Editing Tillage (section)

===Ameliorative intervention===
Slash weight (the oven-dry weight of the entire crown and that portion of the stem less than four inches in diameter) and size distribution are major factors influencing the [[Wildfire|forest fire]] hazard on harvested sites.<ref name="kii1">{{Cite journal |last=Kiil |first=A. D. |date=1965-12-01 |title=Weight and Size Distribution of Slash of White Spruce and Lodgepole Pine |journal=The Forestry Chronicle |language=en |volume=41 |issue=4 |pages=432–437 |doi=10.5558/tfc41432-4 |issn=0015-7546|doi-access=free }}</ref> Forest managers interested in the application of prescribed burning for hazard reduction and silviculture, were shown a method for quantifying the slash load by Kiil (1968).<ref name="kii2">Kiil, A.D. 1968. Weight of the fuel complex in 70-year-old lodgepole pine stands of different densities. Department of Forestry and Rural Development, Forest Research Laboratory, Calgary, Alberta. Departmental Publication 1228. 13 p.</ref> In west-central Alberta, he felled, measured, and weighed 60 white spruce, graphed (a) slash weight per merchantable unit volume against diameter at breast height (dbh), and (b) weight of fine slash (<1.27&nbsp;cm) also against dbh, and produced a table of slash weight and size distribution on one acre of a hypothetical stand of white spruce. When the diameter distribution of a stand is unknown, an estimate of slash weight and size distribution can be obtained from average stand diameter, number of trees per unit area, and merchantable cubic foot volume. The sample trees in Kiil's study had full symmetrical crowns. Densely growing trees with short and often irregular crowns would probably be overestimated; open-grown trees with long crowns would probably be underestimated.

The need to provide shade for young outplants of [[Picea engelmannii|Engelmann spruce]] in the high [[Rocky Mountains]] is emphasized by the U.S. Forest Service. Acceptable planting spots are defined as microsites on the north and east sides of down logs, stumps, or slash, and lying in the shadow cast by such material.<ref name="ronco">Ronco, F. 1975. Diagnosis: sunburned trees. J. For. 73(1):31–35. (Cited in Coates et al. 1994).</ref> Where the objectives of management specify more uniform spacing, or higher densities, than obtainable from an existing distribution of shade-providing material, redistribution or importing of such material has been undertaken.