Talk:Clearcutting/Archive 1

I took out the following paragraph:

"The issues surrounding forestry have been greatly skewed by the media who loves to portray the logging industry and loggers as evil destroyers of virginal forest. This is the same media that relies on wood pulp to produce its papers. The Sunday edition of the New York Times alone is responsible for the deforestation of millions of trees."

NPOV it certainly is not. I dare say this article needs a lot more work, but by someone more knowledgeable about the subject than I am. --MockTurtle 10:35, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I removed this article from the agriculture category because clearcutting is only marginally related to agriculture. Sowelilitokiemu 08:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Personal observation

As a child, I lived in Cave Junction, Oregon for a few years, when the timber industry was booming. That was from 1959-1962. They practiced clearcutting there in those days. There were reportedly 30 sawmills operating in the Illinois Valley, fed by a steady stream of logs from Siskiyou National Forest. Now there's only one mill, and it's barely surviving, getting its logs from private holdings. I've returned there from time to time, and now, nearly half a century later, one can still see the "windows" cut into the forest on the mountainsides. All that grows in the cleared areas is brush and "trash" trees. It will probably take many more generations before the forest heals itself. The timber industry did themselves in with their practices! --Quicksilver^{T @} 12:36, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Timber growth in the Siskiyou is est. 739 million board feet annually. Highest harvest was 309 million bf in 1973. Harvest today is about 13 million bf. The decrease is due to the Forest Management Act of 1993 limited harvest to improve wildlife habitat. Personal observations are biased by individual POV and often not useful. KAM 17:35, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Selection cut

Hi guys. I made a link on selection cut. Any expert on this field ought to develop the article. I myself have no knowledge in this.

It would be appropriate to have selection cut article in pair with the clearfelling article. (Wikimachine 22:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC))

Selection cutting --GoDot 04:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Or should it be a 'selectionfelling' article to pair with the 'clearfelling' article? We should probably work our which name makes more sense. -The Gomm 02:43, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

'Clearcut' is much more common than 'clearfelling'

How about we move the content to the clearcut page, and redirect all the links there. I can imagine lots of urban users who have never heard of clearfelling. -The Gomm 03:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

From Google:

• about 9,300,000 for "Clear-cut"
• about 1,020,000 for Clearcut
• about 893,000 for "Clear-cutting"
• about 473,000 for "Clearcutting"
• about 108,000 for "Clear-felling"
• about 63,900 for "Clearfelling"
• about 29,900 for "Clearfell"
• about 25,400 for "Clear fell"

Almost two orders of magnitude! Who will be least astonished?

This 9.3 million is not too bad compared to other common terms:

• about 2,690,000 for "white bread"
• about 7,730,000 for "fried chicken"
• about 10,100,000 for "christmas eve"
• about 23,900,000 for "public school"
• about 46,500,000 for "main street"

-The Gomm 02:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Unreferenced

{{unreferenced|date=August 2006}}
"Clearfelling",[1], and "clearfell"[2] are not in the Oxford English Dictionary. Neither term is in The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 nor in WordNet (r) 2.0 (these are databases of many on-line dictionaries, chiefly via dict.org[3]). Neither term is in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.[4], [5]

Merriam-Webster has clear-cutting (clear-cut)[6] and clear-felling (clear-fell, both chiefly British)[7], Encyclopedia Brittanica has "Marking, felling, and processing".

That the article is using actual English words is increasingly unlikely, particularly without references (hint).

"Clearcut"[8] is not in the OED, "clearcut" is in the Collaborative International, and WordNet, linking to "clear-cut".

"Clear-cut"

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

v. t.

To cut (a region of forest) clear of all trees. It is a method used for efficiently logging a portion of forest, but often has undesirable effects on the environment.

WordNet (r) 2.0:

2: having had all the trees removed at one time; "clear-cut hillsides subject to erosion"

See also Wikipedia:Cite your sources.

--GoDot 04:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge

"Clearfelling" and "Clearcutting" articles duplicate each other: fixed. However, neither title is a common English word for a not-uncommon concept in American English, particularly in the western U.S. and Canada. This is confusing to readers without prior familiarity with terms and misspellings, as well as being inappropriate to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia recommends following the "Principle of least astonishment": Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Principle of least astonishment.

