Forest stand

A forest stand is a contiguous community of trees sufficiently uniform in composition, structure, age, size, class, distribution, spatial arrangement, condition, or location on a site of uniform quality to distinguish it from adjacent communities.

Instead they have evolved from the Normalwald concept, which was predicated on the idea of harvesting efficiency and thus that forest land was primarily to generate income from timber production.

The concept has by way of extension been applied across all forestry practice in the world, but originated in the Mitteleuropa of the late 18th and early 19th century with the mercantilist tradition, Prussian education and emergence of modern silviculture.

[citation needed] Along with the Normalwald concept has come the idea that stands are standardized in terms of size, species mix, age class and other tree metrics and that forestry should aim to impose this on nature where it has not existed up till now.

[4] As stand is from an economic timber forestry perspective, it is very focused on the tree element of forests.