To flourish, a tree requires cultivationfertilization, control of pests, occasional selective cutting around it, and pruning. Forests benefit from these same cultivational practices.
Silviculture, the art and science of cultivating forests, integrates the principles of ecology, physiology, genetics, forest protection, forest engineering, and economics with silvicultural techniques to ensure forest viability, productivity, and future options. For effective results, silviculturists must be sensitive to both societal expectations and landowner objectives in developing prescriptions for managing forestlands.
As a graduate student in silviculture at MSU, you develop this sensitivity. While enhancing your knowledge of traditional silvicultural techniques, like thinning, prescribed burning, natural and artificial regeneration, and vegetation management, you learn to apply these techniques in both traditional settings, like a forest industry plantation, and nontraditional settings, like an old growth tract or an endangered
Training and research emphasize ways to meet conservation and production goals, such as using of prescribed burning in multipleuse management of red pine or employing shortrotation silvicultural systems for fastgrowing hardwood trees to produce energy and fiber.