What is the term for harvesting trees that are diseased or infested to prevent spread to healthy trees?

The term for harvesting trees that are diseased or infested to prevent the spread to healthy trees is sanitation cutting. This practice focuses specifically on removing compromised trees from a forest stand to protect the overall health of the ecosystem. By eliminating these infected or weak individuals, foresters help to mitigate the risk of pests or diseases spreading to adjacent trees that are still healthy. This proactive approach is essential in forest management, as it retains the vigor of healthy trees and contributes to long-term forest sustainability.

Selective logging, on the other hand, involves the careful removal of specific trees based on certain criteria, but it does not primarily focus on the health of trees in the same way sanitation cutting does. Clear-cutting is a more aggressive harvesting method that removes all trees in a defined area without consideration for health status. Thinning refers to the process of reducing tree density in a stand to improve growth conditions for the remaining trees, but it is not specifically aimed at addressing disease or infestation.