Treesearch

When fire is prescribed as a silvicultural treatment, questions usually arise about the amount of damage the fire does by killing or wounding trees or by retarding growth. Some answers to these questions are now available for the oak-pine stands of southern New Jersey.

More than 6 million acres in the 12 Northeastern and Middle Atlantic States need to be reforested, according to Forest Service estimates. Yet many of the sites that need planting are rocky and steep and hard to plant. In many places there is a dense cover of grasses, weeds, and shrubby growth. Old burns in the northern hardwood-hemlock forests and spruce-fir forests are especially hard to plant.

The use of aspen for the manufacture of excelsior is well established in the Lake States. The properties of the wood make it suitable for this general use, and there are adequate supplies available for increased productive capacity. The process of manufacturing exceisior is relatively uncomplicated, and the production equipment is simple and relatively low in cost. That the industry is not more extensive is obviously due to limitations in markets for excelsior. Expansion of the industry depends primarily upon the development of new uses and new products having excelsior as a base.

This Survey Release presents the more significant statistics on forest area and timber volume for the state of Illinois and for each of the three regions into which the state has been divided. Later an analytical report for the state will be published which will interpret forest area, timber volume, growth, and drain statistics in the light of existing and anticipated economic conditions.

In an extensive forest inventory, estimates involving personal judgment cannot be eliminated. However, every means should be taken to keep these estimates to a minimum and to provide on-the-job training that is adequate for obtaining the best estimates possible.

Once again a spruce budworm epidemic threatens to destroy large volumes of timber in the Northeast. One defense against the budworm is to cut and utilize trees in those stands in which the budworms are most apt to feed and breed. In this report the author presents three practical methods of determining what trees or stands should be cut first.

In planning forest management of spruce-fir forests in the Northeast, the possibility of recurring epidemics of the spruce budworm (Archips fumiferana) must be considered. Investigations of this insect must take into account not only the effects of defoliation on mortality, but also the growth losses that result from partial defoliation.

Recognizing that it can ill afford the loss of timber productivity on the large acreage of forest land burned over by the 1947 fires, the state of Maine requested assistance of the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station of the United States Forest Service in a program of research that would aid in the rehabilitation of the burned-over forest land.

This is the second in a series of papers about the supervisory part of the logging job. It deals with recruiting and training men for logging; it stresses the need for safety. The previous paper in the series (Station Paper 18) dealt with choosing methods and equipment; other papers planned will be about job lay-out, purchase of timber, and marketing timber products.

The Station in l948 initiated a study of the problems of marketing and pricing of farm woodland products. The first step in this project involved some preliminary surveys designed to give an over-all view of the principal conditions and problems.