FOREST RESEARCH AND THE WAR 



BY EARLE H. CLAPP 



ASSISTANT FORESTER, UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE 



IF justification were ever needed for forest research 

 work, the war has amply provided it. Lacking the 

 peaceful gains made by the Department of Agriculture 

 it would not have been possible to increase our food 

 production, our meat supply, our forage resources, and to 

 bring about a more effective use of wood and forest 

 products in the degree in which this has been accomplish- 

 ed in the last few months. There is rarely time during 

 a national crisis to develop a scientific basis for intensive 

 practical application in the field of forestry, and the past 

 work of the Forest Service is making it increasingly pos- 

 sible to aid those of our allies without such a basis and 

 with problems in forest products. 



Under the stress of national necessity fundamental 

 scientific principles find application in a thousand in- 

 genious ways, methods are enormously expanded and de- 

 veloped, and the investigative work itself is concentrated 

 on the more pressing problems. This is exactly what is 

 now happening in forest research. Before we entered the 

 war the research work of the Forest Service was too 

 little known outside the profession of forestry and a few 

 wood-using industries. The Forest Products Laboratory 

 carried on its investigations with too little recognition 

 from scientific and technical men in general. Today there 

 are few branches of the Government employing woocf 

 which do not utilize the results of Forest Service re- 

 search. These results, however, would not now be so 

 fully utilized had it not been for the zeal and public 

 spirit of the research organization in systematically bring- 

 ing them to the attention of every interested agency. 



It would take too long, and it is not the time to enum- 

 erate, the strides made by our research, or to tell of the 

 place which it occupies in the prosecution of the war. A 

 few facts will suffice to show how useful the results are 

 proving to the country. The Forest Products Labora- 

 tory's studies in the properties and uses of woods have 

 practically laid the foundations for all existing Govern- 

 mental specifications for wood. This is particularly true 

 in the case of aircraft construction, shipbuilding, military 

 vehicle and box manufacture. The demand for large 

 supplies of Sitka spruce brought up prominently the 

 question of rapid kiln drying without lessening the 

 strength and toughness of the material. What the Lab- 

 oratory has accomplished in its studies of kiln drying 

 has proved an invaluable asset in this field, and hun- 

 dreds of new dry kilns have been established throughout 

 the country after the pattern evolved at the Laboratory 

 and through its direct initiative, and there is besides a 



wide-spread improvement in commercial drying prac- 

 tice. 



The large demand for woods of special qualities neces- 

 sitated the seeking of substitutes for woods previously 

 used or finding new kinds of wood for new uses brought 

 about by modern methods of warfare. The products of 

 wood distillation have been brought greatly into promi- 

 nence, and here again the research of past years has 

 proved of great value. The possibility of obtaining 

 ethyl alcohol from wood waste promises to be an im- 

 portant measure of national economy. Also of immediate 

 military or commercial value are problems relating to 

 gas warfare, offensive and defensive, extraction of potash 

 from wood ashes, pulp-wood containers as substitutes 

 for glass and tin, substitutes for raffia in camouflage, and 

 impregnation and other treatment of temporary nose 

 plugs for shells, and the like. The staff of the Madison 

 Laboratory is now practically double that employed at the 

 beginning of the war. 



It is only because much of the fundamental knowledge 

 was- already secured that it has been possible to develop 

 the~ s work to its present state. The same is true of the 

 results of silvical investigations. In finding substitutes 

 for woods of which there is an inadequate supply, our 

 knowledge of the different trees and their distribution 

 has proved of great help. Past studies of the woodlot 

 problem and the methods of handling woodlot timber 

 form the necessary foundation for the present wood fuel 

 campaign. The increased production and use of wood 

 for fuel is at the same time the best means of improving 

 the farmer's woodlot. Without the knowledge of how 

 to handle woodlots the drain upon them might have 

 proved calamitous. 



The war, too, is going to leave a marked influence on 

 the character of our research. Under the stress of a 

 national crisis it has become more clear that there is a 

 close interdependence between the different lines of for- 

 est research. A wood can be used with the greatest ef- 

 ficiency only when all of its qualities, mechanical, physi- 

 cal, and silvical are known. 



For the first time in the history of forestry, scientists 

 much more generally have come to feel that, in the 

 members of the Forest Service engaged in research, the 

 Nation has a body of men as fully equipped as those in 

 the older scientific lines, and that the technical results 

 secured are on the same high plane as those secured in 

 other sciences. Forestry as an independent and generally 

 recognized science has now become an accomplished fact. 



CONSERVATIVE CUTTING FURNISHES FUEL FOR TOWN 



T^HE White Mountain Forest has furnished practically 

 * the entire winter's supply of fuel to the people of 

 Bartlett, N. H. Sixty-two families bought a total of 565 

 cords of wood at the price of $1 per cord for stump- 

 age. Cutting, which was done under the supervision of 



the Forest Service, was carried out in such a way as to 

 improve the condition of the forest. Practically all of 

 this wood was cut by the individual purchasers in their 

 spare time, so that the total cost to the consumer, in- 

 cluding stumpage and hauling, was but $2.50 per cord. 



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