Size

Further, until Logging becomes inconveniently large, terms would be more useful within the comprehensive article, per Wikipedia:Article size.

3 Splitting a page

3.1 No need for haste

"Do not take precipitous action [...] There is no need for haste. Discuss the overall topic structure with other editors." [This is also a basic courtesy, particularly with articles that have many editors and development over more than a short time.]

"A rule of thumb
Some useful rules of thumb for splitting articles, and combining small pages (see above for what to exclude):

> 50 KB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time)"

Long articles
"The size of a page in the main namespace (and when not disabled also in the other namespaces) can be found by searching for it (if the search isn't disabled); it is a by-product of that feature (remember to use the Search button, not the Go button!). For long pages it appears also on editing, with the message MediaWiki:longpagewarning – for example:

This page is 37 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable; see article size.

[Appears when size exceeds 32 KB.] [9]

--GoDot 04:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge into Forestry?

I don't think this page should necessarily be merged into anything, but if it is, it probably fits better into the Forestry page, since clearcutting is a Forestry option, rather than merging into Logging which is a Forestry action. -The Gomm 23:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this page should not be merged with logging. Perhaps merge with Wood management and rename Forest Management. If not merged it should be renamed clearcut. The reason it is clearfelling is because at one time clearcut redirected to deforestation. This page was creaed to avoid a row. KAM 11:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Why merge at all? The page is already much larger than most pages on wikipedia (see Random article) and the concept of clearcutting is not just an issue in forest management, but also in environmentalism. Why not make a Clearcut page? The Gomm 16:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point, more then forestry issue. I agree, should be Clearcut. KAM 17:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

This article sucks. In silviculture, Clearcutting is a method for regeneration of forests, and commercially it is one type of harvest. But to a degree, selection cutting, shelterwood, thinning and coptis all have environmental issues, and sometimes the same issues. Most of the environmental concerns "discussed" in this article are relevant to logging, not clearcutting in particular. The silviculture articles' regeneration section actually gerts more across with its single paragraph on clearcutting than this does.The plantation article has about ten times the relevancy to modern forestry and even aged management even without once using the word clearcut. 160.94.147.173 00:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Delete Merge tags?

How long should we keep the merge tags before deleting them? The Gomm 00:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd say remove the merge with logging tag now, probably the forestry one also. I don't understand why references are needed, its all just boilerplate so far.KAM 15:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Text moved from logging

The last two edits I did was to move text from wood management and rearrange a little. The text at wood management originally came from logging. Almost all the original text is still there. KAM 15:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Mitigating Impacts

I would like to move the last couple of lines referring to 'large or poorly planned' clearcuts to the previous section, Environmental impacts, as I think they are more appropriate there. I'll do it if no-one objects.The Boy that time forgot 23:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Done it now. This is purely cosmetic however as the majority of the text in this, and most, of the article is very poor. We need an informed and ruthless editor to shake the article into some sort of coherent shape. That'll not be me then. The Boy that time forgot 21:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Unclear

Some of this is has confusing wording, at least to me. The result is, my editing may remove things that are not false, but are just not worded very well.160.94.27.146 19:18, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Some of this article is way wrong.

I took this out:

"In an area where abundant seedlings and saplings are already established, clearcutting all designated trees 2 inches or greater in diameter at breast height would provide more sunlight to the smaller trees beneath. If this is the case the term "release cut" or "overstory removal" would be more appropriate. This done to maximize dollars and to maximize the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground."

