SILVICULTURAL MANAGEMENT OF BLACK SPRUCE IN MINNESOTA 



maximum prices have preserved the same pattern with spruce com- 

 manding the top price. 



Despite the substantially higher prices paid for spruce, the wood- 

 pulp industry was unable to procure adequate supplies of spruce dur- 

 ing 1943 and 1944. At the same time production of aspen and jack 

 pine pulpwood remained in reasonably good balance with the require- 

 ments. 



The first pulp mill in Minnesota was established in 1889, but there 

 are no records of the quantities of pulpwood used prior to 1909 when 

 consumption of spruce was reported to be 47,000 cords (fig. 2). By 

 1923 it had risen to 271,000 cords after which it fell to 124,000 cords 

 in 1930, and rose to 254,000 cords in 1942. Thus the use of spruce pulp- 

 wood in Minnesota has been strongly correlated with general business 

 conditions. It should be noted that, in 1936 and later years, part of the 

 pulpwood was imported from Canada — evidence that domestic sup- 

 plies could not meet the demand. 



300 







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SPORTS 









^ / \ 1 \/ 



X 



(CANADA) 







/ \ / 

 / \/ 





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V i 







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^-' 



""'% / 







/ 







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— NO DATA ~ 















1910 



'915 



1920 



1925 



1930 



1935 



1940 



1945 



YEARS 



Figuke 2. — Annual consumption of spruce pulpwood in Minnesota. It is esti- 

 mated that 85 percent of this was black spruce. (Compiled from Bureau of the 

 Census and U. S. Forest Service data.) 



In addition to the spruce pulpwood that is consumed in Minnesota, 

 large quantities are shipped to pulp mills in other States, particularly 

 Wisconsin (figs. 3 and 4). In 1930 this amounted to 200,000 cords of 

 pulpwood, chiefly spruce. 6 During the period 1936 to 1943, annual 

 shipments of spruce pulpwood from Minnesota ranged from 44.000 

 to 110,000 cords. 7 



The spruce pulpwood volumes reported above include white spruce 

 as well as black spruce. However, it is estimated that at least 85 per- 

 cent of the spruce pulpwood produced in Minnesota comes from black 

 spruce. The survey of forest resources of Minnesota made bv the 

 United States Forest Service between 1933 and 1936 showed that 82 

 percent of the cubic volume of spruce was black spruce. Some of the 

 larger white spruce is cut into lumber, so it is unlikely that white 

 spruce comprises more than 15 percent of the spruce pulpwood 

 resources. 



Black spruce seldom is cut into lumber because of its small size, ex- 

 cept in box lumber operations where a limited amount sometimes is 

 mixed with jack pine, balsam fir, white spruce, and second-growth 



6 Cunningham, R. N., and Moser, H. C. the forests of Minnesota. U. S. 

 Forest Serv., Lake States Forest Expt. Sta., 122 pp., illus. 193S. [Multilithed.] 



7 Data compiled by Lake States Forest Experiment Station. 



