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$ OCCASIONAL PAPER NO. 90 APRIL 18, 1940

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SOUTHERN FOREST EXPERIMENT STATION
E. L. Demmon, Director
New Orleans, La.

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FOREST RESEARCH AND THE SOUTHERN LUMBER INDUSTRY

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E. L. Demmon, Director
Southern Forest Experiment Station

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The Occasional Papers of the Southern Forest Experiment
Station present information on current southern forestry prob-
lems under investigation at the Station. In some cases, these
contributions were first presented as addresses to a limited
group of people, and as "occasional papers" they can reach a
much wider audience. In other cases, they are summaries of
investigations prepared especially to give a report of the
progress made in a particular field of research. In any case,
the statements herein contained should be considered subject
to correction or modification as further data are obtained.

FOREST RESEARCH AND THE SOUTHERN LUMBER INDUSTRY^-

By E. L, Demmon,

Director, Southern Forest Experiment Station

Permanent, successful, forest-land management must rest upon a sound
foundation of knowledge — derived through forest research. In general, forest
research must be fostered and advanced by public agencies, first, because it is
inefficient for each landowner to undertake, alone, research for his individual
land; secondly, because the public is by far the largest single ov/ner of forest
land; and finally, because in a long-time undertaking such as forest research,
public agencies alone can be expected to provide the necessary stability of
program. The responsibility of the Federal Government for forest research has
been recognized in the establishment of 1.2 regional forest experiment stations
throughout the United States.

The opportunities for forestry here in the South are not excelled in any
other forested region of the United States. Here we have a vast area of excep-
tionally productive forest land supporting a variety of native trees valuable
for many products; the climate and soils are favorable for rapid tree growth;
we have relatively easy logging conditions, and are in close proximity to the
world's greatest timber market. This forest is at present furnishing raw material
for more than 10,000 industrial plants using forest products, and providing more
than 50 million man-days' employment each year.

The foremost customers of forest research should be those ov/ners and
managers of forest lands who are interested in ascertaining the best forest
management practices for their properties. In the South, those potential custom-
ers are primarily private landowners or their representatives, since about 93
percent of the region's forest land is in their hands. Of this immense area of
privately owned southern forest land, it is estimated that somewhat over one-third
is in farm woodlands, the remainder being in industrial and other holdings.

The Southern Forest Experiment Station serves the Lower South, a territory
extending from Florida and Georgia to Texas 3-nd Oklahoma. There are approximately
122 million acres of forest land within these boundaries, representing about 60
percent of the total land area. Forest research at the Southern Forest Experiment
Station was initiated on a small scale in 1921. Since then its program has been
expanded gradually, and, v/ithin the limitations of funds available, it has sought
answers to many of the problems of forest protection and management and of best
forest-land use confronting this region. During this time, much has been learned
about what constitutes good forestry practices, but forest research is necessarily
a long-time undertaking. This is true even in a region of rapid tree growth such
as the South, because the complexity of forest soils, forest types and conditions,
the variety of forest products, and the multiple uses of forest lands result in so
many problems demanding solutions. Because the most important forest problems in
the Station territory have seemed to be concerned with timber growing in the pine
region, practically all of the Station's limited funds thus far have gone into

Address before the 25th Annual Meeting of the Southern Pine Association in
New Orleans, La., March 28, 1940.

southern pine studies. This does not mean that the importance of the southern
hardwoods has been overlooked ^ but rather that a choice was made as to where
limited finances could yield the largest and most immediate benefits to the
public .

The Southern Forest Experiment Station maintains its headquarters in
New Orleans. Its main research activities, however, are centered on 9 experimen-
tal forests, representative of the major forest types, where investigations of the
forest problems in those particular types are conducted. These experimental
forests are publicly ov.Tied, and are usually adjacent to, or parts of, national
forests. They serve as field laboratories for conducting fundamental and applied
forest research and as demonstration areas where lumbermen and otiiers can see,
on the ground, the results of forestry practices. Since each of these centers
of work is typical of forest conditions in its section, the results of these
field investigations are applicable over wide areas and broad forest types.

These experimental forests include the following:

NAME

LOCATION

HEADQUARTERS

TOWN

AREA IN
ACRES

FOREST

TIPE

PRIMARY

RESEARCH

Olustee

Osceola

N. F.

Lake City,
Fla.

2,961

Longleaf-

slash

Naval Stores
management

Hitchiti

Georgia

Piedmont

Macon,

Ga.

4,735

Shortleaf-

loblolly

Forest

management

Harrison
(incl. McNeill)

DeSoto

N. F.

Saucier ,
Miss.

3,850(Har.)

l,210(McN.)

