1140 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



exists that threatens other timber. In other words, the forest insect 

 control program should be coordinated between Federal and State 

 agencies, probably in some such manner as in fire prevention. 



FOREST SERVICE RESEARCH 



By E. H. FROTHINGHAM, Director, Appalachian Forest Experiment Station 



Federal contributions to both agricultural and forest research 

 take two forms, one of financial grants to the States for the State 

 agricultural experiment stations, the other of direct Federal appro- 

 priations applied to building up a strong Federal research organization 

 in the Department of Agriculture. The two types of organization 

 are distinct in plan and scope of activity. The agricultural experi- 

 ment stations are concerned primarily with State and local problems. 

 The 11 regional forest experiment stations and the Forest Products 

 Laboratory which are the Forest Service field units of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture research organization deal, on the other hand, 

 with national and regional problems, and with local problems only in 

 connection with the management of the national forests. The 

 regional forest experiment stations complement, and in no sense 

 rival, the State agricultural stations. At the same time, while their 

 fields are distinct, opportunities for effective cooperation ^ are often 

 afforded by national or regional forest problems with important 

 State angles. Thus the Classified List of Projects of the Agricultural 

 Experiment Stations, 1930 (U.S. Department of Agriculture Miscel- 

 laneous Publication No. 89) contains 21 projects involving cooperation 

 with the regional forest experiment stations of the Forest Service. 



The purpose of research by the Federal Forest Service is to supply 

 the basic knowledge necessary for the best management of forest 

 and range lands, and the best utilization of their products. Of the 

 knowledge so obtained, a large part is of direct or indirect value to 

 the States, to smaller political units, and to private timberland owners. 

 This State-aid aspect of Forest Service research will be apparent from 

 the following brief review of the major activities discussed in the 

 section Research in the United States Forest Service, a Study in 

 Objectives. 



RESEARCH AT THE REGIONAL FOREST EXPERIMENT STATIONS 



Each of the 11 regional stations is charged with the solution of 

 problems pertaining to one of the major forest regions of the United 

 States. These problems are classified under a very few subject 

 heads: General forest management, active at all the stations; forest 

 range investigations, at present in progress at 4 western stations; the 

 forest survey, at 5 stations; forest economics other than the forest 

 survey, at 3 stations; erosion-streamflow investigations at 6 stations; 

 and forest products, at 3 western stations. The work is much more 

 diverse than the small number of subjects might suggest. Within a 

 single subject the problems take widely different forms corresponding 

 to differences in the character of the forest and the uses made of 

 forest lands and products. In the subject of forest management, 

 for example, the eastern stations must give much more attention to 



