Hardwood Management: Bottomland
These sites are fairly rare in the Piedmont. Bottomland hardwoods, swamps to some, provide excellent quality wildlife habitat. In most cases, without a great deal of work, they provide very few opportunities for forest management.
Most of these areas should be left alone. In some cases, it can be useful to selectively release oaks and beeches where they are competing with the more common maples, birches, gums and sycamores. This is not a commercial operation and would best be done for firewood. The felled trees can even be left in the woods.
Drainage patterns may make it possible to create a green-tree reservoir; such an area should be dominated by oaks in order to be effective.
