Treesearch

This is a report on the findings of the forest survey made in Massachusetts as part of a nationwide forest survey that is being carried on by the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. This report shows, for the year 1953, the area and condition of the forest land, the volume and quality of standing timber, the rates of timber growth and mortality, and the extent of timber cutting for forest products. Field work for this survey was begun in February 1953 and was completed in March 1954.

This report presents the results of a survey of the forests in Ohio, as a part of the national survey of forest resources. The purpose of this survey is: (1) to make a field inventory of the present supply of standing timber, (2) to find out how fast this supply is being increased through growth, (3) to find out how it is being diminished through industrial and domestic uses, fire, insects, disease, and other causes, (4) to determine the present consumption of forest products, and (5)to interpret and correlate these findings to aid in the formulation of private and public forest policies....

The purposes and principles of log scaling do not seem to be clearly understood, either by loggers and millmen, or by foresters.

In 1945 a partial-cutting experiment in spruce-fir silviculture was begun by the Penobscot Research Center of the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station. The Eastern Pulp Wood Company of Calais, Maine, made available for the study a tract of forest land, in Dyer Township, Washington County, Maine. This 20.6-acre tract is part of a large area that had been burned over in 1885.

The tremendous destructive capacity of forest insects in reducing our resources of usable timber is becoming increasingly apparent as the shoe of the forest economy pinches tighter. The U.S. Forest Service's recent TIMBER RESOURCE REVIEW, which presents the findings of the most comprehensive survey to date of the present and future timber supply of the United States and coastal Alaska, gives a graphic picture of their importance. For example, forest insects killed more trees in 1952 than any other agent. The growth impact (tree mortality plus growth loss) by insects alone amounted to 16...

Forest humus is one of the most interesting components of the forest environment. Its surface serves as a depository for leaf fall and needle fall, with successive depths marking stages of transmutation from the freshly fallen to the decomposed. And humus is responsive: humus type and depth are indicators of forest treatment and, to some extent, of site quality. Intrigued by these characteristics, foresters and soils men have examined them in detail and have published a wealth of scientific papers on the physical properties of humus, its classification, development, and nutrient content....

Coal mines have long provided a major outlet for the timber products of West Virginia. Although the structure and operation of mine-timber markets is little understood, the efficiency of the marketing system undoubtedly affects the decisions of most of the 130,000 farm and other private timber-growing enterprises in the state.

Although it is well known that sodium arsenite is an effective silvicide, forestry literature contains little information about the minimum quantities of this chemical that are required to kill large cull trees. Such information would be of value because if small quantities of a chemical will produce satisfactory results, small holes or frills in the tree will hold it; and the treatment will be less expensive in both labor and materials than other treatments that require more chemical and larger holes for its placement.

Do you own a woodlot? Does it contain mostly northern hardwoods - that is, beech, birch, maple, and ash, with some hemlock and spruce? If the answers to these two questions are "yes," then you may be interested in the work that is carried on at the Bartlett Experimental Forest in New Hampshire. This is one of the field laboratories established by the U. S. Forest Service to investigate forest problems and find methods of solving them.

Pitch and shortleaf pines often survive severe damage by fires, cutting, rabbits, or deer. Deer may take all but 2 inches of the 6- to 8-inch shoots of seedlings, and still these seedlings may live and develop new shoots. Fires may kill all the foliage and terminal shoots on sapling or pole-size stems, but still these trees may green up and develop new leaders. Many of the pines in southern New Jersey today have two or more crooks where past fires killed 1 to 3 feet of their leaders.