Treesearch

Heavy damage to a young Virginia pine stand was noticed recently on the Beltsville Experimental Forest in Maryland. The injury was confined to pine trees that had come in on an abandoned field. This reproduction ranged from 1 to 10 feet in height and had an average density of 19,000 per acre. Andropogon was the predominant ground vegetation.

Through the McSweeney-McNary Act of 1928, Congress authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a comprehensive survey of the forest resources of the United States. This work was assigned to the Forest Service. The purposes of this forest survey are (1) to make a field inventory of the present supply of standing timber; (2) to ascertain its current rate of growth; (3) to determine how much it is being reduced through industrial and domestic uses, fire, and other causes; (4) to estimate the present consumption and the probable future trends in requirements for forest products; and (5)...

On the Fernow Experimental Forest in West Virginia, as on several other experimental forests in the Northeast, studies are being conducted to compare the biologic and economic results of different methods of forest management. The experiments are being carried out on compartments varying in size from 50 t o 150 acres. Such areas are large enough to permit the simulation of commercial logging operations. The treatments applied to these compartments are designed to encompass different silvicultural systems, different product objectives, and different intensities of forest management....

In any discussion of site evaluation we need to know first what the forester means by the term "site", and the function site serves in the field of forestry. The term may mean different things to different people.

The budworm was present in small numbers throughout the entire spruce-fir region of Maine in 1953; but, as in 1952, noticeable defoliation was restricted mostly to two areas - the vicinity of Madawaska Lake and the Fish River Lake-Beavertail Pond area.

What is this thing called "growth"? We foresters are constantly thinking in terms of growth. We use growth data to evaluate a forest property. We use them to determine how much we can cut. We use them to weigh the results of a type of cutting.

The coniferous forests of northern Maine and New Hampshire are composed principally of red spruce (Picea rubens) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea) in varying proportions.

Valuable second-growth Allegheny hardwood-hemlock forests are found in the High Plateau section of the northern Allegheny Plateau. These forests are valuable as a habitat for wildlife, for regulating streamflow and protecting against erosion, for recreation, and as a source of timber products for industry.

Pure pine stands are the most profitable forest crop on upland sites of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The stands have been common in the past, because loblolly pine and pond pine usually made up most of the first forest growth on abandoned farmland. And apparently nearly all upland sites have been tilled at one time or another.

Fast-growing hybrid poplars are now being tested in plantations scattered from Maine to West Virginia to find out how the different hybrids respond to a wide range of environmental conditions throughout the Northeast.