also started on the effects of fire 

 with 1-acre (0.4-ha) plots 

 demonstrating complete exclusion 

 versus burning at 1-, 3-, and 5-year 

 intervals. Thinning studies were 

 initiated later as the plantings 

 developed. 



These plantings went out of 

 business in the 1970's. But they 

 had been viewed annually by more 

 people in Alabama than any other 

 examples of forest practices and 

 stimulated great early interest in 

 pine forestry. Several observers 

 believe the plantings contributed 

 more than any other university 

 research in the Deep South to the 

 development of general 

 management guidelines (Ware 

 1947; DeVall 1978 and personal 

 communication; Foil, personal 

 communication). 



During the South 's Second and 

 Third Forest Periods 



1931 to 1962— Although the 

 greatest growth in southern 

 university forestry and forest- 

 products research appears to have 

 to occurred after passage of the 

 Mclntire-Stennis Act of 1962, 

 some important building blocks 

 were put into place in the 31 -year 

 period preceding it. 



The first 20 years of this period 

 were generally a slack time for 

 forestry research in the 

 universities. The 1930's saw, 

 simultaneously, an enrollment 

 boom due to the demand for 

 forestry graduates to staff the 



CCC's and other Federal 

 conservation programs coupled 

 with cuts in State appropriations 

 due to the Depression. During 

 World War II, there was little 

 expansion in forestry research 

 anywhere except at the USDA 

 Forest Service's Forest Products 

 Laboratory. For 4 to 5 years after 

 the war, schools experienced a 

 second enrollment explosion due to 

 the GI bill. Teaching again 

 dominated (Kaufert and Cummings 

 1953). 



Establishment of additional 

 university research and 

 demonstration forests constituted 

 the major thrust of research- 

 oriented activity during the period. 



At Duke University, President Few 

 brought Clarence Korstian aboard 

 in 1931 to develop 4,600 acres 

 (1,862 ha) of Piedmont forest and 

 abandoned farmlands that had been 

 given to Duke in the 1920's. Few 

 instructed Korstian to develop a 

 program "like the Harvard Forest ,, 

 apparently in line with Duke's goal 

 to become the "Harvard of the 

 South." Korstian set it up as a 

 self-sustaining enterprise for 

 research, demonstration, and 

 teaching. He conducted trials of 

 many different techniques of 

 regeneration, thinning, pruning, 

 and prescribed burning. He 

 established and maintained a 

 system of permanent growth and 

 yield sample plots, stand maps and 

 study records that, in continuity 

 and detail, are equal to any in the 

 world (Edeburn and Jayne, 



30 