Longleaf-

slash

Silviculture

Chewalla

Holly Springs

N. F.

Holly Springs,
Miss .

2,500^st.)

Upland

hardwoods

Forest

influences

Delta

Mississippi

Delta

Stoneville,
Miss .

2,580

Bottomland

hardwoods

Hardv/ood

management

Palustris

Kisatchie

N. F.

Alexandria,

La.

4,100

Longleaf

Artificial foresta-
tion & fire studies

San Jacinto

Sam Houston
N. F.

Huntsville,

Tex.

2,150

Shortleaf-

loblollv

Pulpwood

management

Crossett

Southern

Ark.

Crossett,

Ark,

1 , 686

Shortleaf-

loblolly

Financial aspects
of forestry

Irons Fork

Ouachita

N. F.

Mena,

Ark.

9 , 000 (est.)

Shortleaf-

hardwoods

Forest

influences

The Southern Forest Experiment Station is organized in divisions, for
which technical personnel are chosen on the basis of aptitude and training.

The men in the Division of Forest P4anagement research concentrate upon
studies of thinnings, improvement cuttings, naval stores operations, forest
planting, forest soils, timber growth and yield, and forest fires, while special-
ists detailed from cooperating bureaus take care of forest diseases, problems
of stain and decay, forest insects, and wildlife and game.

The staff assigned to Forest Economics covers several projects. These
involve studies of: (l) the costs and returns from industrial operations and the
possibilities of profits, for different objectives and for various forest types;

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(2) the ainount of and trends in taxation; (3) the feasibility (from the stand-
point of sustained-yield forestry) of various forms of economic and financial
organization; and (4) the forest survey. This latter group has cruised the
entire Lower South, in units of from 5 to 10 million acres, and is reporting
on stand, growth, drain and future market requirements, and land use.

The Division of Forest Influences staff is studying the effect of forests
on water conservation, erosion, and streamflow, as a basis for determining sound
watershed management practices. Flood control surveys are being made in coop-
eration with other bureaus of the Department of Agriculture, to determine flood
damages and the extent to v/hich land-use and other upstream control measures
are feasible in retarding flood-flows and in preventing soil erosion.

The southern lumber industry is today in a state of transition. The day
of exploitation based on liquidating virgin forest stands is about over. The
forest survey tells us that less than 15 percent of the present forest area
remains in old-grov/th timber. For the past several years, more than half the
lumber produced in the South has come from second-growth stands, and that propor-
tion will increase until in a fev/ years all southern lumber v/ill come from such
stands. By and large, this second crop of timber has come up with very little
care or attention. The beginnings of forest protection and forest management
were made over, 20 years ago by such pioneers as "Uncle Henry" Hardtner of Urania,
and Col. Wm. H. Sullivan of Bogalusa, La., and rapid strides have been made in
recent years in adopting conservative forest-management practices. Nevertheless,
the recently completed forest survey shows clearly that southern forests are
growing at less than 50 percent of their potential capacity, and that many stands
are made up of widely spaced, fire-scarred, limby trees of poor quality and low
value. This picture presents both a challenge and an opportunity. There is a
big job ahead in rebuilding this great natural resource to its maximum usefulness.
As this is accomplished, hov/ever, it will bring its reward in increased outlets
for both capital and labor, to the benefit of the entire region.

I will nov/ discuss some of the forest problems confronting ov/ners of
southern forest lands and relate briefly what the Southern Station is doing about
them. One of the first essentials of a management plan for any forest property
concerns harvesting practices — the operator needs to know when to cut and which
trees should be removed and which left, to insure maximum growth and financial
returns; which trees are needed as a source of seed; hov; open-grovm stands can
be brought to full capacity; how the more valuable species can be favored and
the less valuable eliminated; v;hen and to what extent young stands can be thinned
or improvement cuttings made advantageously; when pruning can be justified, and
hov/ and when it should be done; and many other similar questions which must be
ansv/ered for each of the many forest types, for many different sub-regions, and
v;ith several different objectives of management in mind. The Station does not
have final answers to these questions, but it has made progress in obtaining
solutions to all of them. Study plots, located chiefly on experimental forests,
have yielded many preliminary results. The findings indicate strongly the bene-
fits of conservative cutting practices, and in fact are now being used by a
nuiiLber of progressive forest ov/ners.

For the shortleaf and loblolly pine types, frequent and light cuttings
(knov/n commonly as "selective cuttings"), judiciously applied, have been found
fea.sible, and seem to promise maximum grov/th in quantity and quality. Actual
case studies also indicate that stand-improvement cuttings can often be made

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at an immediate profit. In many cases, worthless and undesirable hardwoods
can be killed readily by girdling. Studies of pruning have also been started
but have not progressed sufficiently to justify conclusions.

