Treesearch

The United States and the world have undergone immense economic, social, and economic change over the 10 years since the last Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment, all of which have impacts on production and consumption of forest products. This chapter describes recent trends in global and U.S. forest product consumption, production, and net trade and also explores economic projections of production, consumption, net trade, timber harvest levels, and timber prices, as influenced by four future scenarios regarding economic and population growth and changing biomass energy demand through...

Rangelands are areas where the natural vegetation is comprised principally of grasses, forbs, grasslike plants, and shrubs that are suitable for browsing or grazing, but the presence of herbivory is not a prerequisite for rangeland classification. In this chapter, we evaluate the nature of rangeland resources across the conterminous United States and provide projections of future rangeland resources. One of the main changes since the 2010 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment has been the dramatic increase in computational power and remotely sensed data describing the biophysical...

The 2020 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment is the sixth report prepared in response to the mandate in the 1974 Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (P.L. 93-378, 88 Stat 475, as amended), which requires the Secretary of Agriculture to assess the Nation’s renewable resources every 10 years. The RPA Assessment is intended to provide reliable information on the status, trends, and projected future of the Nation’s renewable natural resources on all forests and rangelands on a 10-year cycle. While not required by the authorizing legislation, the U.S. Department of...