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[jcrites]

Does it matter how I cut down trees around my fortress?  Does it change the likelihood they'll grow back?

For example, clearing an entire area completely of trees, vs. taking 1 out of every 3.  Does this affect the chance new ones will grow at all?

Or are trees actually more likely to grow in empty areas?  Since I don't know, I have been holding myself back from cutting down the trees.  But if cutting down trees doesn't affect the rate they'll grow, or even helps it (if trees are more likely to grow in empty areas), then I'd change my strategy completely and cut down all the trees on the entire map every year.

[Corona688]

Does it matter how I cut down trees around my fortress?  Does it change the likelihood they'll grow back?

No.

[Jim Groovester]

Unless things have changed from 40d, cutting down trees will not affect their regrowth. So cut down as much as you like.

If you want to improve your lumber harvest, you should frequently gather plants in any of your tree growing areas. They take up room that could be used for saplings, so getting rid of them will make room for more trees. I do this frequently between cuts.

[rodya_mirov]

Basically, cut everything you need and keep your stockpiles.

Nothing seems to affect it.  If you leave all the trees up, it *may* slow down your rate of growth; there is a maximum density (in my experience).  But cutting more trees will only help.  Plus, it might tick off the elves!  And we wouldn't want to (not) do that.

[Beeskee]

Plant growth blocks tree growth though so you may want to clear out the plants from the area. I heard mining directly under a forested area will slow or prevent new trees from growing too, so leave the level directly under the surface unmined.

[Fourdots]

Watch out for dwarfs trampling saplings, of course. That's the main way which cutting trees would reduce tree growth. Play around with pathing costs; you could set up a grid of low-cost areas with restricted areas between, so that dwarfs would only go into the tree-growth areas when they have a task, and would try to stay in them for as little time as possible. Or something like that.

[gtmattz]

If you repeatedly cut down all the trees and never gather plants you can end up with a map full of bushes and no room for saplings, so make sure to gather plants periodically.

[Ilmoran]

On the flip side of gathering plants to make room for trees, be careful not to gather plants too often.  The dwarves trekking back and forth will be likely to flatten some saplings.

[Grumman]

You could allocate z-1 for access tunnels. Just beneath the surface, cut a network of tunnels and set them to high priority paths, with stairs to the surface every now and again. That way, you should be able to avoid most of the trampling.

[backflip]

Harvesting only trees will work against you if you do not gather plants from the same area, and only partially harvesting trees in an area is not a good idea as the saplings that grow to replace what you have harvested might be trampled by dwarves returning to that area to cut down the rest.

My advice: clear cut/gather parts of the map in clearly defined sections.  Once an area has been stripped of trees and plants, leave it alone until it's been replenished with new growth.  In the meantime, move to another section and repeat.  If you want to maximize your lumber harvest in an area, you could defoliate repeatedly so that those plant spawns will eventually be replaced by trees.  But that method seems to me to just waste time that could better be spent stripping a new section of it's resources.

[Chris]

Am I the only one who has clearcut huge swaths and gathered some plants out of them only to see them become virtually dead wastelands? Between dwarf traffic to cut and stockpile the wood and gathering plants my dwarves seem to leave bare soil patches which take years to regrow anything more than grass. It's almost as if my fortresses suffer from erosion or something.

[Hyndis]

STRIP THE LAND BARE!


Seriously. Send out an army of woodcutters and herbalists and turn the lush forest into a barren wasteland. Do it every year or so to get a gigantic harvest of plants and lumber, and to also piss off the elves.

This works underground as well. Get a huge muddy cavern and every year clearcut the entire thing, then when it regrows do it again.

[Hyndis]

Am I the only one who has clearcut huge swaths and gathered some plants out of them only to see them become virtually dead wastelands? Between dwarf traffic to cut and stockpile the wood and gathering plants my dwarves seem to leave bare soil patches which take years to regrow anything more than grass. It's almost as if my fortresses suffer from erosion or something.

Only send your dwarves there once in a while. Once you're done turning it into a barren wasteland just keep your dwarves away for a couple years and everything will regrow. Then send out the axes to raze everything. If your dwarves have no reason to go there then they will not go there. If its on the surface the only time you'll have dwarves go up there is to gather the loot from hunting goblins.

[Psieye]

Watch out for dwarfs trampling saplings, of course. That's the main way which cutting trees would reduce tree growth. Play around with pathing costs; you could set up a grid of low-cost areas with restricted areas between, so that dwarfs would only go into the tree-growth areas when they have a task, and would try to stay in them for as little time as possible. Or something like that.

Be prepared to micromanage the traffic costs after you set up the grid (which itself is time consuming): when you want to deal with an invasion or a hunt, you want to switch your traffic costs to all be even. This has the adverse effect of ruining all the other traffic zones you've set up. Also keep in mind that trees take ~2 years to grow from sapling to tree.

Back in 40d when I was too inexperienced to venture forth to magma sites, I valued trees a lot so I went to the trouble of setting up an underground tunnel network just to avoid walking on the saplings. The tunnels would have to be 2 z-levels below the surface since saplings that don't have a full wall of soil beneath them won't grow further.

Now though, the underground (my worldgen ensures there is water in the caverns) and enlargened caravans supply with much more lumber than there ever used to be. Trees will grow everywhere (muddy or soiled and with wall beneath them) thanks to finding the underground water. Just don't reclaim - that gets rid of all the mud in the caverns.

Am I the only one who has clearcut huge swaths and gathered some plants out of them only to see them become virtually dead wastelands? Between dwarf traffic to cut and stockpile the wood and gathering plants my dwarves seem to leave bare soil patches which take years to regrow anything more than grass. It's almost as if my fortresses suffer from erosion or something.

You embarked on a high drainage area. That you had any trees at all to start with means you also had decent rainfall, but you're pretty much on camouflaged badlands. Just about any traffic will turn grass into barren soil and I'm not sure how plants grow on bare surface soil (they don't grow at all according to your anecdote). Hopefully DF2010's caverns nullify this problem, as underground trees are far less picky about where they grow.

[Hyperturtle]

I've found there is enough open space in my caverns where the trees have effectively taken over.  I used to be an aboveground kinda dwarf, but now I have little reason to venture into the forests unless I am hunting hoary marmots with axes!