Volume and yield tables, giving the contents of trees of different sizes
and potential rates of growth of second-growth, fully stocked stands of the
four principal southern pines and of red gum, have been published. Closely
related to growth rate is site quality, whicii is expressed as an index figure
and represents potential soil productivity in terms of timber production. The
Station is now preparing maps showing average forest productivity zones for
the Lower South.

The specific requirements for obtaining adequate natural reproduction of
the soutxhern pines have been given considerable study by the Southern Station
and broad general measures are now known. In brief, 2 to 4 well-distributed
good seed trees per acre are ample to insure restocking of shortleaf, loblolly
and slash pines, assuming, of course, proper protection from fire. Natural
reproduction of longleaf is much more difficult to obtain than that of the other
southern pines, because of the infrequency of longleaf seed crops, the need for
optimum seedbed conditions, early competition with other plant growth, the brown-
spot needle disease, and depredations of birds, rodents, and hogs. Four to six
good longleaf seed trees per acre, well spaced, may be sufficient to obtain
natural reproduction, but the factors of seedbed, disease, competition, etc.,
must also be properly controlled. Leaving a few scattered pine seed trees is
merely a minimum measure to prevent forest devastation, and should not be con-
sidered a substitute for good forest management. While much additional infor-
mation is needed before optimum silvicultural measures can be definitely recom-
mended, the practice of at least these minimum requirements need not be delayed.

Estimates of the southern pine lands in need of forest planting exceed 20
million acres, depending upon the purpose to be served and the economic returns
expected. This area includes more than 5 million acres of cut-over longleaf
pins land so devoid of tree growth that no merchantable stand seems likely to
reproduce naturally for many years. It includes in addition a great acreage
of longleaf and other lands only partly stocked, on which planting is needed
to bring the land promptly to economic productivity, and also a vast acreage
of abandoned fields. Approximately 500,000 acres in the Lower South have already
been planted to forest trees, v/ith very general though not with complete success.
The combined planting program of both public and private agencies includes the
reforestation of between 75,000 and 100,000 acres of trees annually during the
next few years, at a yearly cost in excess of half a million dollars. To date.
Station studies have yielded many important facts fundamental to all phases of
planting, but the continually expanding planting program continues to bring
forth nev; problems that require much additional research.

An outstanding forest problem in the South, as in practically all forest
regions, is protection from fire. In spite of the widespread publicity given
to fire damage, the South continues to burn about 20 percent of its forest
lands annually. This region has the unenviable distinction of having more than
75 percent of all the fires and more than 90 percent of all area burned in the
United States. Only about half the South's forest land is under organized fire
protection, and practically all this progress has been made in the last 20 years.
Fortunately for the South, forest fires here do not cause damage comparable to
that in other regions. Actually, fires have occurred rather frequently throughout

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the South since earliest historical times, and forest areas that have never
burned are exceedingly rare. Although southern forests are relatively resis-
tant to the typical surface fires, in the aggregate a great amount of damage
is incurred each year through destruction of tree seedlings, scarring of trees,
and retardation of growth. On the other hand, fire, when properly controlled,
may have beneficial effects for silvicultural and protection purposes under
certain circumstances and in game and range management. Adequate control of
fire, however, is a first essential to the practice of forestry in the South,
and any use of fire must be technically sound and correctly adapted to the
o’wner's purpose in managing the land. The Southern Station is studying: (l)
the effects of fire, as a basis for making fire damage appraisals; (2) fire
behavior and control, including an analysis of fire danger and the development
of a fire-danger meter, to increase the efficiency of fire control organizations;
and (3) the economical and effective use of fire in forest management.

A sound forestry program must be based on the management and utilization
of our forest resources in the best interests of the individual, the community,
and the nation. If our forests are to contribute their full quota of usefulness
in terms of maximum income and employment on a stable, permanent basis, we need
a sound foundation in forest economics. The Southern Station has made a start
in obtaining this information in its studies of (l) the financial aspects of
private forestry; (2) forest taxation and the cause and effects of v/idespread
tax forfeiture; (3) the factors governing forest industry ownership in its policy
of forest land management; and (4) the forest survey.

