Impact of occurrence of hollow trees on the wood volume yield of timber harvested in the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, Pará State, Brazil

Abstract

In the tropical forest management, occurrence of hollow in trees and its impact on the volume yield are subjects little addressed in the national scientific literature. This issue is addressed in this paper by means of a study case in an annual management area (AMA) located at Saraca Taquera National Forest, state of Pará, Brazil. We selected 3,190 trees of 25 commercial species to be harvested, representing a wood volume of 24,020 m³. Of that amount, 3,079 trees were logged, of which 1,227 (39.8%) were trees that replaced hollow trees found during the harvest. During logging operation 1,175 (36.4%) standing trees were found hollow. In general, there were 53.5% of hollow trees in the AMA, representing approximately two hollow trees per hectare managed. The results revealed that despite the expressive number of hollow trees this defect did not significantly affect the volume yield (80.7%) mostly due to the possibility of replacing hollow trees by the time of logging. As more than half the selected trees were hollow, the replacement assures economic viability of the current forest management.