Abstract
Shrub species have a great capacity to develop in extreme climatic conditions; this ability has a direct influence on their development and productivity in timber and firewood. In this paper, the timber’s production of experimental plantation aged 28 years of Acacia berlandieri (Benth.), Havardia pallens (Benth.) Britton & Rose, Helietta parvifolia (Gray) Benth., Ebenopsis ebano (Berl.) Barneby and Acacia wrightii (Benth.) species is quantified and compared with the production of the same species developed naturally in the native bush. The variables recorded were the number of shoots per tree, total height, basal diameter and diameter at breast height of each tree to determine the volume of wood with the Smalian equation. The results indicate that the volume of usable wood was higher in experimental plantation than that on native vegetation for H. parvifolia, A. berlandieri and H. pallens. The species that produced the highest volume of timber were H. parvifolia (0.396 m3·ha-1·year-1) in plantations and E. ebano (0.118 m3·ha-1·year-1) in native shrubs, species with lower production were H. pallens (0.059 m3·ha-1·year-1) and A. berlandieri (0.052 m3·ha-1·year-1) in the native area. The highest number of shoots was registered for A. berlandieri and H. parvifolia, with eight shoots per tree in experimental plantations of both species compared with native vegetation, which was five and three shoots per tree respectively. These results high-light the importance of developing plantations in degraded areas of scrub, which can increase timber volume production.
Highlights
Selection of native tree species for non industrial use in developing countries has become an important issue due to the recent world awareness of the importance of forestry to rural development and the pressure to achieve useful results in a quick manner (Burley & Von Carlowitz, 1984; Tewari et al, 2000)
The experimental plantations have presented the highest number of shoots, with an average of five shoots per tree, while in the native scrub, there were three shoots per tree
Acacia berlandieri and Helietta parvifolia were the species that developed the largest number of shoots, with an average of seven and five shoots per tree respectively, while Acacia wrightii generally had a single stem
Summary
Selection of native tree species for non industrial use in developing countries has become an important issue due to the recent world awareness of the importance of forestry to rural development and the pressure to achieve useful results in a quick manner (Burley & Von Carlowitz, 1984; Tewari et al, 2000). The Tamaulipas thorny shrubs of northeastern Mexico are one of the most abundant vegetation types with the more history of use in Mexico (García, 2004; Rzedowski, 1978), covering an area of 125,000 km of the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mexico in the north-east of the country and the southern tip of Texas, USA (Ruiz, 2005) This ecosystem is quite diverse in number, density and height of trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs (Alanís, 2006). The Tamaulipas thorny shrubs are used for a wide variety of purposes in all the silvopasture, where anthropogenic influence has marked different patterns of use, such as the production of fodder, fuel wood, shelving, timber, construction materials, food and traditional medicine as well as the selective species extraction (Foroughbakhch & Heiseke, 1990) The use of this kind of scrub without silvicultural practices has led erosion, de- struction and/or conversion of large areas (Andrade et al, 2001; Vale et al, 2004). These actions are undoubt- edly due to ignorance of the growth patterns of the species, which is why cover many areas of scrub and are still used primarily for agricultural purposes and/or livestock, whose economic returns are short-term
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