View article

A long-term study has been established to address the following objectives: (1) Evaluate the crown ideotype approach to clonal testing in loblolly pine; (2) Determine impacts of increasing genetic uniformity on growth and uniformity of loblolly pine plantations; (3) Compare growth response, carbon allocation patterns (above and below ground), and ecophysiological processes of loblolly pine clones under different management intensities and planting densities; and (4) Compare the effects of different climatic and edaphic conditions and silvicultural regimes on growth and ecophysiology of loblolly pine varieties. This study has two North American installations in the southeastern United States (Virginia Piedmont, North Carolina Coastal Plain) and one South American installation in Brazil (Santa Catarina State). A split-split plot design was used in this study with two levels of silviculture (operational, intense), as …