Coppice Agroforestry: Tending Trees for Product, Profit, and Woodland Ecology

A Cultural History of Coppice Agroforestry

This chapter illustrates how humans have harnessed woody plants’ sprouting ability to meet their fundamental needs for millennia and how this relationship has in turn shaped their cultures. Sections include:

• Coppice: An Essential Prehistoric Resource
• Coppice in Europe: From Subsistence Resource to Market Commodity
• Coppice in the Emerging Market Economy
• The Near Extinction of Coppicing
• Revival? Coppicing for the 22nd Century
• Recapitulation: Crafting Regenerative Resprout Silviculture

The Ecology of Coppice Systems

Resprout silviculture practices cause dramatic changes in forest-stand structure, composition, energy cycling, and the character of the habitat they provide. No single technique meets all management goals. What aspects of forest ecology does resprout silviculture enhance, and what compromises does it require? Sections include:

• The Ecology of Forest Ecosystems
• Natural Communities & Forest Cover Types
• Effects of Coppice on Community Ecology & Biodiversity
• A Conservation Panacea?

Coppice Economics and Products

Coppicing evolved to meet clear and immediate societal needs, and it persisted because it was highly effective. Some of these needs were essential: fuel, fencing, fodder. Others formed the foundation of highly developed production networks, fueling the craft economy.

Sections include:

• Markets
• The Value-Added Continuum: From Low to High
• Business Development
• Financial Assistance to Support Coppice Management
• Forestry Cooperatives

Listening to the Land

Design is as much about process as it is about product. We can’t foresee all of the potential implications of our design decisions, but we can do our best to plan for them. We make mistakes—and we learn from them. Design is iterative. Sections include:

• The Silviculture Standard
• Goals and Management Objectives
• Mapping, Site Analysis, System Design
• A Coppice Pattern Language
• Designing Cultivated Ecologies
• Temporal Design
• Case Studies

Getting Started

After taking the time to analyze your site and clarify your management goals, you’ve created a plan that points you towards the landscape you aim to create. Generally, this leaves us working from one of two starting points, woodland conversion and field transformation. Sections include:

• Existing Stand Dynamics
• Natural Regeneration
• Prescribed Burns
• Species & Layout and Spacing
• Ground Prep & Planting Techniques
• Maintenance & Protection

Coppice Management and Harvest

The culmination of our establishment efforts arrives when we finally harvest the sprouts we’ve nurtured. And ensuring a successful harvest requires varying degrees of ongoing attention during the intervals in between. Sections include:

• First Harvest Cycle: Coppice Establishment
• Pollarding
• Managing Hedgerows
• Tools & Felling Techniques
• Snedding or Limbing
• Cross-Cutting and Product Selection
• Extraction
• Storing Products

Appendix 1: Additional Resources

• Selected Billhook and Forestry Tool Suppliers
• Planting Tools, Materials, Irrigation
• Nurseries
• Fencing Products

Appendix 2: Yield and Species-by-Use Tables

Tables Include:

• Consolidated “yield” or mean annual increment
• Durability and decay resistance of wood of select coppice species
• Selected woody basketry species and their uses
• Firewood characteristics of select woody coppice species
• Estimated digestibility and crude protein content of leaves of select coppice fodder species for cattle, sheep, or goats

Endorsed by Geoff Lawton, permaculture consultant

"This classic book covers the ancient and much-forgotten craft of coppicing. This essential sustainable skill not only must be revived but also expanded to suit new geographies and species and create more possibilities than ever before. Mark has written a book you should purchase for both your future security and that of your grandchildren."