PROGRESS OF LAND CLASSIFICATION IN NAT'L FORESTS 11 



is painstaking and expensive, but up to December 31, 1915, a 

 total of 450,000 acres had been covered in South Dakota by this 

 method. 



Usually, however, reconnaissance examinations, and the 

 boundary revisions which are based upon such examinations, 

 have resulted in a permanent classification of over 90 per cent 

 of the area in each National Forest. The classification has in 

 many cases been governed by some one controlling factor. For 

 example, it is not necessary to secure an accurate timber cruise 

 of a township located at such an altitude that the weather re- 

 ports show killing frosts every month in the year. Obviously, 

 such land could not be used for farm purposes even if the stand 

 of timber should be found to be very light. Again, it is un- 

 necessary to consider questions of timber valuations when deal- 

 ing with a tract of land having a topography utterly unfitted 

 for farm purposes. By taking such facts into consideration it 

 has been possible to carry on the work with great rapidity and 

 at a low average cost. While some of the classification work 

 done by the most intensive methods has cost as high as 10 cents 

 an acre for the area covered, the average classification cost has 

 been less than half a cent per acre. 



The field work has already been finished on over one hun- 

 dred million acres of National Forest land, but the mere me- 

 chanical labor of typewriting reports, and preparing and dupli- 

 cating maps to cover such a vast area is in itself a stupendous 

 task, and work now under way will not be put in final shape 

 for official action before the close of another year. Meanwhile, 

 however, the Forest Service, already has located very definitely 

 practically all the areas of land of any considerable acreage 

 having any material or prospective value for agricultural pur- 

 poses, and by January 1, 1917, will have completed most of the 

 reconnaissance classification surveys and will have accurate 

 figures showing the total acreage remaining for final classifi- 

 cation. 



In the progress of this work the Forest Service has learned 

 many things. The study of farm values in their relation to 

 land in each National Forest and the investigations which have 

 been made to determine the ultimate highest use of each tract 

 of land in the existing National Forests, has brought out the 



