Forestry Aesthetics and Nonprofessional Forestry

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here from Penn State Extension.

Today I'm going to talk about forest aesthetics and forestry aesthetics.

Now, what's the difference?

Well, aesthetics means the visual beauty of something.

So forest aesthetics have to do with the beauty, the natural beauty of the forest.

It can include the trees or the colored leaves, the water running through a forest, the wildlife that you observe, or even the wildflowers in the spring, or the flowers on the trees in the fall and the summer.

So forest aesthetics is nothing more than the natural beauty of the forest, and everyone appreciates those.

Forest landowners, the public, and forestry professionals.

But forestry professionals are also very concerned about what they call forestry aesthetics.

Now, forestry is the art and science and management of managing forests, and forestry aesthetics means the beauty of that work, the work that is done in the forest and how it turns out, what it looks like.

So forestry aesthetics is very important to forestry professionals.

Now, they worry about a few things, some of the natural kinds of things that can mess up their work, such as windstorms, or fires, or floods, tornadoes, or ice storms, they can all impact the aesthetics of the forest, as well as the aesthetics of the work that's been done there.

Those aren't something that they can control very well, but they can manage those after they happen sometimes, to make them look a little better.

But the thing that foresters are most concerned about when it comes to forestry aesthetics, is when individuals who are managing property or forest landowners have a timber sale without any kind of professional assistance.

In that sense I mean, they don't have an independent forester working on their behalf to help them manage their forest.

So forestry aesthetics can be good or they can be bad as a result of a timber harvest.

Timber harvests, of course, are very important.

They help us manage forests in different ways and provide wood products for society.

But if a timber harvest is done well, you're going to have beautifully laid out roads in the right locations.

You're going to have proper concern for the future forest.

You're gonna have lots of beautiful regeneration, young trees coming in, and the trees that are left on the site, if there are some, are going to be in very good shape, they're not gonna be damaged by the harvesting activity that went on.

But if you have a very poorly done timber harvest on your property without any forestry professional assistance, you're gonna have a problem.

You're often gonna have lots of invasive plants that weren't controlled originally, so that now they become a major problem when you have a harvest, and preventing young forest trees from coming back in.

You're gonna often have damage to the residual trees.

You're gonna have water problems, sometimes, you're gonna have all kinds of issues maybe because the roads weren't laid out or the landing where the logs were taken out is very poorly laid to rest, so to speak, and it just isn't cleaned up.

Forestry aesthetics can be impacted by people when they make decisions about harvesting timber.

So to wrap this video up, I hope you now appreciate the difference between forest aesthetics and forestry aesthetics.

And if you're ever in the position to make a decision about something related to forest or forestry aesthetics, that you'll use great professional assistance, so you'll have a much more aesthetically pleasing result.