A clearcut is an area of forestland where most of the standing trees are logged at the same time and a few trees remain post-harvest. Forested buffers are left around streams and lakes, and the area is replanted within two years of harvest.

Where is clear cutting most common?

Clearcutting is the dominant form of logging on private industrial timber lands and state forest land in Oregon. Extensive clearcutting has occurred across hundreds of thousands of acres of privately-owned timber lands for the past century, and continues today.

What ecosystems are affected by clear cutting?

Clearcutting disturbs soils, wetlands, and peatlands, releasing their vast carbon stores, and diminishes the boreal forest's ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. As such, it is often an ecologically harmful form of logging.