Picturing Forests from the Air 



porting logs and equipment. Injuries to 

 legs, feet, and toes were most common. 

 Logs, trees, hand tools, working sur- 

 faces, and vehicles were the leading in- 

 jury-producing agencies. Outstanding 

 among unsafe working conditions were 

 rough, slippery, or obstructed working 

 areas, and decayed or dead limbs and 

 trees. The most common unsafe acts 

 were the unsafe use of equipment, par- 

 ticularly hand tools, inattention to foot- 

 ing, and unsafe planning of felling. 



In larger companies, a safety staff 

 should be available to analyze facts of 

 accidents, to show the organization how 

 and where its efforts will produce the 

 best results in accident prevention. One 



679 



of the most important functions of a 

 safety staff is to see to it that training 

 in safety is followed through, that per- 

 formance follows the precept. The pre- 

 cept is: Injuries can be prevented. 



SETH JACKSON worked in the log- 

 ging camps of northern Ontario and 

 Michigan before his graduation in for- 

 estry from Cornell University. After 

 2 l /2 years with the International Paper 

 Co. in Newfoundland, he joined the 

 Forest Service. He now has charge of 

 the safety program. He has held ad- 

 ministrative positions on national for- 

 ests in Wisconsin, Michigan, and in 

 Montana. 



PICTURING FORESTS FROM THE AIR 



RAYMOND D. CARVER 



Aerial photographs have many uses 

 in forestry. 



In the management of forest and 

 range lands, aerial photographs sup- 

 plement and sometimes supplant plani- 

 metric maps and ground examinations 

 in locating roads, trails, telephone 

 lines, firebreaks, recreation areas, and 

 other improvements. They are used in 

 mapping and administering timber 

 sales and range allotments and ap- 

 praising timber for sale. They provide 

 basic reference material for forest- 

 management plans. They are an indis- 

 pensable aid in certain types of forest 

 research, such as country-wide forest 

 surveys. They record forest conditions 

 at a given time and place, and supply 

 the basis for essential measurements 

 for classifying timber. If they are sup- 

 plemented by additional study and 

 measurements of the timber on the 

 ground, the results rate high as a sta- 

 tistic in computing total forest area, 

 volume, and growth; the kind, age, 

 condition, and size of trees; general 

 accessibility; areas of forest depletion 

 by cutting, fire, and disease; and loca- 

 tion of the timber in relation to trans- 

 portation. 



They were first used in a practical 

 way during the First World War. 

 Methods of making and applying them 

 expanded greatly during the Second 

 World War. Between the wars, progress 

 was moderate, and possibly the widest 

 application was in planimetric and 

 topographic mapping, with forestry a 

 secondary objective. 



Aerial photography is employed in 

 Australia, Canada, the Soviet Union, 

 Europe, Africa, Central America, 

 South America, and the United States, 

 where photographs are used in ap- 

 praising forests. 



The techniques in the United States 

 and probably in other countries are not 

 yet perfected to a point where they 

 fully meet the needs of foresters, but 

 because increasing use is made of the 

 photographs in forestry, study and ef- 

 fort to improve the technique of taking 

 the pictures and interpreting them are 

 going on all the time. 



The first use of air photographs in 

 the United States probably was in 1917 

 in mapping part of the Columbia 

 National Forest in Washington. Dur- 

 ing the past two decades about two- 

 thirds of the United States has been 



