The Grazable Forest Land Resource 



Of the commercial timberland sampled, 906,500 acres were found to be 

 grazable. An estimated 81 percent of this land was classified as being in 

 good or excellent condition. The carrying capacity on the grazable forest 

 land was judged to be 127,9'f8 AUM's. If every acre of grazable forest land 

 had been in excellent condition, the potential available carrying capacity 

 would be 172,277 AUM's. Actual available carrying capacity was Tt percent of 

 potential . 



Range condition, an estimate of the departure from climax based on the 

 species composition of the understory vegetation, was calculated for each 

 commercial field location. It was assumed that the forage potential of under- 

 story vegetation in stands of timber with a crown density greater than 70 

 percent was so low that these sites were not sampled. Also, although unpro- 

 ductive forest lands have the potential to produce relatively large amounts of 

 forage, these lands contained few inventory plots and were not sampled for 

 range condition. 



The data summarized in Tables 15 through 17 was obtained from grazing 

 guides developed by the SCS. Appendix 7 contains a sample grazing guide 

 and an example of the field data form used. 



Overall Condition 



Understory vegetation was estimated to be in good or excellent condition 

 on 729,800 acres of commercial timberland or 81 percent of the grazable 

 timberland. Understory vegetation on another 176,700 acres was found to be 

 in fair or poor condition. The remaining 273,500 acres had crown densities 

 greater than 70 percent (see Table 15). 



Commercial timberlands with crown densities of 0-30 percent were the 

 most overgrazed. About 34 percent of these areas were in fair or poor 

 condition. Fourteen percent of the lands within the 31-50 percent crown 

 density group and the 51-70 percent group had understory vegetation in poor 

 or fair condition. 



A comparison of the relative amounts of grazable timberland in fair or 

 poor condition between ownership groups showed almost no difference. Each 

 ownership group had about 17 to 20 percent of its grazable timberland in fair 

 or poor condition. 



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