PAULO, Joana Amaral    TOME, Margarida. Virgin cork production estimates resulting from young cork oak stands thinning and debarking operations. []. , 22, 1, pp.29-42. ISSN 0870-6352.

Cork oak's juvenile stage precedes the first income obtained from cork production during the exploitation of the Quercus suber forest. This is obtained with the first cork extraction, where virgin cork, with low commercial value, is obtained. In recent plantations, some made with considerable high tree density values, it is frequent the need of thinning operations during the juvenile stage, as a way of selecting trees, and diminish the number of trees per hectare. During these thinning operations, frequently made simultaneously to the stand first debarking, big amounts and varieties of wood and virgin cork are produced. With this work, a methodology for quantifying the amounts of virgin cork originated on a thinning operation is proposed, which depends exclusively on the diameter at breast height measurement.

: cork oak; virgin cork; juvenile stage; first debarking; thinning.

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