[3] One of the first government-sponsored pieces of forestry research in America was to promote the growth of live oak (Quercus virginiana), which was used for shipbuilding.
They found that oaks could maintain their dominance in the next generation after clearcutting a forest lot if there was significant advance regeneration or disturbance from fire.
[3] Oak appeared to regenerate more freely in the distant past than in modern times, which may in part be due to obsolete or declining woodland management practices as well as local site ecology.
[5] Oak is a light-demanding genus, so the survivorship of seedlings recruited into the canopy is mainly determined by incident light levels on the woodland floor.
As well as limiting the levels of incident light onto the woodland floor, mature oaks can also impede growth of seedlings by dropping on them leaf-eating caterpillars.
[6] However, modern forest management often entails fire exclusion, leading to smaller canopy gaps and less capacity for oaks to access the needed light.
For example, the arrival of a non-native powdery mildew pathogen in European woodlands and forests in the early 1900s gave rise to concerns about the regenerative failure of the widespread native pedunculate oak (Quercus robur).
Moreover, because fencing and other exclusion methods are cost-prohibitive, deer are also able to browse freely on many managed forests, which reduces oak competitiveness because they are a favored species of the herbivores.
Therefore, it has been suggested that the main reason for oak regeneration failure in Europe is land-use changes since the early modern period, with the abandonment of wood-pastures, pannage and forest grazing and the more homogenous landscapes this brought about.