples have a lot of hair like capillary roots and if the soil is compacted around them or the roots are damaged, a lot of the affected trees will develop sap streak disease....

Most of that information pertains to driving machinery over or grazing cattle/horses in maple stands. Not a lot of work has been done on the impacts of people walking over roots. A lot of good info on sugarbush management below:

Sugarbush management: a guide to maintaining tree health
http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/technical_reports/pdfs/scanned/OCR/gtr-ne-129_files/

Sapstreak Disease
www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/.../ne_rp675.pdf
http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/research_papers/pdfs/scanned/OCR/ne_rp687.pdf

Sugarbush Diseases and Insects
http://maple.dnr.cornell.edu/insects-disease/index.htm

[heus]

Thanks Dr. Tim

[heus]

It's interesting that when my great grandfather tapped this woods 45-50 years ago, they drove the tractor and sapwagon all throughout the woods. Today there are 50 year old ruts everywhere you look, some with rather large trees growing in the middle of them. I wonder if this driving all through the woods, right up next to just about every tree negatively impacted the maples? They used to do over 1000 taps yearly. Most of the trees are still alive and kicking. I have tried to limit the number of tractor trails, although I do have atv trails in several places.