Woodlot

A woodlot is a parcel of a woodland or forest capable of small-scale production of forest products (such as wood fuel, sap for maple syrup, sawlogs, and pulpwood) as well as recreational uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower appreciation. The term woodlot is chiefly North American; in Britain, a woodlot would be called a wood, woodland, or coppice. A woodlot is a parcel of a woodland or forest capable of small-scale production of forest products (such as wood fuel, sap for maple syrup, sawlogs, and pulpwood) as well as recreational uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower appreciation. The term woodlot is chiefly North American; in Britain, a woodlot would be called a wood, woodland, or coppice. Many woodlots occur as part of a farm or as buffers and undevelopable land between these and other property types such as housing subdivisions, industrial forests, or public properties (highways, parks, watersheds, etc.). Very small woodlots can occur where a subdivision has not met its development potential, or where terrain does not easily permit other uses. Very large woodlots (hundreds of acres) might emerge where profitable wood species have been depleted by commercial logging practices or compromised by diseases, leaving little choice but to divide and liquidate the real estate for other purposes. One distinguishing characteristic of a woodlot is that the parcel size or quality of wood on the parcel does not generally justify full-scale commercial harvesting, leaving many woodlots as private investments by individuals. On the other hand, good forest management practices, even on a small scale, may create a sustainable source of products, which can significantly contribute to the aggregate inventory available to forest-product consumers. In the era when family farming employed a large percentage of the population in the United States and Canada, it was typical of prized parcels of farmland that they included a woodlot from which the family could harvest firewood, wood for buildings and wagons, and wood for repair work. On the Great Plains woodlots were scarce, but not so elsewhere. In New England and Ontario especially, making sugar from sugar maple sap was an important part of farm life.