Need to ascertain age of tree (years) and time (tentatively in month) other than annual ring count method.
Forest tree age estimation for plantations are influenced by several factors i.e soil (physico-chemical parameters), precipitation, rainfall, moisture, temperature, sunshine, aspect, topographic, micro-organisms and altitude forming site class index. With the site class index the height of tree species determines its age and silvicultural treatments in terms of tending, weeding, pruning, thinning and finally harvest cutting. Tree species play critical and important role in solving some ecological and environmental problems globally necessitating retention to provide ecosystem goods and services. In addition to timber production, forest tree plantations provide many other forest ecosystem goods, services and functions such as erosion control, windbreak, micronutrients, carbon sequestration, soil protection, shelter-belts, clean water production catchment areas and biodiversity conservation. Plantation forest tree species must be managed according to owners objectives, sustainable principles in order to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation. Determining right cutting ages of tree species are one of the most important management decisions, establishment objectives, trade-off of ecosystem goods and services and finally based on multiple-use forest policies and management.
You can estimate the age of a tree by observing the ring existing in the bark of the tree. Cutting duration of tree from a forest or plantation site is varies based on you purposes and maturity of the tree.
Tree age from plantation is determined from the planting records. Age of forest trees in natural tropical forests are estimated based on the history of changes, regeneration, growth, mortality usually recorded over time in permanent sampling plots or researches.
In forest plantations, management decisions on what age or when to undertake various thinning right up to final harvest of tree crop is based on the growth rate, maturity of wood in relation to designated uses and marketing choices.
In the natural forests age of many trees may not me known thus age is not absolutely required to decide on time of harvesting. In this country of mostly mix species, experiences with tree sizes and wood quality contributed to the minimum cutting limit set at 50 cm, diameter measured around the tree stem at usually 1.3 m above ground.
Stand Density diagram or Volume table developed for a particular species can be helpful for some extent
Branching pattern and age correlation sounds interesting. Can you share any literature on this aspect Matthew Joseph Ruggirello
Counting the rings of the bark stem of the tree, one can know about age
Mohit Husain simply the age of the tree can be recorded by the planting records and any botanist taking care of that tree will surely have it handy