Clearcutting is cutting down all trees for an area, not trees of a certain height or diameter. This paragraph describes a selection cut, or thinning. Whomever wrote this, please consult a textbook or some kind of accredited website before writing anything else on silviculture.160.94.120.173 19:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

While not specifically untrue, I have qualms with the "reasons for clearcutting" bulleted section. Other than "regeneration" (although it could be argued) many of these are also reasons for selection cutting or using other methods. I would also like to state now that clearcutting is not always the most economical method of harvest. In an unmanaged rain forest, there may be just a few trees that are worth something to the market and many more ficus and balsa which are worth much less, and in that situation cutting down all of the trees is less profitable than skidding out the mahogany etcetera.128.101.70.97 16:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Current Revisions

Gomm- land conversion is not an issue for foresters, but for developers. I am pretty sure that developers don't call it clearcutting when they deforest an area in order to change it. I don't think I can find a citation for the idea that a developer would not call clearing land clearcutting, it's easy to find citations for what things are: penguins are birds, and harder to find a citation for what things are not, penguins are not made from ice.160.94.147.173 00:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, none of the headers really describe what the following paragraph is focused on, if it really is focused on anything. 160.94.147.173 00:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Facts first, criticisms second

My suggestion for the structure of the article is that first it should go over how a forester or silviculturalist would describe clearcutting, then in a separate section go over its criticisms. Consider: it is not unreasonable to think that at some point there could be an entire "criticisms of clearcutting " article. In that scenario there would need to be a separate article on clearcutting with a technical definition and general overview of the practice, with the controversy mostly not present and summed up in a short paragraph with a link.66.41.66.213 06:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Facts don't come first or second. This is Wikipedia, in which facts do not matter, only verify-ability. Don't post facts. Post links to verifyable sources. These sources can be as stupid and we want, but they do need to be something that we can all go look up. -Gomm 06:54, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, not what I mean. I mean in the structure of the article, controversy (regardless of how sourced it is) should have its' own separate section, and the main body of the article should describe the practice more simply--otherwise it is too confusing for the general reader.

And as for you, my facts are generally accepted and can be sourced to published papers and textbooks by me or by anyone else.66.41.66.213 17:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Tragic citations

This is the start of my collection of things that aren't where they belong in the article, but I'm not comfortable deleting since someone took the time to find a real citation to their facts, even if they didn't cement their relevancy in the paragraph I found them in.

"Plantation forests that have been established in areas of high winds will suffer catastrophic wind damage once terminal height is achieved. "

This could belong in a section titled "Clearcutting and other forest management" that would be a sort of compare and contrast, I suppose. As it is it doesn't belong. Maybe I'll have to read the paper, because from the paragraph it seems like it would be an argument for clearcutting, but if "terminal height" means "maturity" then it is an argument for cases where clearcutting is inappropriate. Also this fails to cite what species of tree we are talking about. 66.41.66.213 07:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem deleting the reference, it was put there what now seems like a long time ago when the article was structured much differently, it maybe made more sense then, I seem to remember a Reasons for section or something. In order to save you the trouble of having to read it I can briefly summarise. It is the case (and I generalise) that the majority of afforestation that has taken place in Britain over the past eighty years has involved establishing plantations of (mainly) Sitka spruce in upland areas of the north of the island. Due to a combination of precipitation levels, soil characteristics and high windiness many plantations reach a point, around 40 - 60 years after planting when they reach "terminal height". This means that you can expect a significant part of the crop (and it is a crop) to blow over. The only form of silvicultural management that makes financial / asthetic sense under these conditions is to manage on a clearfell (rotational) system. The Boy that time forgot 16:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I remember the "reasons for clearcutting" and, I think the problem is that a list of benefits of clearcutting including lower cost makes it seem like foresters look over a similar list of bulleted points, rather than asses a forest based on a number of factors, well, anyhow, I have an idea. The information that was previously on a list could be included in "clearcutting in history" with each reason for clearcutting provided in an example. Examples are good!

Maybe I'm really tired, but in my opinion this article no longer completely sucks. There's a lot of redundancy, but I think all of the defensive language is gone, and I think the sentences under a heading have something to do with that heading for the most part. 66.41.66.213 18:39, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Clearcutting/clearfelling

Perhaps for clarity's sake the article should be moved to clearcutting, which is easier than rewriting the entire thing to use the term clearfelling instead. 66.41.66.213 01:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. See my comments (above). -Gomm 01:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I call it clearfelling however I will admit that on a global scale, as Gomm has illustrated, clearcutting is probably more recognised. As long as there is a redirect, go right ahead. The Boy that time forgot 21:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

MOVE?!

I get a big crazy warning that I don't understand when I try to move the page name to "clearcutting" !? Help, I don't understand! Lotusduck 05:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC)