Reduction of time for commercial wood cultivation and increasing the productivity of plantations is an urgent direction of scientific research considering supply of forest resources in the country and the growing need for timber. One of the ways of intensive forest reproduction is the creation of forest plantation crops. Plantation of forest crops involves the cultivation of technically valuable tree species in a shorter period of time. Our country has experience in the creation of forest plantation crops, but due to the reorganization in the forest industry, many areas were left without proper care. However, for 34 years research scientists at the Mytischi Branch of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (formerly Moscow State Forest University) have been systematically monitoring the growth and development of spruce forest crops created in 1984 with intermediate agricultural use between the rows. The method of creating test crops is aimed at providing the most favorable conditions for growth and development of the main tree species in the first years after planting, the use of the natural growth of plantations during the entire period of crops cultivation, cost optimization for frequent silvicultural care, obtaining stands with high economic and aesthetic properties, prevention of wood defects. The article presents the technology of creating spruce crops, which is a distinctive feature of this method. We analyzed changes in the diameters and heights of trees grown by creating forest crops in the traditional way and with the use of intermediate agricultural use between the rows. The reliability of differences in the average values of independent samples was assessed, confirming the advantage of the spruce test crops. Their species composition is 100 % spruce, the absolute taper of which is 2.13 times less than those created by the traditional method. A higher probability of obtaining trunks with a volume of more than 0.02 m3 by creating test crops has been established. The results of statistical processing of experimental data indicate the prospects of the method of planting spruce forest crops with intermediate agricultural use between the rows, which contributes to the formation of high-quality stands.
Trait hierarchies are stronger than trait dissimilarities in structuring spatial co‐occurrence patterns of common tree species in a subtropical forest