Information on the costs and returns of timber growing is essential in
determining the all-important question, "Will it pay?" The answer to this
question is particularly important in the South, where about 93 percent of the
commercial forest land and 95 percent of the saw-timber volume is presently in
private ownership. Station studies in the shortleaf-loblolly pine region have
developed information that (1) logging of trees below certain sizes not only
does not pay, but also materially curtails the grov/th rate of the forest; (2)
selective cutting under both virgin and second-growth forest conditions usually
is feasible; (3) cuts as light as 500 board feet per acre often are possible,
particularly v/here truck logging is used; (4) tractor logging can be used profit-
ably under certa.in conditions; (5) top logs often can be utilized more profitably
for pulpwood than for sawlogs; (6) thinnings and stand improvement cuttings often
can be made at an immediate profit, as well as to the advantage of future quality
and quantity growth.

The forest survey of the South, begun in 1930, includes an inventory of
the present supplies of standing timber and other forest products, an estimate
of the current grov/th rate, mortality rate, and industrial drain, and a study
of future forest-products requirements. It is supplying basic information of
essential importance in the formulation of sound regional policies for effective
and rational use of forest land. Field v/ork has been largely completed and the
computation and interpretation of the field data and publication of the results
are progressing steadily. Reports on the forest situation by survey units have
been issued for nearly every section of the Station territory, and State and
regional reports are being prepared.

Among the outstanding survey findings have been that the sound-tree growing
stock of usable timber in the Lov/er South totals about 255 billion board feet,
lumber tally (56 percent pine, 44 percent hardwoods and cypress), or 1.1 billion

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rough cords (48 percent pine, 52 percent hardwoods and cypress). In 1936,
growth v/as 16.3 billion board feet of saw timber, or 62.1 million cords for
the entire growing stock; whereas drain, including mortality, was 17.3 billion
board feet of saw timber, or 55.6 million cords total. In 1937, comparable
data showed a growth of 16.4 billion board feet of saw timber, or 62.9 million
cords total, with a saw-timber drain of 17.9 billion board feet, and a total
drain of 57.2 million cords.

The causes for nonpayment of taxes and the uses of land thereby forfeited
to public ownership are also under investigation. Land so forfeited in 8 southern
states totaled approximately 31 million acres in 1934, of which about 17 million
acres v;as forest land, mostly in poor grov/ing condition. This extensive delin-
quency is largely the result of (1) abandonment following removal of timber values,
(2) inefficient administration of the tax system, and (3) inequitable taxes.
Remedies lie in improving the opportunities for private forestry by adoption of
more conservative cutting practices, improving the administration of tax laws,
and in some cases revising the lav;s. For lands v;here private forestry is not
feasible, some form of public ownership and administration is the obvious solution.

Recently the Station initiated another economic study, to ascertain and
measure the factors influencing the adoption of sustained-yield forestry by
wood-using industries. This study should reveal the physical and financial set-
up most likely to succeed in the profitable employment of land, capital, and
labor for sustained forest management and contrast it with set-ups that- seems to
work against these objectives. Out of this project should come a better under-
standing of the growing-stock requirements, the financial structure, the optimum
size of utilization plant, and the type and extent of land ownership best suited
to each of the principal forest sections in the South.

In the foregoing, I have discussed only those lines of research under w^ay
at the Southern Forest Experiment Station v;hich are of major interest to southern
lujTibermen. I have barely touched upon several other research problems to which
the Station is giving attention, such as naval stores investigations, studies of
the relation of forests to streamflow and erosion, and flood control surveys.

A summary of Station progress is issued currently in our annual report and in
various occasional papers, releases, and notes. We are anxious to make these
available to anyone interested in them, but present policy dictates that they be
distributed only upon request.

In conclusion, I should like to suggest that you lumbermen avail yourselves
more fully than you have in the past of the results of the Station's findings.
Although v/e are not an extension agency, we are alv/ays glad to answer all reason-
able requests for advice and assistance. Our experimental forests serve as demon-
stration centers, and you are cordially invited to visit them at any time. Many
of you have already availed yourselves of this opportunity, and I trust have
profited thereby.

We feel that research has already helped point the v;ay toward better and
more profitable forestry practice on private lands in the South, but we want to
do much more than point the v/ay. We v/ant to orient our program so as to help you
directly in your more complex and pressing technical forestry problems, to the
very limit of such resources as we have available. V/e want not only to help
solve the technical phases of such problems, but also to make our findings

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available for v/ide and effective application. To do all this we must have
your help, in the form of constant contact and stimulation, of constructive
criticism and suggestion, of moral support during the progress of our work,
and of applying research findings in woods practices. We v/ant you to feel
that this is your Station, and that your problems and ours are mutual. With
a combined attack on these problems, forestry in the South should make more
rapid strides than it has heretofore, to the social and economic betterment
of the region.

Note; Assistance in the preparation of these materials was furnished
by the personnel of Work Projects Administration Official Project 65-2-64-74.

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