Treesearch

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.

In most forest-management plans, attention is usually directed to certain cultural treatments early in the life of a stand. These are generally some form of weeding or thinning to favor the ultimate crop trees by cutting out a proportion of the young stand that seems least desirable to retain.

Timber is an important resource in Ohio, and cutting records are an essential part of a forest resource appraisal. However, finding out just how much timber is cut in the State during any one year is a big job. Occasionally in the past, wood-using industries have been surveyed to determine the volume cut by species and product, but the variety of industries, the large number of small operations (including individual farmers) and lack of systematic records at small mills, makes an industry production survey difficult and costly. Production varies from year to year, so an industry survey for...

I am firmly convinced that the Lake States Forest Tree Improvement Committee, and similar groups in other regions, can play an important role in encouraging and coordinating research and other activities in forest genetics. As this new field of work continues to expand, which it assuredly will, it will become of increasing importance to maintain close liaison among the agencies engaged in it. For this reason our Station is glad to participate in and to further the work of this Committee.

This is the fifth report on a series of studies to show the relationship of stump diameter to diameter breast high (d.b.h.) for commercially important tree species in the Northeast. This report is for northern red oak (Quercus rubra).

Foresters and others who engage in woods work find it desirable at times to have information about the size class of trees that are cut for various products.