Both the contributions and the problems of for- 
estry are influenced by the close ties between forest 
and other agricultural land. Woodland is an in- 
tegral economic feature of 314 million farms. 
Hundreds of thousands of farms are intermingled 
with nonfarm forest land. Thousands of farmers 
depend in whole or in part upon forest range for 
feeding their stock, and on forests for water supplies 
and other services. Many farmers earn cash in 
woods work. Moreover, forests help sustain in- 
dustries and communities that provide the farmer 
with local markets for food, fiber, and livestock 
products. 
America’s forest lands are a vast domain of 
widely varying character and _productiveness. 
From tidewater to timber line they include a rich 
variety of forest types and conditions. They are 
an important factor in the economy of every region 
except the Plains (fig. 2). East of the Plains they 
represent nearly half of all the land—about one- 
fourth of the Central region, 45 percent of the 
Lake, and half or more of the Middle Atlantic, the 
South, and New England. In the West they bulk 
largest in the Pacific Northwest, with more than 
PLAINS 
half the area. The far-flung distribution and great 
variety of forest lands assure a wide sharing of 
their benefits and services. 
In studies of timber resources forest land is 
usually divided into two broad categories. About 
three-fourths, 461 million acres, is classed as com- 
mercial because it is suitable and available for 
growing merchantable timber (table 1). The bet- 
ter and more accessible forest sites are of course 
in this class. The less-favored one-fourth, 163 mil- 
lion acres, is called noncommercial. It includes, 
for example, the open-grown mesquite and pinyon- 
juniper of the Southwest, the chaparral woodland 
in southern California, high alpine forests, and the 
oak-cedar breaks of Texas and Oklahoma. It also 
includes 13 million acres of better sites set apart 
for parks and game preserves. 
Although forest land is chiefly thought of as a 
source of timber, both commercial and noncom- 
mercial forest land is valuable for watershed pro- 
tection, for forage crops, for wildlife habitat, and 
for recreation. ‘These values, essential to our eco- 
nomy and way of life, in some regions outweigh that 
of timber supply. Most of the forest land may be 
Y 
COMMERCIAL FOREST 
NONCOMMERCIAL FOREST 
FicuRE 2.—Distribution of the forest lands of the United States by regions. 
14 Miscellaneous Publication 668, U. 8. Department of Agriculture 
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