Emerging needs for oak management and research.

Research needs are broad, due to large species’ ranges, and specific, due to lack of studies on particular research questions. Extrapolation of research results across multiple geographical ranges is difficult. A single management prescription to regenerate and recruit oak is desired by managers, but is probably unrealistic; however, single prescriptions have been adopted across a wide geographic range. For example, a shelterwood-burn technique (Brose 2010) tested in the Piedmont is currently being applied on many public and some private lands throughout the Eastern United States without concurrent support from research in other areas. Conversely, other research needs (e.g., use of fire, planting, thinning) in the Piedmont is largely lacking. Artificial regeneration research developed in the Ozarks/Boston Mountains (Johnson and others 1986, Spetich and others 2002) has been largely adopted throughout the Eastern United States even though site quality and competition will drastically differ in forests to the east and south. The long-term nature of forestry research further exacerbates difficulties in transferring research results into real-world prescriptions. Rarely do silvicultural studies have results past the stem exclusion stage of forest development. Specific research gaps exist on relationships between site quality and management. While it is well understood that lower site quality yield better oak regeneration and recruitment (see Chapter 4 Johnson and others 2002), there is a specific lack of research on efficacy of specific management practices across a range of productivity levels (e.g., site index). Oak silviculture should be ‘finertuned’ to identify stands where oaks can dominate, timber returns can be realized, and management inputs to promote oak (e.g., fire, herbicide, planting) do not exceed revenue. In other words, where will managers get the best return on their investment?