Research in Manage- 

 ment of Timber Stands 



Management of forests for 

 timber products has long 

 been the subject of a major 

 part of the work of forest 

 scientists in the South. 

 Once forests are regenerat- 

 ed, many closely related 

 questions remain. What 

 growth and yields can be 

 expected from natural and 

 from planted stands? How 

 can undesirable hardwoods 

 and other unwanted vegeta- 

 tion be controlled? Will 

 fertilization be effective and 

 economic? Should harvest- 

 ing be by seed-tree, 

 clearcutting, selection cut- 

 ting, or other methods? 

 Such questions faced forest 

 managers for a wide variety 

 of types, sites, and stand 

 and ownership conditions 

 through the extensive and 

 widely varying southern 

 region. 



Early studies of southern 

 pine management conduct- 

 ed in the early 1 920's by 

 R.D. Forbes and his small 

 staff at the Southern Forest 

 Experiment Station were 

 aimed largely at determining 

 desirable cutting practices 

 in longleaf and other south- 

 ern pines. Another task 

 was to develop "normal" 

 yield tables for unmanaged 



pine stands. In this early 

 period, informal studies of 

 so-called practical forestry 

 were also undertaken by a 

 number of southern forest 

 landowners through the 

 crusading efforts of such 

 men as Austin Carey (White 

 1961). In the 1930's, an 

 expanding program of 

 studies included work by 

 H. Bull, A.L McKinney, and 

 others to evaluate thinning, 

 pruning, and improvement 

 cutting in loblolly and 

 longleaf pines. Scientists 

 such as W.F. Bond and 

 R.R. Reynolds issued the 

 first in a long series of 

 publications on both silvicul- 

 tural and financial aspects 

 of southern pine manage- 

 ment. 



The period prior to World 

 War II also saw the begin- 

 ning of research on manage- 

 ment of bottomland in the 

 South by G.H. Lentz, J.A. 

 Putnam, H. Bull, and others. 

 This work usually featured 

 destructives studies of 

 important timber species to 

 provide an understanding 

 of such attributes as tree 

 charactistics, distribution, 

 and relation to site factors. 

 A 207-page report on trees 

 of the Mississippi bottom- 



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