Wind damage to forests and trees: a review with an emphasis on planted and managed forests

This paper presents a review of our current understanding of the process of wind damage to trees and forests, with a particular, but not exclusive focus, on planted and managed forests. It makes a direct comparison with the state of knowledge just over 50 years ago when systematic research on wind damage to forests was beginning and discusses how our knowledge has changed over that period. The paper starts with a discussion of the types of severe winds that cause damage and then explores the effect of a number of factors on the risk of wind damage. These include species differences, the influence of different tree characteristics, and the effect of tree competition, tree spacing, gaps and edges in the forest, and soil and site preparation. There is then a section dealing with wind damage at a variety of spatial and temporal scales and the processes occurring at these different scales. The penultimate part of the paper describes the actual physical mechanisms of stem damage and uprooting, how this understanding can be used to develop wind damage risk models, and then how the different parts of the overall wind damage problem can be brought together to form a holistic view. Finally, there is a brief review of the advance in our understanding over the last few decades, the continued areas of uncertainty or that require further work, and recommendations of subjects and topics that could be a focus for future research.