Intensive silviculture is practiced in many parts of the world but is rare in the public forests of western Canada. Here, we make the argument that intensive silviculture could be justified in Alberta but has not been implemented due to philosophies and policy decisions by foresters from government, industry and academia. These include adherence to long rotations, management goals that are aimed at sustained total volume yield rather than economic value, limitations in the types of stands that are allowed to be regenerated and models that do not include intensive silviculture options. In Mixedwood Growth Model projections, we demonstrate the potential of intensive silviculture that includes combinations of selecting good sites and thinning to produce merchantable stands by age 50 compared to the standard rotation age of 80 with basic silviculture. There could be even more gains if forest level constraints in timber flow were removed due to the increased growth of regenerating stands. Finally, we examine the attitude and policy changes that we believe are necessary for adoption of more intensive silviculture systems on parts of Alberta’s forest landbase.

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加拿大艾伯塔省集约化造林的机遇和挑战

集约化造林在世界许多地方都有实施，但在加拿大西部的公共森林中很少见。在这里，我们认为集约造林在阿尔伯塔是合理的，但由于政府、工业和学术界的林业人员的理念和政策决定而没有实施。这些包括坚持长期轮作、旨在实现持续总产量而非经济价值的管理目标、允许再生的林分类型的限制以及不包括集约造林选择的模式。在混合木材生长模型的预测中，我们展示了集约化造林的潜力，包括选择良好的地点和间伐的组合，以在 50 岁之前生产可销售的林分，而标准轮作年龄为 80 岁，基本造林。如果由于再生林的增长增加而消除对木材流动的森林水平限制，则可能会获得更多收益。最后，我们研究了我们认为在艾伯塔省部分林地基础上采用更集约化造林系统所必需的态度和政策变化。