Post-harvest check
After a thinning or felling, check damage to the trees left standing and to regeneration, the condition of the extraction racks, and audit the stumps against what was marked and recorded.
- For
- Consultant foresters
- Time
- 5 minutes to read
- Where
- Field app — Post-harvest check; web — Results › Post-harvest check
- Updated
On this page
Harvesting in a continuous-cover stand must leave the remaining trees, the regeneration and the soil in good shape. The check records damage on the stand’s permanent plots and/or strips along the racks, and compares the stumps with the intervention recorded. provisional: the damage bands, wound-severity and rut classes and the stump-to-DBH factor are working defaults, not a standard — set them to your contract terms.
Record in the field
- One record per sample unit — a permanent plot, or a strip along a rack (length × width, default width 10 m). Record undamaged units too, so they count.
- Count the residual live trees ≥ 7 cm in the unit.
- Each damaged residual tree once, by its worst wound: type (bark wound, roots, crown, stem broken, leaning), position and severity.
- Regeneration damaged or lost (% estimate); on racks, rut depth and the brash mat.
- Every fresh stump: diameter and its removal mark — marked, unmarked or can’t tell.
Read the result
- Residual damage % (damaged ÷ residual trees) and the severe share, by type — bands ≤ 10 % low, ≤ 20 % moderate, above that high.
- Regeneration damaged (mean of units); rack strips rutted ≥ 10 cm (%).
- Stumps per ha by band and basal area removed (DBH ≈ 0.83 × stump diameter, a rough factor) compared with the intervention it follows — flagged beyond ±25 %; and the share of stumps without a mark, flagged.
In the WIS CCF checklist, damage to remaining trees and soils after a felling is a recommended item (Grant evidence).
- No demo stand has a post-harvest check, so results are described rather than shown.
- It flags; the judgement on the contractor’s work is yours.
Sources: Picchio et al. (2020) Curr. For. Rep. 6:115–128; Allman et al. (2023) Forests 14:910; Environment Agency (2006) SC020051; Ontario Tree Marking Guide v1.1 §7.2; DAFM WIS 2023–27 p. 40.